Rose McIver Deserves More Credit for Her Role in iZombie.

Zombies are nothing new to popular culture, but the long-delayed apocalypse experienced a bit of a renaissance on TV in the 2010s. On one hand, there were genre-defining juggernauts like The Walking Dead (2010–2022). But there were also some real stinkers and weirder experiments, like Netflix’s own horror-comedy The Santa Clarita Diet (2017–2018). In that latter camp, you’ll find iZombie, the supernatural procedural dramedy that spent five seasons on The CW. The brain-craving show never found blockbuster success, but it quickly developed a fiercely devoted following that loved its biting wit, lovable cast, and odd mixture of weekly crime-solving and season-spanning, zombie apocalypse mythology.

This combination was especially true when you compare the series to its Vertigo comic book source material, created by writer Chris Roberson and artist Michael Allred. In the comics, the titular character, Gwen Dylan (voiced by Dana Snyder), is a zombie working as a gravedigger in Eugene, Oregon. She survives by eating a brain every 30 days to preserve her memories and mental state. Her dearest friends include a ghost woman from the 1960s and a were-terrier named Scott “Spot” whom she partners with to solve supernatural mysteries (including vampires and mummies). The CW show adapted the loose concept, but with nearly every other element different. The CW show, created by Rob Thomas and Diane Ruggiero-Wright, transplants the story to Seattle, with only the comic book-influenced opening credits and a cover of “Stop, I’m Already Dead” by Deadboy & The Elephant Men to nod to Allred’s original series.

Meet the New Girl on The Block

Enter heroine Liv Moore (Rose McIver), a self-described overachiever and aspiring doctor whose life was turned upside down after a boat party she was enjoying turned into a horrific massacre. The cause was revealed to be a lethal combination of the energy drink Max Rager and a bad batch of the designer drug Utopium. Escaping wasn’t enough to save her, though; scratched by a zombie as she fled, Liv woke up in a body bag on a beach, newly undead and with a ravenous hunger for human brains. She breaks up with her fiancé, Major (Robert Buckley), to spare him the truth, grows apart from her best friend, Peyton (Aly Michalka), and eventually takes a job at the medical examiner’s office to keep her hands full of brains.

Liv soon gets a little too full, as her boss and old CDC friend Ravi Chakrabarti (Rahul Kohli) quickly deduces her secret. Instead of freaking out, Ravi (who got fired from the CDC years earlier for trying to warn them about such a virus) becomes obsessed and promises to find a cure. Liv also starts working alongside Detective Clive Babineaux (Malcolm Goodwin), who is convinced that she is psychic. The twist was that Liv began learning flashes of memories from every person whose brain she ate, as well as certain aspects of their personality. While this could mean anything from useful foreign language skills to new, sometimes debilitating phobias, those memories often helped her in solving the weekly murder cases.

Brains, Villains, and Our Favorite iZombie Characters

No good drama is complete without a villain, and iZombie had one of the best: Blaine DeBeers (David Anders), the zombie who bit Liv at the party. A former drug dealer of the tainted Utopium, Blaine became a brain trafficker, biting rich clients and making them addicted to his product. Dark but also charming and with a tragic backstory of family issues, Blaine was both a formidable adversary and a semi-reluctant hero.

The details of the show often made it funnier. Major’s last name is “Lillywhite”, Blaine’s butchery in season one is named “Meat Cute”, Ravi and Major’s adopted dog is named “Minor”, and the zombie bar is called “The Scratching Post”. Fans were also enamored with the brain-based recipes, whether Liv’s more low-budget stir-fries, pizza roll mixes, and hush puppies or Blaine’s haute cuisine versions, like gnocchi stuffed with medulla oblongata.

Love was a common thread as well. Fans debated the exact relationship status between Liv and Major, as their break-up and reconnection were a common part of the early seasons. However, many fans rooted for Liv’s short season one relationship with Lowell Tracey (Bradley James), a British musician who was turned into a zombie and saw his performing career abruptly cut short. Their shared experience created a bond, as well as Lowell’s easygoing friendship with Ravi. However, Lowell’s story ended tragically when he died taking on Blaine, and fans were quite angry.

In later seasons, the show introduced a more colorful supporting cast, some of whom became as much of a fan favorite as Liv. From Jessica Harmon’s Dale Bozzio, who goes from an FBI investigator to Clive’s new partner, to Bryce Hodgson first playing Scott E. (a memorable patient at a mental hospital) and later his identical twin brother Don E. (as part of Blaine’s brain empire). The show also had some great one-off appearances, like Daran Norris as sleazy weatherman Johnny Frost, or Steven Weber as Max Rager CEO Vaughan du Clark. That said, his on-screen daughter Rita (Leanne Lapp) was more accurately fitting when she was killed by the company’s toxic ingredients in the season two finale. After seeing him dumped into a vat of ingredients while dead, Rita went “full Romero” before he was killed, eating her father’s brains in a ghoulish scene.

The most consistently entertaining aspect of iZombie, though, was Liv’s frequent personality changes after eating a brain. An accomplished comedian and quick-change artist, McIver played an impressive variety, from a dominatrix and snarky grumpy old man, to an elf fantasy LARP-enthusiast professor and a former kids’ basketball coach. On occasion, this brain influence was used purely for laughs, whether it was Lowell eating a gay man’s brain before a date with Liv, or Liv, Blaine, and Don E. conspiring over the same paranoia-fueled brain.