Eating Brains, Gaining Empathy: The Emotional Core of iZombie

Ah, zombies. One of the mainstay elements of pop culture in general, they really had a strong moment in the spotlight throughout the 2010s on television. From the gargantuan success of AMC’s The Walking Dead (2010–2022) to the unusual experiments of Netflix’s horror-comedy The Santa Clarita Diet (2017–2018), this was a fantastic time to be a zombie on TV. In the latter camp was iZombie, a supernatural procedural dramedy which aired for five seasons on The CW.

Never a blockbuster hit, the show nevertheless carved out an intensely loyal following for its razor-sharp comedy, lovable characters, and for mixing its weekly procedural case-of-the-week with zombie mythology in a way few shows had done before.

Zombie comic origins: The early Gwen Dylan books

The series was based loosely on a Vertigo comic book of the same name by writer Chris Roberson and artist Michael Allred. The comic’s premise follows a zombie named Gwen Dylan, who works as a gravedigger in Eugene, Oregon. Eating a brain every 30 days keeps her memories intact and her mind clear. Her only real friends are a 1960s ghost and a were-terrier named Scott “Spot,” with whom she must solve supernatural murders and mishaps with vampires, mummies, etc. The TV series kept the basic premise but transplanted it to Seattle and reinvented just about everything else. Allred’s only real contributions to the show were in the comic book-style opening credits and their choice of cover song, a Deadboy & The Elephant Men tune called “Stop, I’m Already Dead.”

Meet Liv Moore, a dead medic by day, a party girl by night.

Liv Moore (Rose McIver), the show’s protagonist, is an ambitious medical student at Seattle University. She’s also the former girlfriend of Ravi Chakrabarti (Rahul Kohli), a fellow student and researcher whom she’ll be working with in their rotation at the medical examiner’s office that fall. Liv’s life is thrown into chaos, however, when a night out at a boat party turns into a massacre when the energy drink Max Rager mixes with a tainted batch of the designer drug Utopium and triggers an outbreak. Scratched by a zombie and in the process of trying to escape, Liv wakes up as the undead on a beach in a body bag, smelling the fresh brains she is now compelled to eat. Breaking off her engagement to her fiancé, Major (Robert Buckley), for his safety and drifting away from her best friend, Peyton (Aly Michalka), Liv gets a job at the medical examiner’s office to at least ensure she has a daily supply of brains.

Her boss at the ME’s office, Ravi Chakrabarti, figures out her secret almost immediately. Intrigued instead of terrified by the discovery, Ravi (who had once been fired from the CDC for reporting a virus that could do just this) promises to find a cure for Liv so she can be human again. Liv is also partnered with Detective Clive Babineaux (Malcolm Goodwin), a man who is convinced she is psychic (in reality, Liv eats the brains of murder victims and absorbs flashes of memories that come with certain personality quirks, like new language skills, different mannerisms, or debilitating phobias, which often help her solve cases).

Brains, Villains, and the show’s indelible cast

Not every drama or action movie has a major villain, but every good zombie series needs one. iZombie’s was the smooth and deadly Blaine DeBeers (David Anders), the zombie that bit and killed Liv on that fateful boat party night. A dealer of the designer drug Utopium that went wrong with the tainted batch, Blaine switches to brain dealing to create a dependency and customer base amongst the wealthy people he infects. Charismatic, calculating, and with family baggage that continued to trip him up and set him back, he’s both the show’s main villain and, at times, its accidental friend and ally.

A colorful supporting cast soon arrived. FBI investigator Jessica Harmon’s Dale Bozzio (played by Leanne Lapp) would later become Clive’s new partner. Bryce Hodgson had two roles, first as a memorable mental hospital patient called Scott E. in season one and later as his evil-looking twin brother, Don E., as part of Blaine’s operation. Cameos ranged from sleazy local weatherman Johnny Frost (Daran Norris) to Max Rager CEO Vaughan du Clark (Steven Weber). One of the best was Rita (Leanne Lapp), Vaughan’s daughter and her eventual successor. It is she who eats her father’s brains in the season two finale before she is killed—someone should have told her that not everything goes smoothly as porridge in the world of zombies. “Full Romero” was Rita’s unfortunate turn as she was being eaten, forcing her to eat Vaughan’s brains before she was finally eaten.

One of the highlights of the show was Liv’s constantly shifting personalities, dependent on the brain’s effects she consumed. Her world was turned upside down after she ingested the brain of her reckless and adventurous former sorority sister, Holly (Tasya Teles), who died in a suspicious skydiving accident, in the “Flight of the Living Dead” episode. As Liv lived through Holly’s head, she had to grapple with the exuberance for living that Holly once had and reevaluate her own life choices in the time after she became a zombie. From LARP-loving professors to kids’ basketball coaches, from a British lord to a haggard old man, McIver never shied away from transformation or let the bits be played for jokes too many times.