IZombie takes a bite out of crowded genre
CW’s insightful comic-book-inspired series turns a monster into a hero
One of the most insightful shows on TV right now also loves a nice montage of a zombie cooking and eating a brain.
The zombie genre is more crowded than ever. AMC’s zombie epic The Walking Dead (Sundays, 10 ET/PT) is losing creative momentum; Netflix comedy Santa Clarita Diet (returning March 23) gives the zombie story an absurdist spin with Drew Barrymore; Syfy’s Z Nation (returning later this year) goes for a wider disaster feel; and Starz’s Ash vs. the Evil Dead (Sundays, 9 ET/PT) serves up nostalgia.
But while those series have their strengths, the zombie show most suited for today’s cultural moment is CW’s iZombie (Mondays, 9 ET/PT), a comicbook-inspired dramedy that turns a zombie into a hero.
Now in its fourth and most ambitious season, iZombie built a world where zombies are sentient and only as good or evil as humans are. In last season’s twisty finale, the world became aware after a zombie defense contractor poisoned a flu vaccine and turned thousands of humans into the undead.
Season 4 opens with Seattle, the show’s setting, walled off by the government, under military rule and filled with hatred. Zombies aren’t just sci-fi creatures — they’re the societal other, living with discrimination from people
and institutions.
Starting in the latter half of Season 3, the series became parable about living in a literally divided world, themes that resonate in our fractious political and cultural era. It challenges the audience’s notions of what is right and wrong, and who holds moral authority.
When The Walking Dead premiered in 2010 and took off in the ratings, postapocalyptic stories were all the rage. (The first Hunger Games film arrived just 18 months later.) Our visions of survival and dystopia were far-flung or all-consuming. iZombie offers a story about the unthinkable happening and life just continuing to tick on. There’s a wall around Seattle, but hey, the Seahawks are still playing, just in Tacoma. Its hero, a zombie named Liv Moore (Rose McIver), tries to just carry on as normal until she can’t take it anymore.
iZombie entered this season while still retaining its signature comedic style (that zombie defense contractor is named Fillmore Graves — get it?) and strong writing. It has long balanced disparate elements: Liv comes to terms with her zombiehood while experiencing romantic drama and helping the police solve crimes. After she eats the brains of murder victims, she sees visions from their final moments and helps put away their killers.
And while the leap from murder-ofthe-week to martial law might seem like a stretch, it’s worth remembering that the series was never really just about zombies. Liv’s storyline in Season 1, adjusting to her new life and the trauma of the attack that turned her, mirrors the aftermath of sexual assault.
The new season isn’t perfect — there’s an ill-advised subplot in which one of its primary villains randomly becomes a prophet — but it makes a statement about the world we live in now in a way its fellow zombie shows haven’t. These dead don’t just walk, they have something to say.