Marvel Takes Over NYCC with Zodiac, Three More Marvel Zombies, and a Surprise VisionQuest Premiere

Marvel Television and Marvel Animation took over the Empire Stage at New York Comic Con on Thursday afternoon, playing to more than 3,000 fans in a packed hour that stretched Marvel's Disney+ slate through Halloween 2029. Host Brandon Davis welcomed Brad Winderbaum, Marvel's Head of Television, Animation, Comics & Franchise, who noted how much had changed since he stood on the same stage a year earlier. Chief among those changes, he now oversees Marvel Comics in addition to television and animation, and he shared that comics were a lifeline for him as a kid, crediting his mother for taking him to a local paperback exchange.

A Detour Into Marvel Comics

Winderbaum explained that he had just spent three days at a creative summit with Marvel Comics' writers and artists, led by new Editor-in-Chief Stephen Wacker, and he invited Wacker out to share some news. Wacker described the summit as one of the most inspiring conversations about comics he had ever been part of, mentioning Jonathan Hickman among the creators in the room and promising that the ideas discussed would reach readers over the next couple of years.

Wacker then ran through a quick list of current comics news. He had just come from Midtown Comics, where lines were still out the door for Marvel's new Midnight line, which reimagines the Fantastic Four, the X-Men, Spider-Man, and other familiar heroes with a layer of horror. He also highlighted the milestone Amazing Spider-Man #1000 from the previous week, which he said changes Spider-Man forever, and plugged the new collaboration with Webtoon that will bring a new Marvel app later this year, with Marvel's entire digital comics library moving to the platform. Before handing the stage back, Wacker plugged the Bullpen Bulletins panel he would host on Friday, a Midnight panel, and Saturday's House of Ideas panel, where the all-new Avengers lineup would be discussed.

Zodiac

Back on the television side, Winderbaum admitted he had been trying to keep his next project a secret, but news had leaked the week before, so he unveiled the title and logo for Marvel Television's Zodiac. He described the live-action series as a spy thriller that will begin shooting in London in spring 2027 ahead of a 2028 debut on Disney+, and said casting would begin within the next couple of weeks. Winderbaum stayed tight-lipped beyond that, though he encouraged comics fans to study the logo closely for clues about where the story is headed. Davis pressed for more, but Winderbaum held firm that the rest was still under wraps.

Marvel Zombies

Winderbaum next revisited Marvel Zombies, which debuted last Halloween, and announced that director Bryan Andrews, who also helmed several episodes of What If...?, will return for three more two-part event series. Marvel Zombies: The Winter Soldier arrives for Halloween 2027 and will reveal where Bucky Barnes was during the first series, along with some big surprises. Marvel Zombies: The Fist of Khonshu follows for Halloween 2028, and the story concludes for Halloween 2029 with Marvel Zombies: The Last Guardian, though Winderbaum declined to reveal who the title character is. He said the team was about halfway through animatics and described the project as gory and blood-splattered yet surprisingly beautiful, joking that he could hardly believe Disney+ allowed it.

X-Men '97

Turning to X-Men '97, Winderbaum told the crowd that he cries right along with fans when he reviews edits of the series, since every romance and every goodbye hits hard, which he called something X-Men has always done well. He said most of the team has been with the show since the beginning and is hard at work on the third season, and admitted he was getting choked up just thinking about one of the upcoming episodes.

He then debuted footage from Season 3, which premieres in 2027 with a fourth season already planned. The clip opens in District X, where Sentinel posters are being defaced with graffiti asking where the X-Men went. A circular wall barricades the city, and authorities refuse to let anyone leave without transit letters. Among the protesters pressing at the border is a blue-haired girl clutching a flier for Xavier’s school, who gets knocked down and trampled in the crush. Spotting a ladder at the wall, she slips past a barricade and begins to climb, only for a Sentinel to identify her as a mutant and seize her. A group of mutants emerge and take the Sentinel down. When the girl asks if they are the X-Men, they reveal themselves as the Brotherhood, now led by Mystique.

The footage then cuts to Professor X and Storm riding to a wedding as a radio report recaps the president’s first 100 days in office. Storm blames Xavier for letting things get this far, and she shows little enthusiasm for the ceremony, which she dismisses as a public relations exercise for mutants. Guests arriving at the celebration included Deadpool, She-Hulk, Namor, and Squirrel Girl, before the clip revealed that the happy couple was Gambit and Rogue.

Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man

Davis then welcomed Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man creator and showrunner Jeff Trammell, making his first trip to NYCC. Trammell said Season 1 showed Peter Parker learning the ropes with a guy in the chair and a mentor at his side, but that Season 2 strips those supports away and sends him straight into bigger threats. Otto Octavius and the Scorpion, both major figures in Season 1, will return alongside new surprises, and Trammell teased that Peter's extra help may arrive as a black symbiote from space. He then announced that Season 2 premieres January 13th, 2027, on Disney+ and unveiled the season's poster before screening an exclusive clip.

The exclusive clip opens at a high-society gala, where reporter Eddie Brock presses Harry Osborn for an interview about his new venture until Nico Minoru steps in and pulls Harry away. Their conversation didn’t stay private for long, as a waiter eavesdropped and relayed everything he heard through an earpiece to Otto Octavius. With Norman Osborn a no-show, Octavius settled for his son. He raised a toast to the room, sealed the doors, and burst his mechanical arms through his coat to seize Harry. Spider-Man swung in to intervene, and the chase escalated up the side of the building into a gravity-defying battle fought sideways along its face. When Octavius tore Peter’s suit, the rips repaired themselves in black, leaving Peter visibly puzzled. To make his escape, Octavius flung Harry from the building. Spider-Man dove after his friend, using his webs to pull himself toward the ground even faster, caught Harry, and fired a line upward that stopped them just seconds before impact.

The footage closed with a sizzle reel of the season ahead, featuring glimpses of Spider-Gwen, Daredevil, Rhino, Electro, a masked woman in black who may be Black Cat, and Spider-Man fully covered in the symbiote suit.

Daredevil: Born Again

With Hell's Kitchen just a short trip from the Javits Center, Davis brought out three of the original Defenders: Charlie Cox, Krysten Ritter, and Finn Jones. The cast said reuniting for Daredevil: Born Again Season 3 felt as though no time had passed, with Cox comparing it to being back in 2016. They also shared that they missed Mike Colter, who could not attend but will return as Luke Cage. Acknowledging that Season 3 will be the show's last, Cox joked that fans should get the “Save Daredevil” campaign ready again.

The Season 3 teaser, debuting in the room, opened with Luke Cage, Jessica Jones, and Danny Rand seated together as an unseen authority across the table offered them badges, prompting Jessica to point out that there should be four. The footage then found Murdock behind bars, as a voiceover reflected on paying for the so-called crimes he committed to save the city. A montage traced the path that led him there, including a glimpse of Bullseye. Alone in his cell, Murdock senses that his skills are needed elsewhere, so he tears up his orange jumpsuit and fashions an improvised mask from the fabric. The teaser closed on Murdock in the middle of a bloody prison brawl, about to emerge victorious.

VisionQuest

The panel closed with VisionQuest, which premieres October 14th on Disney+ and concludes the trilogy that began with WandaVision and continued with Agatha All Along. The series finds a rebooted Vision in hiding after escaping those who sought to weaponize him, consulting the AI personas embedded in his programming, including F.R.I.D.A.Y., E.D.I.T.H., J.A.R.V.I.S., and Ultron, until a bounty on his head sends him on the run with Thomas Shepherd, a mysterious boy who may be Vision's reincarnated son. Showrunner Terry Matalas joined stars Paul Bettany, James Spader, Ruaridh Mollica, and Emily Hampshire on stage.

Davis noted that fans had been wondering where Bettany's White Vision went since flying off at the end of WandaVision. Bettany joked that he had been working in a park before explaining that he and Matalas had been figuring out how to tell a superhero story about fathers and sons, one featuring a robot father and a human son, and that the project truly came together once Matalas suggested they get the band back together and bring Spader back. Spader, returning to the MCU as Ultron, quipped that he had worn lifts in his boots during filming to stand next to Bettany, but left them at home for the panel.

Mollica, who plays Tommy (credited as Thomas Shepherd), said little beyond expressing his gratitude for joining the MCU and offering a cagey tease about family reunions. Hampshire, who voices the AI persona E.D.I.T.H., first heard in Spider-Man: Far From Home, said the character finally has a body and has essentially been set free. Asked which questions the series would answer, Matalas joked that it answers all of them, or at least most, before stressing that the show was made with love by everyone from Marvel's executives and writing staff to the crew at Pinewood Studios, the department heads, and the visual effects teams. 

The cast then debuted an exclusive trailer, in which Vision consulted the AI voices in his programming, Ultron among them, while protecting a young man who carries memories of being Vision's son. Winderbaum returned to the stage to call VisionQuest the most fun show he has ever worked on, then delivered the night's final surprise: the audience stayed for a screening of the series' first episode, and attendees left the convention center with an exclusive VisionQuest mini-poster.

Stay tuned for more coverage from New York Comic Con.