After being on hiatus for nearly a year, iZombie is back for it’s third season, and as fun as ever. In fact, now that Liv’s entire circle of friends is in on zombie secret (Clive having finally been brought into the loop in the penultimate episode of season 2), the show has opened itself up to explore a plethora of new storylines. We got a taste of that in “Heaven Just Got a Little Bit Smoother”, as the group (are we officially calling them team Z?) started to figure out what their next steps are in light of what happened in last season’s finale.
The episode picks up right where season 2 left off, with Liv’s newfound discovery that Vivian Stoll, head of the cleverly titled military contractor company Fillmore Graves, and her crew are zombies, and that they know Liv is a zombie too. As we learned in this episode, Vivian is essentially Seattle’s own Magneto from the X-Men comics. She’s protective of zombie-kind, and therefore a potentially valuable ally to Liv and company. She’s also very set in her belief that one day humans will discover zombies, and she’s using her resources to prepare for the war she believes will follow. Major, facing the persecution of having all of Seattle think he is a serial killer (despite the fact that he was cleared of those crimes and many of his supposed victims have resurfaced), is completely on board with Vivian’s view of the future. By the end of the episode, unable to find a regular job, he even joins Fillmore Graves as a soldier/employee.
If Vivian is Magneto, then Liv is Professor X. Having experienced first hand the kindness that humans can show zombies, she’s not sold on the idea that humans will automatically want to kill zombies upon their discovery. She’s also not naive enough to think that humanity at large is currently ready to find out about the zombie outbreak. Liv has always used her powers to help humanity, but those same powers have exposed her to humanity’s darkest corners. Magnifying that conflict, feels like a natural direction for the show to go in this season.
Now that Clive is in the know, he can actually weigh in on all of this, which is an exciting development. Being Liv’s friend and crime solving partner, he’s somewhat of a zombie ally, but being a human and a detective, he’s naturally skeptical about what Fillmore Graves is up to. As he notes in the episode, he doesn’t want to go down in history as the human who was dumb enough to help a zombie army destroy human-kind. His resolve is softened somewhat, when he learns that a boy, Wally, who used to live in his apartment building, is also a zombie. Unfortunately this development also leads to what appears to be one of the show’s major story arcs moving forward.
Somebody knows zombies exist (and probably that Fillmore Graves exists too), and is killing zombies to send a message. The first victims were Wally and his family, but I suspect the killings won’t stop there. If there is a zombie serial killer out there, then it is in everyone’s best interest to stop the person or zombie committing these crimes. It’s also an effective way to bring everyone together with one goal, despite all of the characters’ opposing agendas. It’s hard to tell if this new direction for the show will produce better or worse iZombie, but either way, “Heaven Just Got a Little Bit Smoother” was an interesting start to the long awaited season.
Other Thoughts:
- Ravi, Peyton, and Blaine don’t have a whole lot going on in this episode, beyond a love triangle nobody really wanted or needed.
- Similarly, everything about Blaine and his business felt like a distraction from all of the much more interesting stuff going on in the episode. What is Don E. doing with Blaine’s dad? Honestly I don’t care all that much.
- Thank goodness the show finally added Aly Michalka as a regular cast member. Peyton is funny, smart, and a more loyal friend to Liv than just about anyone else. This was a no-brainer (pun intended!).
- Major didn’t play a huge role in this episode, but he was around enough to raise some interesting questions about his role this season. As Ravi pointed out, Major is living (or nonliving?) on borrowed time as a zombie, and Ravi seems to have given up on a side effect free cure, in favor of a cure for memory loss. It took little convincing for Major to join Fillmore Graves, but he must be well aware that if he wants to stay alive he has to cure his zombie-ism sooner than later. Also, Major brought up the missing zombie call girl way too much in this episode for it not to come up again at some point this season.
