Why It’s Time for a iZombie Rewatch

Zombies have never really been out of fashion, but they did enjoy something of a boom in the 2010s on TV, with megahits like The Walking Dead (2010–2022), and weirder experiments like Netflix’s horror-comedy Santa Clarita Diet (2017–2018). A much less-watched series from The CW that fits into this latter category is iZombie, a supernatural procedural dramedy series that ran for five seasons. It was never a smash, but it has managed to hang on to a fairly hardcore group of fans who appreciate its humor, its likeable characters, and its odd combination of weekly whodunits and ongoing zombie mythology.

Based very loosely on a Vertigo comic of the same name by writer Chris Roberson and artist Michael Allred, iZombie’s comics center around a zombie named Gwen Dylan, a gravedigger from Eugene, Oregon, who eats a brain every 30 days or so to maintain her memories and keep her mind clear. Her best friend is a 1960s ghost, and her roommate is a were-terrier named Scott “Spot.” They help her out with various supernatural menaces like vampires, a mummy, etc. The TV version was developed by Rob Thomas and Diane Ruggiero-Wright and kept the broad strokes but changed almost everything else. It moved the action to Seattle, and the only real nod to the comics is that Allred did the show’s comic-styled opening titles, and the song the characters played in their weird mockumentary montage in the pilot is a cover of “Stop, I’m Already Dead” by Deadboy & The Elephant Men.

It’s there that she is spotted by her new boss, Ravi Chakrabarti (Rahul Kohli), who, instead of being horrified at her secret, is enthralled and becomes obsessed with creating a cure. Ravi himself was fired from the CDC years ago for making too big a deal about the very outbreak that’s occurring. Liv also becomes a second pair of eyes for Detective Clive Babineaux (Malcolm Goodwin), who strongly suspects that Liv is psychic. The truth is that whenever Liv eats a brain, she gains a few flashes of the dead person’s memories, as well as a few personality quirks and traits (fluency in foreign languages, phobias, etc.), which can help with their cases.

Brains, Villains, and the Series’s Iconic Characters

Every good drama needs a good villain, and iZombie has at least two of them. The first is the zombie who bit Liv in the first place, Blaine DeBeers (David Anders), who starts as the drug dealer who provides her with the tainted batch of Utopium and turns into a brain smuggler and trafficker, infecting the rich and then selling them a zombie fix. Blaine is charming, capable, cold, and very broken over family issues and trauma, which means he’s both a great antagonist and a perfect reluctant ally.

The show’s humor was in the details. Major’s last name is “Lillywhite.” Blaine runs a butcher shop in season one called “Meat Cute.” Ravi and Major have a dog they name “Minor,” and a zombie bar is named “The Scratching Post.” Fans of the series also geeked out over Liv’s different recipes and what her brain was cooking as she concocted everything from delicious-looking stir-fries, pizza roll mashes, and hush puppies, to Blaine’s homemade gourmet dishes with expertly prepared and stuffed medulla oblongata.

Over the seasons, the show also developed a great supporting cast. FBI investigator Jessica Harmon’s Dale Bozzio became Clive’s partner over time. Bryce Hodgson first made a memorable guest appearance as Scott E., a patient at a mental hospital, and would later return to play Don E., a member of Blaine’s operation and Scott’s twin brother. Daran Norris pops up as sleazy local weatherman Johnny Frost, while Steven Weber is there for one scene as Max Rager CEO Vaughan du Clark. Vaughan’s daughter Rita (Leanne Lapp) gets a darkly appropriate send-off in the season two finale when she goes “full Romero” and eats his brains before he kills her in turn.

Liv’s constantly shifting personalities are likely the series’ most consistently funny element, though, and a ton of the episode plots center on her absorbing a new brain, which causes either helpful side effects, frustrating side effects, or a character quirk that causes major problems with Major or someone else in her life. They range from laugh-out-loud funny (playing a dominatrix, an old man, an awkward LARP-loving history professor, a D.C. hardcore chick, a kids’ basketball coach) to very touching, and McIver nails each character effortlessly, even when the brain is just a setup for a one-off joke (Lowell eats the brain of a gay man before a date with Liv, Liv, Blaine, and Don E. all become conspiracy theorists after a brain full of paranoia).

Seasons four and five did show signs of running out of steam a little bit, and the series finale was pretty rushed and left fans unsatisfied, but iZombie was a solid combination of humor, mystery, thrills, and an engaging cast, and found an audience who’s still there for it today. Zombies will never go out of style, but the sheer number of shows with the undead is proof that there’s plenty of room for a series like this one, which blended murder cases, too many puns, and deeper character work, one tasty brain at a time.