WARNING: The following contains spoilers for Empyre: X-Men #1, by Jonathan Hickman, Tini Howard, Matteo Buffagni, Nolan Woodard and Clayton Cowles, on sale now.
The Marvel Multiverse is full of deadly forces and nefarious threats, but one of the most fearsome is the Marvel Zombies. These ruthless and quietly cunning monsters can bring down entire worlds on their own, fueled by their hunger for flesh and with twisted reflections of their old personalities and powers. In their various incarnations, the Marvel Zombies are a deceptively powerful force that can take down a world, which makes their newest appearance both a boon and a major threat.
Thanks to the Scarlet Witch, a new batch of Marvel zombies have been resurrected in the remains of Genosha, and they could help against the Cotati, the aliens currently invading Earth in Marvel's Empyre event, but they could also risk dooming the X-Men if fully unleashed.
THE NEW MARVEL ZOMBIES
Since Mark Millar and Greg Land introduced them in Ultimate Fantastic Four #21, the Marvel Zombies have been one of the most dangerous forces of chaos within the Marvel Multiverse. Multiple realities have been struck with the virus that turns normally heroic figures into ravenous monsters, although only a few have fully descended into total chaos due to their presence. Often, the virus is spread by some figure bringing infected beings into other realities and beginning the outbreak all over again.
However, the newest horde of empowered zombies comes from this world as a direct result of the actions of the Scarlet Witch. Empyre: X-Men reveals that in the aftermath of her actions in House of M wiping out the mutant gene in a majority of humanity, the Scarlet Witch dedicated herself to trying to make amends for her actions. Although she believes her crime against mutantkind can't be forgotten, she can still be redeemed by doing some major good for the race. To that effect, she uses magic to bring back the 16 million murdered mutants on Genosha. Although she is able to bring some form of the mutants back, her spell backfires and instead resurrects them as zombies.
Like the traditional Marvel Zombies, these new mutant zombies are eager to devour anything, and they move in massive packs when able. They retain a certain amount of their mental faculties and their mutant powers, although they have been consumed with a desire to consume living flesh. Apparently, their diet also includes the plant-based lifeforms that make up the armies of the Cotati, who are trying to set up an invasion of Wakanda by using the ruins of Genosha as a base. Initially, this seems like it could be a benefit to the Earth since they're another powerful army that could be used as a tool against the army of Cotati warriors currently attacking the world in Empyre.
However, there's an inherent risk to using the zombies, and that's the threat they pose to the rest of the universe if they spread their disease. Like other versions of the Marvel Zombies, the zombies also retain their superhuman abilities even as the undead, allowing them to be far more overwhelming than any normal zombie. It's what allows their outbreaks to be so quick and effective. All of this makes the newly resurrected horde a genuine threat to the Marvel Universe, and Krakoa specifically.
Sending a team to investigate the disturbance on the island, the X-Men quickly find themselves defending the Krakoan Gate that's on the island. Because the zombies are all mutants, it's possible that they could breach the otherwise impenetrable island nation and spread chaos. If fully unleashed, these mutant zombies could become one of the few true threats to wiping out the mutant race. It's actually the arrival of Hordeculture, a group of older plant experts that have come into conflict with the X-Men in recent months, that proves most effective against the zombie horde. They quickly wash them away in what seems to be a wave of a slimy, acid-like substance.
These experts on plantlife might make invaluable allies while dealing with the zombies on Genosha and the Cotati invasion of the island. But there's a chance they could then turn their full attention to the assembled band of X-Men. But that's a problem the mutant heroes will have to put on hold, as it's up to them to prevent a zombie outbreak from fully consuming their world as it has across the multiverse.
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