Spinning off from the zombie episode of What If, Marvel Zombies reveals the problems of bringing together the entire Marvel Cinematic Universe for a zombie horror saga. The MCU has fared fine when reserving its corners for different genres, be it the sci-fi adventure of Guardians of the Galaxy or the atmospheric horror of Werewolf By Night. But when all parties are assembled for the grandest of ensembles of Marvel TV shows, the effect comes off lukewarm for a miniseries where people are gored and killed off rapidly.

The biggest problem with this zombie apocalypse framing is that the protagonist is the chipper fangirl Kamala “Ms. Marvel” Kahn, reprised by the exuberant Iman Vellani. Even after enduring the loss of several superheroes to the zombie outbreak, she still seems confident around her contemporaries, Riri “Ironheart” Williams (Dominique Thorne) and Kate Bishop (Hailee Steinfeld). This trio should have energetic camaraderie, but it feels woefully misplaced in a story with a high chance of them suffering a dark demise. That quippy nature devalues much of the danger, where several deaths via zombies are presented with silly punchlines. There’s only so many times one can take the laugh-and-smash approach to this horror scenario that I just stopped caring about who lives and who dies.

It’s sad to see how the lesser-used characters of the MCU are treated more like cannon fodder for this story. While a film like Thunderbolts made you care about the lingering presence of Yelena Belova and Bucky Barnes, this show turns the underused characters into literal cartoons that are sliced and diced for your amusement. There’s something so vile about a show like this that takes the wisecracking personas of Jimmy Woo (Randall Park) and Peter Parker (Hudson Thames), and contorts their latest zinger into their bloody epitaphs. It’s especially disheartening to see so many forgotten and even yet-to-appear-in-the-MCU characters getting this treatment. It’s one thing to play Grim Reaper with finding various ways to kill off the MCU’s many characters cleverly, but it’s quite another to take the scythe to ideas that never fully materialized.

The closest comparison I can make for a show like this was DC Comics’ similar attempt with Justice League Dark: Apokolips War. This was also a horrific premise in which nearly the entire DC roster was brutally obliterated amid a dire situation that left the universe in ruins. But while that direct-to-video production carried some emotional weight, Marvel Zombies feels like a noisy divergence rather than a subversive turn for the PG-13 franchise. At least with the anthology series What If, certain characters refrained from exploring different story ideas. This extension of that one episode feels unnecessary by comparison, merely presenting more undead and/or gored superheroes and supervillains without much of a tonal shift.

Marvel Zombies merges undead horror with the spirited MCU like a sandwich composed of peanut butter and ketchup. The animation isn’t much of an upgrade from the What If TV series, the violence is rarely inventive, and the towering ensemble of mostly returning actors feels like a waste of potential. Even at a brisk four episodes, the series blows through so many characters and ideas, leaving little meat to this exercise in animated brutality that comes off as little more than the MCU dressing up for a Halloween party in a tacky and ill-fitting costume.