What If…?: What’s hidden in plain sight in episode 5

When the Zombies attacked

One of the fun things about What If…? is seeing where along the MCU’s timeline did events start diverging. That, however, gets a little difficult when it comes to figuring out when during Marvel Studios’ list of now twenty-five movies there could have been an outbreak of animated flesh-eating corpses. Prior to “What If… Zombies?!” being aired, the rumor was that this particular zombie plague would result from Crossbones’ attack on the bio-weapon lab in Lagos, Nigeria during Captain America: Civil War (2016). Turns out the outbreak actually begins when Hank Pym rescues his wife Janet Van Dyne from the Quantum Realm during Ant-Man and the Wasp (2018).

As we see, this means two things. One is that, in the official MCU timeline, the end of Ant-Man and the Wasp (prior to the mid-credits scene) took place two weeks before the start of Avengers: Infinity War. And the other is that, in this alternate universe, it was the zombies, not Thanos, that made the Avengers decide to put aside their differences after Captain America: Civil War. 

Thing is, one that’s well versed in Marvel movies might notice a few oddities. Yes, Black Widow’s hair is still bleached blonde like it was in Avengers: Infinity War, but Captain America (Josh Keaton) appears to have shaved off his beard and is wearing his Civil War outfit instead. Guess he had time to shave and change outfits before going off to kill some zombies? Hawkeye also is with them, even though he retired and took a plea deal to be with his family at the end of Civil War.

Presumably, the other Avengers were there, too, like Falcon, Wanda, and Vision (Paul Bettany). That brings up another potential plot hole, but we’ll get to that later. And then there’s Sharon Carter (Emily VanCamp) who, canonically, should be over in Madripoor building herself up as the Power Broker. Yet it seems she got herself a flight back to the States just to help out the surviving heroes. Perhaps Okoye (Danai Gurira) and Bucky (Sebastian Stan) gave her a lift while travelling from Wakanda.

Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man

One particular joy about this episode is that we got to see Peter Parker (Hudson Thames) have several moments to shine as the web-slinger, and still being a source of humor and optimism in spite of all the loss he’s suffered. There’s also quite a few references towards the original comics, too.

For starters, Peter being one of the bearers of the Cloak of Levitation could be seen a nod towards the fact that Spider-Man and Doctor Strange were both co-created by artist Steve Ditko. Peter and Hope Van Dyne’s (Evangeline Lilly) friendship is an inversion of how Janet Van Dyne/Wasp treated Spider-Man when they first met in the comics; she disliked him due because “Wasps and spiders are natural enemies.”

Yet “What If… Zombies?!” marks the first time that Peter’s Uncle Ben and his death has ever been explicitly referenced in the MCU. That’s some comfort to those who were more than a little annoyed over how Tony Stark became far more instrumental to Peter being Spider-Man that the very person who raised him and whose murder motivated him to be a superhero in the first place.

One odd Spider-Man related bit, however, does involve Spidey’s webbing, and how they’ve been used to help create the surviving Avengers’ makeshift base of operations in New York. Shouldn’t those webs have dissolved after two hours?