The second season of iZombie is well underway, and if the first two episodes are any indication, this one may be even better than the last. Blaine’s human again! Major’s hunting zombies! Liv’s roomie is a spy! For a zombie show, the second season of this sharp Vertigo Comics adaptation definitely isn’t lumbering out of the gate. Best of all, it’s only going to get better from here, so if you’re watching, you have a lot to look forward to starting with tonight’s episode, which mixes some pretty shocking twists—and some pretty amazing dresses—in with this week’s mystery.
So what sort of things can we expect? iZombie Executive Producer Rob Thomas recently helped shed some light on what’s ahead for Liv and her friends. Here are five things that are worth looking forward to.
A Much Bigger, Bolder World…And Set of Adversaries
“The world is getting bigger,” promises Thomas. “There are more moving parts this season. Last year, Blaine was really the sole big bad. This year, Steven Weber is occupying a bunch of that space.”
Weber, of course, plays Vaughn Du Clark, the executive behind the Max Rager energy drink which was partially responsible for the zombie outbreak. The Season 2 premiere found Vaughn coercing Liv’s former flame, Major, into becoming their zombie hunter. It’s a fact that’s currently unknown by Liv, but NOT by Liv’s roommate, Gilda, who works at Max Rager and is secretly reporting all of Liv’s activities to Vaughn. And then there’s Liv’s Season 1 adversary, who may no longer be a zombie, but who’s definitely still in the business of brains.
“I think Blaine still has some really fun, juicy stuff this year,” says Thomas. “Blaine is going to try to become the crime lord of Seattle, and we eventually meet the current crime lord of Seattle and he will be a significant role as well.”
In short, Liv’s lack of pulse is the least of her problems. And speaking of problems…
Major’s Heading Down a Dark Path
If you caught last week’s episode, you know that Major hasn’t just landed an unwanted new job, he’s also picked up a utopium habit, something that will have some pretty hard consequences.
“He’ll hit rock bottom,” Thomas explains. “That’s the journey that he’s going on. He’s doing this horrible thing and can’t quite stand himself. We have a scene that I really adore in which he officially hits rock bottom. It’s Major out on the streets, trying to score utopium, and he ends up buying it from a kid whom he used to try to get off drugs at Helton Shelter.
Sadly, that’s the sort of thing that happens when you’re forced to kill zombies, proving that folks don’t need to be living and breathing to be…well, people. But he’s caught in a difficult spot, something that’s further complicated by his strained relationship with Liv.
“It’s going to be a moral crisis for him. It’s a big part of the reason that he’s going down into the utopium well. It will be tearing him apart, and it doesn’t get any easier for him for a long time.”
But never fear, Robert Buckley fans (and really, who isn’t a Robert Buckley fan? Even Jim Lee is.), there’s definitely a light at the end of this dark tunnel.
“He’s not just going to sit back and take it all season,” says Thomas. “You’re not going to watch 22 episodes of him forlornly going about this task. One of the fun things about Season 1 and what we pitched Robert Buckley when we got him to agree to do this was that there was going to be this journey and he would be a man of action. He’s been put in another pretty awful predicament, but part of the journey will be him trying to figure out a way out of it.”
Clive Will Continue to be Clueless
Yes, Liv’s detective pal will continue to be a whiz at solving every mystery except the one concerning his “psychic” partner, Liv.
“Would you figure out that these are zombies?” Thomas asks. “Maybe if you lived in a TV world you might. We’ve written scenes before that have not made it in the show in which Clive looks at Liv and says, ‘You realize that you start acting like the people who died.’ We’ve written that scene, and it’s never made it into the episode. Part of it is because Malcolm is so funny reacting to her brains. It’s comedy gold. Maybe at some point someone will do one of those supercuts of Clive’s “are you kidding me?” faces and we’ll know it’s time to shut that down.”
Love May Still be in the Air for Ravi
Last season, Liv’s employer and friend, Dr. Ravi Chakrabarti, enjoyed an oh-so-very-brief relationship with her Season 1 roommate, Peyton. Of course, that was before Peyton discovered that her roomie was a brain-eating zombie and she freaked out and got the heck out of dodge—er, Seattle.
But Ravi’s relationship with the assistant district attorney may not be over, especially since Peyton is returning in tonight’s episode.
“We had sort of made the decision that when Peyton comes back, they’re not going to fall into a relationship and that they’re both going in different directions,” says Thomas. “Then we shot the first scene with the two of them together in Season 2. Those two are so good in that scene that it’s one of those moments where I might rethink everything. They’re so good together.”
Of course, don’t expect Ravi and Peyton to just play romantic interests this season. Ravi will be very active in trying to recreate the now-lost zombieism cure, and Peyton will play a much more active role than previously.
“This year she is very much in the thick of it,” Thomas promises. “She gets asked by the D.A. to take over the utopium task force. That puts her right in the thick of the action, so it’s not just her popping into the apartment to hear how Liv is doing. She’s deep in it this year.”
Brain Food in the Most Literal Sense of the Words
We learned pretty early on in iZombie that Liv and her fellow undead prefer their brains well prepared. However, sharp-eyed viewers may have noticed that those dishes have taken a new form this year, with a quick-cut montage showing Liv preparing each episode’s brain. What they might not have taken notice of is how they’re prepared. They should, though, since they actually tie in with the brain’s personality in often clever ways.
“That’s something we’re doing differently this year that we’re having a lot of fun with,” Thomas reveals. “If you look at it, it makes no sense in some ways because we’re having be thematic, but she hasn’t actually eaten the brain yet. So it’s just a wink.
“Down the road, she’s on a degenerate gambler brain, and she makes clams casino, but with brains—brains casino. It’s a little joke for anyone who’s playing attention. We have fun in the writers room deciding on things like what a stalker would eat.”
iZombie airs Tuesdays at 9 p.m. (8 p.m. CST) on The CW.
