We’ll do our best to leave the plot twists out, but if you’re not caught up then this is going to ruin plenty of surprises since it follows the progression of the show. So yeah, SPOILER ALERT.
As a series, few have successfully changed as much as iZombie in such a short run. Over the four seasons, they’ve had characters go from innocent to jaded, from normal to undead and living in a cross-species war zone. Luckily, we’ll be seeing a fifth season as well. Liv, Major and the rest of the crew have been through a lot since that first ill-fated boat party way back in season one. As they have grown and changed, the show has become ever more complex and enjoyable.
The sheer versatility of the actors is commendable on its own. Playing a zombie who takes on the psychological characteristics of anyone whose brains they eat is a challenge worthy of the finest thespians. Not only do they have to convince us they are the characters they play, but that those characters maintain something of themselves while also absorbing the mentality and habits of another person every few days. As a result, it’s no surprise the brilliant cast has been able to take us down such a twisted path without losing our suspension of disbelief or immersion in their world for years.
Season One
The cheekily named hero of the show, Dr. Liv Moore and her oh-so-dreamy fiance Major Lilywhite the social worker with a heart of gold have a perfect life. They love each other and plan to marry soon. They’re both absorbed by their jobs and focussed on the future. Liv is a workaholic and kind of uptight doctor, and Major helps troubled youths. Or that’s how things began. Within the first episode Liv was infected by a zombie at a party she hadn’t even planned to go to. It was her overly attentive fiance who suggested she unwind and take her coworker up on the offer.
Death Becomes Her
Suddenly Liv finds herself among the undead. She doesn’t know what happened, but she is dead, and her hair has gone from its usual dark hue to a washed out bleach blonde. Fortunately, as a doctor, she runs a few tests to try and figure out what’s going on. She eventually comes to the conclusion that she’s not just undead, she’s also contagious. She breaks away from her friends, breaks things off with Major, avoids her family and gets a new job at the morgue. Everyone is concerned, and they should be, but she’s not sharing her private death-details with anyone. At least she has a supply of brains and a new friend in Ravi, her coworker. He quickly discovers her ‘problem,’ and fortunately for her, offers to assist her. Not only does he become a confidante and conspirator in her brain-eating, but he also wants to experiment and help her find a cure. Ravi also becomes quite close with Major, who ends up infected and zombified as well.
Learning the Ropes and Cooking the Brains
The first season is all about adaptation. Her family and friends have to accept that something she won’t talk about has happened and Liv is very different. Live’s new coworkers have to adjust to the unusual personal habits of the pale-skinned Liv and her extraordinary ‘psychic ability,’ to understand what the murder victims she comes across went through. Live herself has to adjust to death, having almost no sense of taste except for the most ridiculous levels of spice, eating the brains of murder victims, and her new life as an outcast. At least she’s on the trail of Filmore-Graves, the company that accidentally created the zombie virus with their energy drink, Max Rager. By the end of the season, Ravi has synthesized a tiny bit of anti-zombie serum which Blaine and Major end up with. Liv is learning to use her talents to help Clive Babineaux, a police officer who doesn’t understand her ‘powers’ but is learning to rely on them none the less. It’s not much, but it keeps her going.
Season 2 & 3
Liv has a new roommate who’s more of a corporate espionage agent planted to keep an eye on her at first. Major turns out to be not so great as a human. Between his Utopium addiction and the somewhat coerced zombie killing spree he goes on, things have changed a lot for Major. Liv’s best friend Peyton reappears but her family doesn’t forgive her easily for the earlier faux pas. Learning to handle being human, or not, isn’t easy.
Season 2 and 3 are the development of the characters and their flaws. Major goes through drugs and murder as coping mechanisms and eventually becomes a zombie again. Much the same can be said for Blaine, except it’s more like a lifestyle choice than a coping skill for him. Liv pursues her destruction of Max Rager and ends up more embroiled than ever in solving crimes with Clive. Clive learns to live with a partner who bizarrely impersonates the dead and Peyton learns that Ravi is a good boyfriend and she’s more committed to her friends than her high powered career as a lawyer. Blaine doesn’t change much, he likes chaos and death almost as much as he likes making money.
The middle seasons are clearly a buildup to the next significant change, as characters who are trying to out zombies to the world quickly become part of the show. Filmore-Graves develops a whole zombie based private military force, which Major joins. Blaine gets into and out of the brain selling business more than once, and Liv learns how not to, with style. Filmore-Graves, Blaine, Liv and plenty of others want to avoid having the world find out about the zombies. Things go from lighthearted brain and habanero eating fun to a darker world where two sides, both equally extreme in their desire to protect their species, are at war. Each progressive season has had a higher body count and more serious moments.
By the end of season three not only are zombies public information, but they’re being taken as a real threat to the world. The season finale for the third season is Filmore-Graves living up to their name by infecting most of Seattle with the virus by spreading it as a part of a flu vaccination. They then publicly announce that they expect the help of the rest of the country to fulfill the need to feed their population and keep them from running amok causing chaos and the apocalypse.
Season 4
The zombie revolution has begun. Seattle is walled off, and the American government is considering nuking the whole place. Only the remaining live citizens and ramifications of nuclear fallout are holding them back. Filmore-Graves is policing the city streets, yet somehow, people within are slowly coming to terms with their new reality. Humans and zombies in many places have come together. In spite of dietary differences and the fact that zombies can’t die, but can lose their minds and go feral, there are ways to make it work. Cross-species couples and families are finding unique methods of coping. From polygamy to the zombie underground sneaking people who are dying into the city for a second chance at life as one of the undead life with sentient zombies is weird. If Seattle can keep from being nuked into a paste, they just might find a way to live in the post-zombie world. Not everyone is happy about that. It looks like some of the character’s past indiscretions are about to bite them again. There’s also the issue of what to do with thousands of zombies who are running low on food. There are only so many brains in Seattle.
Final Thoughts
Season one was hopeful and adorably seeking perfect normalcy. The next two seasons developed the roles of people and zombies as very different species. Oddly season four, for all its darkness manages to show that there can be gold at the end of the rainbow. The evolution has more plot twists than Lost, but iZombie maintains its sense of fun even as it descends into darkness. We can’t wait for season five to hit Netflix so we can binge it as well.
Follow Us
