From Case-of-the-Week to Zombie Apocalypse: iZombie’s Bold Story Arcs

Zombies are like cockroaches: They may never completely go away, but 2010s TV was kind of their decade. It introduced AMC’s monster hit The Walking Dead (2010–2022) and Netflix’s delightfully weird horror-comedy The Santa Clarita Diet (2017–2018). Sandwiched between was iZombie, a series that blended crime procedural, undead melodrama, and absurdist comedy throughout five seasons on The CW.

It wasn’t an all-out smash hit, but it developed a passionate cult following thanks to its cleverness, heart, and winning performances. Add a wonderfully original take on a genre that can feel exhausted, and it’s easy to see how the brain-munching tale wormed its way into so many fans’ hearts.

Inspired by the Vertigo comic series of the same name by Chris Roberson and Michael Allred, creator Rob Thomas and his writing partner Diane Ruggiero-Wright kept some elements of the source material and discarded others, but they retained the undead spirit.

Chris Roberson and Michael Allred’s original iZombie comic featured Gwen Dylan, a zombie gravedigger from Eugene, Oregon, who must eat brains every 30 days to keep her memories. She’s also befriended by a ghost and a were-terrier (keep reading, we’ll get there), making the comics a supernatural riff on identity, friendship, and other lofty themes that struck a chord with readers.

The show, which transplanted Gwen to Seattle and renamed her Liv Moore (intentional, we think), moved in a different direction. Liv (Rose McIver) is a type-A overachiever who is working through med school when she ends up at a boat party that goes disastrously wrong thanks to a new designer drug called Utopium, which when combined with an energy drink called Max Rager leads to an explosion, bloodthirsty zombies, and Liv herself being scratched and put in a body bag before waking up as one of them.

Liv ends her engagement to her dopey but lovable human fiancé, Major (Robert Buckley), distances herself from her cheery roommate Peyton (Aly Michalka), and secures a job at the medical examiner’s office to conveniently feed off of brains. When her vivacious and well-meaning boss Ravi (Rahul Kohli), a CDC scientist who has dedicated his life to finding a zombie cure, discovers her secret, Liv is brought into the fold as a reluctant ally. This was a surprising shift from the comics, where Gwen worked to keep her condition a secret and lived a much more isolated life.

Over the years, Liv’s eating of brains and the memories they entailed became one of the show’s most endearing tropes: With every brain, she would take on new facets of the person she ate, be they a newly discovered penchant for Hush Puppies or the memory of a traumatic past. This lent McIver, and the show overall, an inexhaustible source of new characters to play, and her portrayals of a sassy dominatrix, curmudgeonly old man, romance novelist, magician, and a pub trivia-loving hitman are still among some of her best work.

Brains, Villains, and One Last Goodbye

Every good show needs a villain, and iZombie had an aptly named one in Blaine DeBeers (David Anders), the leechy, sleazy, morally bankrupt zombie who scratched Liv at the boat party. Blaine starts a small-time dealer of tainted Utopium but eventually expands his criminal portfolio to become the premier brain trafficker in town for a group of well-heeled zombie clients he dubs the Aristocrats, as well as one hanger-on named Dale (Jessica Harmon). Blaine was bad, very bad, and the quintessential sleazy white guy bad with his slightly aristocratic sneer, daddy issues, and a particular talent for trash-talking in the backhandedly charming way only David Anders can.

The show had plenty of great side characters too, from Jessica Harmon’s Dale Brazzio, an FBI agent who eventually becomes Clive’s partner, to Bryce Hodgson’s criminally underrated turn as Scott E. (season 1), who fans were so charmed by they made him back into his brother Don E. (season 2) as a loyal Blaine lackey. And guest roles like Daran Norris’ sleazy weatherman Johnny Frost, Steven Weber’s Maxwell Rager, CEO Vaughan Du Clark, and his zombie daughter Rita (Leanne Lapp) provided memorable one-off storylines, series-long threats, and the kind of broad physical comedy only Weber can pull off.

After a strong first half of the series, it lost some steam in the latter seasons and was unceremoniously canceled in 2020 (we’ll never understand The CW’s decision to cancel Three Ghosts and let iZombie limp to its finale after two seasons of what could have been). The finale was also a miss for many fans as it felt rushed, devoid of the emotional punch we had all been waiting for. Still, it’s hard not to admire what it did accomplish over its run: It took the fantastical and absurd and made it heartfelt, it had sharp humor, it had one-too-many puns (Major Lillywhite, The Scratching Post bar, Ravi’s dog “Minor”), and it had stomach-churning brain-based cuisine that we’ll never not love (think stir-fry, hush puppies, or the protein shakes).

There was gore, zombies, and murder, yes, but most of all, it had soul.