Do You Need to Play MWZ To Understand Dark Aether?

Recently I've gotten back into zombies after not playing since Cold War's launch, and while I knew some of the lore, I wanted to play all the games relating to the New Storyline to fully understand it, but I noted that MWZ had some type of connection to the Dark Aether storyline and was wondering if it was something worth playing to fully catch up on the current story.