The Season 3 opener leaves audiences craving more episodes like its zombies crave brains.
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After the explosive end to Season 2, there were promises of a new dawn to the iZombie format – the world of zombies now seeming on the precipice of exposure. With an ‘in media res’ style of being set 2.8 seconds after the end of the previous season, viewers have to remember every detail of what’s come before, the lack of a recap making that a little confusing. I felt like I was playing catch up for the first half of the episode.
Thrown away was the traditional format of: victim is murdered, Liv (Rose McIver) eats the brains, then takes on quirky persona for an hour, and then the murderer is found. Instead, this episode has a sense of moving all the pieces and storylines into position for the upcoming season. Audiences watch as Vivian Stoll (Andrea Savage) and her private army moved in and revealed her company Fillmore-Graves (a clever pun) to be a secret yet thriving world of zombies, ready for D-Day. For the moment there is harmony, with Liv and the good guys working with Stoll, but it does feel like we’ve been introduced to the villain of the season; especially with suggestions of friction as to how Liv and Major think the world will react to news of zombies’ existence.
As an establishing episode, it felt devoid of the eccentricities which characterise this unique teen show, including Major’s witticisms and Blaine’s devilish charm. Though it’s definitely an underwhelming outing for iZombie, once the season gets underway this will surely change, with new and exciting plot lines hinted at.
Liv Moore (again with those puns!) continues to be a great lead, with Rose McIver doing a fantastic job at bringing the undead doctor to life. In fact, all of the cast are strong and really create a show that entertains and shocks, leaving audiences craving new episodes like the undead crave brains. Where once the only villains were the weekly murderers, now it seems like Liv and her gang are being surrounded on all sides; there’s mobsters, the ambiguous Stoll, and the suspicious antics of amnesia-stricken Blaine. Darker undercurrents are being explored than ever before in the usually light and comic teen show, heralding a potential for greatness.
Season 3’s opener serves to clear up the cliffhangers left from previous episodes so iZombie can move forward with a clean state, establishing new major characters and storylines to take us through the season. Though it’s satisfying to see these suspended stories addressed, at the same time it would have been nice to go straight into the action of season 3.
iZombie airs weekly on Netflix in the UK.
