A review of the iZombie season three finale coming up just as soon as I choose the wrong time to clean my Glock…
Both the first and second seasons of iZombie were defined largely by big action set pieces (Major’s assault on Meat Cute, the zombie massacre at the Max Rager party), and I kept waiting for “Looking for Mr. Goodbrain, Part 2” to offer up its equivalent. But instead of an elaborately choreographed shootout, the finale went and blew up the entire show by infecting a good chunk of Seattle’s population, then publicly revealing the existence of zombies.
I emailed Rob Thomas a few questions about why he, Diane Ruggiero-Wright, and the other writers did this, and what the show is now. His answers suggest it will still have a murder mystery component, but one that takes place in an entirely new world. If it’s not quite (to borrow a phrase from another Thomas show) hard sci-fi, it sounds like the fourth season will have to reckon with how life in Seattle (and elsewhere) would change if the existence of relatively benign zombies was known to anyone and everyone. The moment in the climactic montage where a re-zombified Major begins scratching hospital patients, for instance, opens up a huge can of worms about people looking to the zombie virus as a cure for incurable ailments, and Thomas says that will be part of the story now.
Even with murder investigations still a part of the show — albeit with Liv’s gifts in this area no longer unique — it’s a big change, and one that probably makes sense at this stage of iZombie‘s lifespan. This was probably my favorite season of the show, mainly because Clive being in on Liv’s secret identity vastly livened up the Brain of the Week stories that still dominate each episode, while at the same time, I felt less interested in, and conscious of all the details about, the larger story arcs than ever before. When Filmore Graves exec Carey Gold was revealed to be the season’s big bad, for instance, I mainly had to remind myself who she was, even though she was in nearly half this season’s episodes. The arcs obviously won’t go away in the new iteration of the show, but they may have to be less mystery-driven, now that Discover Day has come and the world knows that zombies exist and what they can do. Juggling a bunch of season-long mysteries on top of weekly mysteries isn’t impossible — Thomas and company did it perfectly back in Veronica Mars season one — but it’s tough, especially with so many serialized dramas out there right now. (I imagine I’d have an easier time following iZombie had it aired on UPN a dozen years ago.)
A show where zombies live out in the open, but with many different factions — Major being vehemently pro-zombie after witnessing so many of his Fillmore Graves comrades (plus the cured Natalie) die in that suicide bombing, Liv a human sympathizer, others just trying to survive and make sense of the new rules of their life. (Clive and Dale, for instance, finally have reason to get back together, but can’t because she’s a zombie and he’s not.) And whether Ravi’s vaccine works or not, the search for a cure should only intensify, and perhaps tainted Utopium will be easier to come by now that zombie-ism is a major public health crisis?
This is a fun show that went arguably as far as it can in its current incarnation. Things will be different next season, but I’m looking forward to the changes.
What did everybody else think?
Alan Sepinwall may be reached at sepinwall@uproxx.com