‘iZombie’ Finale Postmortem: Creator Rob Thomas on Season 4’s New Universe
Can zombies and humans co-exist peacefully?
That was the question set up in the Season 3 finale of iZombie, which finally blew open the secret that zombies exist. The entire world knows — so, now what?
In the finale, Liv (Rose McIver) discovered that the Aleutian flu outbreak had been caused by zombies craving a bigger pool of brains to eat. It was a plan hatched by a Fillmore Graves executive who was trying to pull a coup over her boss, Chase Graves (Jason Dohring).
After taking care of the traitor, Chase took matters into his own hands by infecting the flu vaccine with the blood of zombies. To warn the public, Liv spilled the beans on local television. And Chase followed up by announcing that Fillmore Graves would feed all new zombies and accept brain donations from across the country.
But despite his overture, tensions between zombies and humans remained high. A re-zombified Major (Robert Buckley) is forced to take action against a group of rioting humans.
The secret of zombies has been the driving factor of the series since it began. Now that everything is in the open, iZombie will see something of a reboot, as creator Rob Thomas tells Yahoo TV.
“As a showrunner, I like seasons being new stories. I like reinvention. I like progression. It gets boring to me if you just keep doing the same thing each week,” he says.
And while Thomas and the writers considered stretching out the big reveal over two seasons, “You don’t know how many seasons you’re going to get.”
The big reveal opens up many new possibilities for the show.
“I’ve been very excited about the stories we can tell in a universe where humans and zombies co-exist because it’s a story I haven’t seen told,” he says. “We already felt like we were doing a fresh zombie show — like, we are the only zom-com-rom-dram.
“Now we’re going to be the only show where zombies and humans are aware of each other and existing together in society. Each zombie is contagious and could cause the apocalypse; now, how do you live together. That seems like such a great story to tell.”
For many viewers, this season, with the conspiracy theorists who spewed hatred online and pitted humans against zombies, resonated with the current political climate. Thomas said that next season “will have a lot of political overtones.”
“This one does really make you think about the refugee crisis,” he says. “We talked about refugees quite a bit. No one wants zombies. If you think people don’t want Syrians, no one wants zombies.”
Thomas noted that a reverse crisis will occur, as terminally ill humans seek to get into Seattle. “They want to get in to be turned into the zombies, and there aren’t enough brains to feed them all,” he explains. “Chase Graves will have the responsibility of, ‘Do we let in more humans who want to be turned into zombies who we can’t feed?’”
And while there will still be a murder of the week, how cases get solved will change.
“Things are going to change up at the police station a bit. Like, every detective is going to have a zombie they work with,” Thomas says. “The Seattle police force will only handle cases in which the victim is a human. Fillmore Graves will have their own force that will handle cases where the victim is a zombie. Things within the system will change a bit.”
But don’t worry, iZombie fans, your beloved show isn’t undergoing a complete transformation. As Thomas says, “Everything will have a slightly different flavor but the structure will feel very similar.”
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