Seattle has become a human-zombie battleground when iZOMBIE returns for its fourth season, with a very tenuous peace exisiting as the city is now walled off from the rest of the country. And while a lot of things have changed, our favorite characters are all just trying to adapt to their new reality. During a visit to the set of iZOMBIE in the fall, we spoke to the cast about what’s in store for Liv, Blaine, Major, Ravi and Clive in season 4.
Blaine’s New Business. Blaine started his Shady Plots business to have access to brains, but now he has a new establishment. According to David Anders, it’s called Romeros and was described by the writers as a “cemetery to table” restaurant. In other words, “it’s a fine dining establishment for the once percent zombies.” For Blaine, New Seattle is all about opportunities: “[It’s about] money, power, [and] greed for Blaine, straight up. He’d love to get back to girls, sure. He’s single, but yeah, [his main goal is] to be the king, to keep swinging. That’s his end game. But it’s so interesting [because] he’s not just nefarious and mustache twirling and evil, [especially after we learned about] Angus with this terrible upbringing that he had, [and that] he was locked in a crate, and had this terrible nanny.” Fortunately for Blaine, he and his buddy Don E. “are back in cahoots, they’re doing great. It’s like Butch and Sundance those two.”
Clive and Bozzio. “Poor Clive. It’s a rough [relationship — Clive and Bozzio],” Malcolm Goodwin lamented. “Obviously, the love of his life is now a zombie and he’s just exploring the difficulty of trying to make that relationship work. They can’t be intimate and they’ve tried several ways of being intimate without him contracting the zombie virus. It gets to the point where it starts to become a problem. They try different methods in order to make the relationship work but those methods present some really, really difficult struggles between them and really, really challenges their relationship with one another. But it’s also fun. Our show is also fun so it also does it in a funny way. And also, obviously, there’s an emotional tear to it at the same time.”
Clive In the Know. The public knowledge about zombies — and Clive’s knowledge about Liv — has placed the character in a whole new light in season 4 specifically. “Clive becoming more hip to how everything works with the brains and using that to his advantage [is something I like about the new season]” Goodwin hinted. “He does more of that this season than last season. He’s real crafty in a way. The way him and Liv work now is really, really crafty.”
Ravi in the Lab. While Clive’s role may have grown because of the new zombie order, Ravi will still be plugging around in his lab (and trying to find a cure). Rahul Kohli teased that “[Ravi’s overall role and motivation] hasn’t changed. It’s only intensified and magnified by what’s happening in the city — so the search for the cure, it’s only become more intensified. The disease is now more widespread, obviously being contained within New Seattle. Even though [zombies are[ a problem in the city, it still feels like Ravi [is] in his lab. I guess what has changed is the politics. The job has changed in its own way, so now there is zombie crimes, and there are human crimes. That changes how we operate in the morgue too, in terms of what cases we get. If it’s a human one, then it’s a Seattle Police Department problem. If it’s a zombie crime, it’s a Fillmore Graves problem. There’s a lot of things [that are different], in terms of how we do the procedural aspect. Even the landscape itself, none of us are allowed to leave Seattle. That has its own impact, in terms of that. But he’s still the same guy, it’s just the rules have changed.”
Major and Fillmore Graves. Major’s continued employment with Fillmore Graves is going to present him with several new opportunities. For example, Robert Buckley said that Major will have a chance to work with at-risk kids again — but this time they’re zombies. “One of the things that we see early on is at Fillmore Graves, Chase Graves asks Major, ‘Hey, we have some sort of at risk youth in the city, would you be willing to talk to them?’ Which is very smart because that’s what Major used to do and Major’s very enthusiastic and thinking, ‘Holy crap, this was my calling and now I can kind of combine my old love with my new love’. And he begins working with some of these youths and some of them get actually brought in to the Fillmore Graves fold and so we sort of see some relationships grow from there.”
Expect to see Major rise up in the ranks at the organization as well. “I think it was last year we saw him just being a grunt, just kind of going on missions and whatnot. And this year we’re seeing him rise in rank a bit, so now he’s sort of responsible for a unit. And in addition to that he kind of gets closer with Chase Graves. So we start to see an unlikely relationship start there and via that relationship as well gets some new interesting tasks that he has to take care of.” But it’s not all opportunity and sunshine for Major. His continued work at Fillmore Graves will be a point of contention in his relationship with his friends: “It creates some conflict. I mean I think what we started to see last season, the trend of Liv not being particularly enthusiastic about him siding so heavily with Fillmore Graves. That continues to happen.”
Liv the Trailblazer. Rose McIver said that the zombie revelation means that Liv “doesn’t have to keep so many secrets [in season 4], which makes life a little bit easier. I feel like now that there are other zombie and cop combos that happen, it’s kind of a little bit of pride [that] she’s established this, and then also a little bit of these other people are not competition, but she can compare herself to other people now, which is definitely new for her. She still is able to work solving crimes. She’s able to do it legally now. With this whole season we’re treating it like there’s no right answer, there’s just very nuanced shades of gray as to how people are supposed to interact with this new zombie population, and I think that Liv takes definite issue with some of the hard and fast opinions that Fillmore Graves and their followers have.”
Don’t miss the season 4 premiere of iZOMBIE on Monday, February 26 at 9:00 p.m. ET/PT on The CW.
