- calendar_today August 21, 2025
Where iZombie Lost Momentum—And What It Still Got Right
Zombies are never truly out of fashion, but the last decade was when they arguably hit their peak on television. In the 2010s, we got AMC’s cultural juggernaut The Walking Dead (2010–2022), plus Netflix’s off-kilter horror-comedy The Santa Clarita Diet (2017–2018). Somewhere in the undead middle is iZombie, a zombie-crime-solver-drama sprinkled with absurdist humor and quietly genuine emotions, that aired on The CW for five seasons from 2015 to 2019.
It was never a monster hit, but in the world of low-to-medium ratings shows, it managed to find an audience of fans that was big enough to keep the program chugging along for five seasons. The heart was there in the form of smart writing and performances with sincerity you don’t often see in this genre, as well as a certain originality in how it approached a zombie show. Created by Rob Thomas and Diane Ruggiero-Wright, the series was based very loosely on a Vertigo comic book series of the same name by Chris Roberson and Michael Allred.
In the comics, the focus is on a zombie named Gwen Dylan, a gravedigger in Eugene, Oregon, who has to eat brains every 30 days to maintain her memories. Her inner circle of friends is expanded by a ghost (who she knows is a ghost) and a were-terrier. It’s a supernatural friendship concept, while also being about the complicated search for identity. The show subverted that idea, instead of starting a new chapter in Gwen’s life when she meets up with an old friend (played by Rose McIver) who has just moved to the city.
Liv Moore is her name, and yes, that name was very on-the-nose. Her type-A personality and ambitious nature make her the typical overachiever with very little time for levity in her life. When a boat party ends in a zombie outbreak, thanks to a new designer drug called Utopium and a hyper-concentrated energy drink called Max Rager, Liv becomes one of them after she’s scratched by Blaine DeBeers (David Anders), a smooth-talking drug dealer. She ends her engagement with her human fiancé, Major (Robert Buckley), drifts from her roommate Peyton (Aly Michalka), and lands a job in the medical examiner’s office for easy access to brains. That way, she can also avoid the zombie hunters that keep popping up around Seattle.
The only person who discovers her secret is her super-competent and kind-hearted boss Ravi (Rahul Kohli), himself a former CDC scientist. He was convinced that the zombie condition was contagious and, although he and Liv go through various ups and downs in their relationship, his commitment to discovering a cure is total.
Liv’s new zombie condition is that when she eats someone’s brain, she not only gains the memories of their recent activities, but she also takes on their character traits and personality. This allows for endless variations on McIver’s performance, and she runs the gamut from evil dominatrix to curmudgeonly codger to romance novelist to magician to pub trivia-obsessed hitman. She always plays each brain with sincerity, bringing a lot of charm to what otherwise might be an exercise in absurdism.
Bringing the brains to her work as a forensic puzzle, Liv then teams up with Det. Clive Babineaux (Malcolm Goodwin) to work together to solve murders, which Liv approaches with varying levels of success (Clive, at least initially, believed her to be psychic). Ravi is not only comic relief (he was originally intended to be that and a little bit more) but also brings the scientific aspect to the show, bolstering Liv while also getting great amusement out of her more offbeat personas (albeit maybe not when it was PhD scientist brain, who was an annoyance to him in life).
Brains, Bad Guys, and Bittersweet Goodbyes
A show like this requires a true bad guy, and the show found its ideal lead antagonist in Blaine DeBeers (David Anders), the charismatic, sociopathic murderer who scratched Liv at that ill-fated party. From lowly dealer of illicit and untested Utopium, Blaine moves into more exclusive territory as a brain trafficker, setting himself up as a preferred source for wealthy undead looking to maintain their quality of life. With his aristocratic sneer, deep daddy issues, and absurdist panache, Blaine was a presence one could not help but watch.
The series was also fortunate to have some interesting supporting characters, like Jessica Harmon as FBI agent Dale Brazzio who later becomes Clive’s partner, or Bryce Hodgson who made an indelible impression in one episode in season one as Scott E., so beloved was he that the showrunners dusted him off later in the series as twin brother Don E., who becomes Blaine’s perennial sidekick. Standout guest roles were also common in iZombie, like Daran Norris’ sleazy TV weatherman Johnny Frost, or Steven Weber’s portrayal of Max Rager CEO Vaughan Du Clark and his zombie daughter Rita (Leanne Lapp), who remain in our hearts as both one-off memorable roles and legitimate series-wide threats.
After a strong start, iZombie’s later seasons struggled to maintain their momentum, with its finale coming in as particularly rushed and a nadir of the series, which left fans wanting emotional resolution. It’s hard to argue with business decisions, but when your show has this much heart, a quick and definitive ending will always disappoint. Still, iZombie accomplished what a lot of shows of its ilk have not: It made the outrageous and surreal feel real. It allowed for heart as well as humor. It trafficked in cleverness (read: puns), because the leads (especially Major Lillywhite, The Scratching Post bar, and Ravi’s dog “Minor”) were so dang quotable.
