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The Black Panther of What If…?’s zombie episode suffers a dark fate — but he’s got NOTHING on the T’Challa from the original Marvel Zombies.
WARNING: The following contains spoilers for What If…? Season 1, Episode 4, “What If… Zombies!?,” streaming now on Disney+.
In worlds defined by Marvel Zombies, there’s rarely any genuine hope for the world. If the undead can count dangerous competent and terrifyingly committed ghouls among their number, then there’s little that the remaining heroes of the world can do, let alone those without amazing powers or technology at their disposal. Despite this, Black Panther has consistently proven to be one of the few who can survive such a universe — although it appears to come with a consistent cost in the form of a strikingly similar injury across mediums.
The Black Panther who survives the events of “What If… Zombies!?” has had a rough go of it, but it’s nothing on the life of the Black Panther from the first incarnation of the Marvel Zombies.
In the original Marvel Zombies miniseries by Robert Kirkman and Sean Phillips, T’Challa was one of the last surviving Avengers. Although many of his teammates were infected towards the beginning of the outbreak, Black Panther was lured into a “bunker” by his teammate Giant-Man. Already infected, Giant-Man reasoned that by keeping T’Challa alive and “rationing” his flesh, he could retain his intelligence for longer. This kept Black Panther hidden for an extended time, only escaping in the chaos of Galactus coming to Earth and the super-powered undead struggling to figure out how to respond — albeit without one of his arms and legs, which had been steadily cut off and consumed by the formerly heroic Hank Pym.
The Black Panther of “What If… Zombies!?” suffers a similar fate, although under very different circumstances. In this world, Pym was actually one of the earliest infected heroes, and upon his return from the Quantum Realm with his infected wife Jan helped spearhead the spread of the virus. Black Panther was one of the Avengers who responded to the outbreak, and was the only one not seemingly corrupted into one of the undead. Missing for some time, Black Panther eventually turned up in Camp Lehigh, base of operations for the Vision (and prison for the infected Scarlet Witch). Trying to appease her hunger, Vision cut off pieces of Black Panther to feed Wanda — resulting in him ultimately losing his leg. However, he also survives the events of the episode alongside Spider-Man and the head of Scott Lang.
It’s notable that both versions of T’Challa hit similar roadblocks, despite the different versions of the zombie apocalypse happening around them. Both of them survived the initial outbreak, both of them were captured by those they considered allies, and both lost a leg to their attempts to satisfy the zombie plague. The Black Panther of What If…? at least had some allies left in the world who were able to help him up — and even as he and the rest of the survivors head to an uncertain future and an army of the dead led by Zombie Thanos, at least there’s still hope in the possibility that they and their allies could find a way to survive and fight back. This is different than the Black Panther of the original Marvel Zombies continuity, who led a long and ultimately tragic life.
After escaping Pym’s confinement with the severed but still active head of the Wasp, T’Challa ended up alongside Forge, Fabian Cortez, and the last of Magneto’s Acoyltes as some of Earth’s last non-undead survivors. Black Panther even becomes a leader of the survivors, embraced by the Acolytes above Cortez even though he was a human. T’Challa married one of their number — Lisa Hendricks — and had a family. But after decades of rule, he was mortally wounded by an assassin in Marvel Zombies 2. The infected Wasp (who’d gained some semblance of control over her hunger) infected him a bid to save him. In the end, both were trapped in an alternate reality and were wiped out by the undead Avengers of Earth-Z in Marvel Zombies Return.
To see more variants of Black Panther from across the Marvel Multiverse, What If…? releases new episodes every Wednesday on Disney+.
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