iZombie May Be Gone, But It Still Lives Rent-Free in Our Brains

If you needed a refresher, zombies have been a long-running part of pop culture, but they experienced something of a boom on TV in the 2010s, including both big-budget juggernauts like The Walking Dead (2010–2022) and more quirk-driven experiments like the Netflix horror-comedy The Santa Clarita Diet (2017–2018). iZombie fell firmly into the latter category: the supernatural procedural dramedy aired on The CW for five seasons, without ever becoming a big breakout hit but racking up a cult following that appreciated its witty writing, its likable characters, and its unique blend of weekly crime procedural with an overarching arc about Liv’s zombie existence and her efforts to take down Blaine DeBeers.

Based on the Vertigo comic of the same name by writer Chris Roberson and artist Michael Allred, the comics follow zombie gravedigger Gwen Dylan in Eugene, Oregon. To stay alive and keep her memories and sanity, she needs to eat one brain per month. Her best friends are a 1960s-era ghost named Mr. Mollusk, and her “partners in crime” are a were-terrier named Scott “Spot,” as they solve supernatural cases and are up against the local vampire coven and mummy twins. The showrunners for the TV adaptation, Rob Thomas and Diane Ruggiero-Wright, didn’t stray too far from the general premise, but they nixed the Oregon setting for Seattle, Washington. Apart from the show’s opening credits, which echoed Allred’s comic-book style and art, and a Deadboy & The Elephant Men cover for the show’s theme song “Stop, I’m Already Dead,” the comics’ influence ended there.

Liv Moore (Rose McIver), the series’ heroine, was a driven medical student before her life was shattered by a zombie outbreak at a boat party. After a zombie she was unable to outrun scratched her, she awoke on the beach in a body bag in her zombie form. Max Rager, an energy drink she had consumed that night, mixed with a bad batch of designer drug Utopium, to allow her to keep her memories and intelligence. Breaking off an engagement with her sweet but dopey boyfriend Major (Robert Buckley), estranging herself from her old best friend Peyton (Aly Michalka), and taking a job at the medical examiner’s office to ensure a consistent supply of brains, Liv’s life had its ups and downs.

Her boss, Ravi Chakrabarti (Rahul Kohli), who Major told about her new “diet,” could not stop himself from being fascinated by her when she kept a steady routine of weekly autopsies. Fired from the CDC years earlier for sounding the alarm about such a virus, Ravi convinced Liv to work with him to find a cure. Liv also had to solve crimes with Detective Clive Babineaux (Malcolm Goodwin), who first approached her when she was working at the coroner’s office, as he thought she was psychic. Her weekly meals helped her solve most cases, as Liv’s brain eating resulted in her taking on flashes of the donor’s memories and some of their personality traits, both good (fluency in a foreign language, emotional strength) and bad (acrophobia, psychosis), which generally related to the murder case in question in some way.

Brains, Baddies, and More Memorable Characters

A good show usually has a compelling antagonist, and iZombie found one early in Blaine DeBeers (David Anders), the zombie that Liv first encountered on the boat party that changed her life. After peddling the tainted Utopium she got infected from, Blaine turned to trafficking brains from those who could afford his exclusive service of infecting someone with his custom Utopium-zombie virus. This gave him control over his brain clients, as they would be driven to seek out more of his “magic paste” or risk becoming addicted zombie alcoholics. Blaine was an intriguing and, for the most part, unpredictable bad guy, as his moral ambiguity and tragic family backstory often made him a reluctant ally to Liv.

The show also had a number of romantic subplots, though the primary relationship viewers initially thought would drive the show was Liv and Major. But in the fandom, Liv’s romance with Lowell Tracey (Bradley James), a British musician whom season one paired them up, took off. In the case of Lowell and Liv, both of them had a secret, and his easy rapport with Ravi was excellent, and his character got killed off rather callously as he tried to take down Blaine, which fans did not take well.

One of the show’s most consistently enjoyable elements was the personalities Liv found in her brain. Liv became a goth librarian, a dominatrix, a grumpy old man, a LARPing professor, a jewelry thief, a fried chicken connoisseur, a 1930s housewife, a pottery-making yoga instructor, a mentally disabled senior citizen, a fire-breathing chihuahua-wrestling Mexican wrestler, a former basketball coach for Liv’s niece and nephew, a hurricane chasing thrill-seeker, and many more in various episodes. Rose McIver deftly embodied each of these characters, allowing for her brain-influenced character to range from wild comedy to emotional, poignant drama. At other times, the brain intake was simply meant to give the show a chance to make zombie-related or pop-culture-y jokes, like Lowell eating a gay man’s brain on the way to a date with Liv or Liv, Blaine, and Don E. all eating paranoia brains and bonding over shared conspiracy theories.