Summary
- The zombie Mary from Shaun of the Dead has a chilling origin story, revealed in a dark comic prologue by Edgar Wright and Simon Pegg.
- The comic provides a grim backstory, as Mary tries to do the right thing but dies an unjust death.
- The story has thematic links with The World's End, making it a surprisingly essential addition to the trilogy.
Despite her relatively small role in Shaun of the Dead, the zombie known as 'Mary' has the darkest story in not just the movie, but the entire Cornetto Trilogy. Edgar Wright, Simon Pegg, and Nick Frost's Blood and Ice Cream Trilogy (aka the Cornetto Trilogy) is a comedy masterwork, beginning in 2004 with the rom-zom-com Shaun of the Dead. Now twenty years old, many fans still don't know that Shaun and Ed's first zombie antagonist has a chilling backstory.
In the run-up to the film, the British comic 2000 AD published the short story 'There's Something About Mary,' from Simon Pegg, Edgar Wright, Frazer Irving, and Annie Parkhouse. The eight-page story follows supermarket cashier Mary during the opening day of the zombie apocalypse, ending with her following Shaun and Ed home from The Winchester as a zombie. Their discovery of her standing in their garden the next morning is the duo's introduction to the undead plague in the Shaun of the Dead movie, where Mary is played by Nicola Cunningham.
For many fans, this short comic was their first introduction to Shaun and the world of Shaun of the Dead, and it even shares some crucial details from the film from a different perspective. The eight-page comic is available to read for free on 2000AD.com (warning, it's incredibly gory.)
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'There's Something About Mary' embraces a grimy sense of menace that Wright's movies don't...
Shaun of the Dead Gave Mary a Chilling Origin
Simon Pegg and Edgar Wright's Comic Is a Dark Prologue
The comic opens with Mary working at 'Landis' - a fictional supermarket that honors An American Werewolf in London writer and director John Landis, while also referencing real-world supermarket chain Londis. Mary encounters Shaun on multiple occasions - running to Liz's house and later sitting near him and Ed in The Winchester. It's in the pub that Mary meets a sick man who asks her to help him find a doctor. Mary obliges, but the man quickly turns into a zombie and bites her. Mary then overhears Shaun and Ed singing Melle Mel's White Lines (Don't Don't Do It) (an iconic moment in the movie) and follows them home.
It's a tragic story in which Mary tries to do the right thing and ends up paying the ultimate price, however the truly dark detail is the comic's other character - a large man who harasses Mary throughout her day. Following her after work, the man appears to be stalking Mary, and she actually tries to ask Shaun for help escaping him, however Pegg's character is in too much of a rush to hear her. When the stalker finally catches up with Mary, it's clear he intends to attack her, but instead the newly zombified Mary takes a bite out of his face. Fans of the movie will realize this is the second zombie who arrives after Ed and Shaun discover Mary in their garden - in her undead state, Mary unites with her would-be attacker to feast on the living.
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While the Cornetto Trilogy isn't exactly absent darkness - Shaun kills his own mom, The World's End ends with a global disaster - 'There's Something About Mary' embraces a grimy sense of menace that Wright's movies don't (surprising, since he and Pegg wrote the comic's script.) Nihilistic and skin-crawling, Mary's backstory evokes the traditional zombie movies that Shaun of the Dead lovingly satirizes, adding a truly nasty bite to a background character. Most distressingly of all, it emphasizes the humanity that Mary has lost once fans see her in the movie - Shaun and Ed confront an innocent woman and a dangerous creep but see them both as equally inhuman.
While Mary's big scene is as a zombie, fans can see her at work in Landis in the movie's opening moments, during the montage scored to The Specials' Ghost Town.
Mary's backstory makes Shaun's plan to hole up in The Winchester even more irresponsible...
Pegg and Wright's Comic Answers Lingering Questions
Shaun & Ed Picked Up Their First Zombies at the Winchester
While the comic is more about establishing the undead plague and introducing Shaun, it does answer some lingering questions and offer new context to moments in the movie. First, fans learn that Ed and Shaun picked up their first zombies on their way home from The Winchester. Mary isn't just randomly in the pair's garden as they assume, but was attracted by their carelessness. Mary's backstory also makes Shaun's plan to hole up in The Winchester even more irresponsible - while it's indeed empty of zombies once Shaun's group arrive, it was the site of a deadly attack only minutes after Shaun and Ed left the night before, showing incredibly early on that it's nowhere near as secure as they'd hoped (something that becomes a key plot point later.)
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The comic also establishes that some moments are darker than they appear. Shaun's worrying about his anniversary dinner with Liz caused him to miss the fact that Mary needed help, inadvertently leading to her death outside The Winchester after she entered to escape her stalker. Likewise, the scene in which Ed subtly lays out the plot of the movie becomes far darker. During their drinking session in The Winchester, Ed makes a speech planning out a day of debauchery to help Shaun get over Liz. He says:
You know what we should do tomorrow? Keep drinking! Have a Bloody Mary first thing, a bite at The King's Head, couple at The Little Princess, stagger back here, bang, back at the bar for shots.
Famously, this scene describes the plot of the movie, from Dianne and David joining the group at Liz's house to the gang faking zombie groans to get back to The Winchester. "Bloody Mary first thing" describes their face-off with the zombified Mary, and it's far darker to know that she's sitting a few feet away while Ed is accidentally predicting her fate. The movie's ending also shows that the Landis supermarket now 'employs' zombies, echoing Mary's early claim that she doesn't feel like she actually has a life. Despite her attempts to do the right thing and an unjustly violent death, she's immediately replaced by the mindless undead.
Shaun of the Dead's ending reveals that zombies have become a fact of life, with TV clips showing zombies used for menial work and mean-spirited entertainment, as well as Coldplay playing a charity gig for the organization 'ZombAid.'
'There's Something About Mary' bucks a major Cornetto Trilogy trend, providing a genuinely dark downer note that isn't leavened with humor or an eventual twist for the better.