One of the best parts of iZombie is the conceit that zombies take on the personalities and skills of the people whose brains they eat. Luckily, we didn’t need to eat the brains of the show’s cast and crew to learn what’s in store for season three. They just told us.
Season two ended with the revelation that Vivian Stoll and her private military contractors were zombies, and Vivian was looking to make Seattle the capital of a zombie safe haven. She asked Liv to join her, and the answer to that question will come early on in the new season.
During the panel, executive producer Rob Thomas made clear that Vivian isn’t a “big bad”. Her army is based on the premise that, once the secret of zombies gets out, humans are going to want to exterminate them. This army is for protection when that comes. So Liv wrestling with whether or not she’s on Vivian’s side will be a big part of season three.
The premiere will have Liv telling everyone exactly what Vivian told her, promising that all our main characters will be the “no secrets” club. Investigating Vivian and her company will be the running theme.
Season three is going to do what Thomas called a “Law & Order” theme, with one episode focusing on a crime and having Peyton (Aly Michalka) prosecuting the resulting cases. We’ll also be diving into the backgrounds of the characters, meeting the person who fired Ravi (Rahul Kohli) from the CDC, flashbacks to Clive’s (Malcolm Goodwin) history and Blaine’s (David Anders) horrible dad will also return.
“We still have a procedural. We still have not everyone knows about zombies. This is kind of season of percolating where things are coming to a head,” assured executive producer Diane Ruggiero said at the press event about the effects of season two’s huge finale on the structure of the show.
With the procedural aspects sticking around, that means more crimes solved by Liv eating murder victim brains. Thomas laid out a few fun brain plots for us. The second episode back has “a murdered Phil Dunphy-like father and his sarcastic 15-year-old daughter”. Because everyone assumes the father was the target and the daughter merely collateral damage, Liv eats the father’s brain. And Major eats the 15-year-old brain. “Robert Buckley was born to play a 15-year old girl. He is going to be so good,” said Thomas.
There’s also an episode where Liv is “sort of like the owner of a yoga/meditation studio”. But the one that everyone was talking about comes in the fifth episode, where Liv eats the brain of a dominatrix.
Ruggiero said it’s a situation that shows how knowing Liv is a zombie changes Clive’s reactions. “When Liv starts acting like a dominatrix or whatever we know Clive can look at it and go, ‘Is that, like, your jam? Or did you eat a dominatrix?’”
“That could get real weird, real quick,” Rose McIver said about doing that scenario without Clive knowing. She also added that she’s run out of personal skills, other than ice skating, that she can use on the show and brain-given extra talents.
Rob Thomas added that they have come up with some interesting scenarios, but the script hasn’t gone to the network for approval yet. “With the dominatrix brain, as these men are being dominated and what they chose, you see one of these men as a Catholic schoolboy getting his knuckles rapped by a dominatrix in a nun outfit. We’ll have long conversations, ‘Can we get that one by?’”
Thomas continued, “If you do not see that in an episode, know that someone above us [vetoed it], because it’s going in there, whether it makes through to the other side, you’ll watch episode five and know.”