We missed you so, iZombie.
The CW zombie series returned tonight, picking up just minutes (2.8, to be exact) after the end of the season two finale. Vivian Stoll (Andrea Savage), owner of a company called Fillmore-Graves Enterprises, had taken charge of the chaos in at Max Rager, and offered Liv (Rose McIver) the chance to join her in making Seattle the new zombie homeland.
Tonight, we learned that Vivian is building an entire zombie community, complete with a zombie military, a zombie school, and a zombie island. She's arming herself and the zombies of Seattle in preparation for the inevitable day that humans find out that there are zombies among them, and the zombies will need to fight back.
And that day might be coming sooner than it seems, because the security guard from the Max Rager party isn't keeping quiet...
Aside from that potentially troubling development, Liv is not even close to being recovered from having had to kill her boyfriend, and Clive (Malcolm Goodwin) dealt with his own new knowledge of zombies, and the discovery that his old neighbor and her son Wally have joined team Z. Unfortunately, Wally didn't make to the end of the episode. He and his mom appear to have been executed for being zombies, making this whole "D-Day" situation seem a lot more dire.
Major (Robert Buckley) discovered that while he's been technically cleared as the Chaos Killer, the citizens of Seattle might not agree. Even the baristas are writing "Chaos Killer" on his coffee cups. In the end, he decided to join Vivian's zombie army.
Meanwhile, Peyton (Aly Michalka) not only being harrassed online, but she now finds herself caught between her ex Ravi (Rahul Kohli) and the brand new, memory-free, much less judgmental, and much more sing-y Blaine (David Anders).
Finally, the world said an official goodbye to singer Rob Thomas after his death in the finale, with help from a tweet from Carlos Santana. "Heaven just got a little bit smoother," the tweet read, according to the radio.
In the video above, the cast has a lot to say about that love triangle, as well as Liv's love life (she's going to have a boyfriend who doesn't die!), and the ever-growing bromance between Ravi and Major in the midst of Major's potential impending death.
And for even more scoop on the premiere and what's to come, we got on the phone with creator and executive producer and not-the-singer Rob Thomas.
E! News: So I'm feeling sort of an X-Men vibe with Vivian's zombie community. Is that something you set out to emulate?
Rob Thomas: Yes. We referenced the X-Men a few times in the room, although I will say that we had a bit of an evolution on that. You know, at one point that discussion of Liv is Professor X and Vivian is Magneto came up, but Magneto is more of a bad guy than we think Vivian is. But at the heart of the debate, that sort of debate of if you equate zombies to mutants and both sides want to protect…they both claim to be on mutant side, and one is going to take a militant approach, like we're going to go down swinging, and the other is saying we can all be friends, it works to a certain degree. But that's not the exact shape of our season, but we have thought about that. So that's not far off , because that was much discussed, but we don't think…I mean, I don't want to give away too much or give you all the answers about where Vivian stands, but I would describe Magneto as more of a killer, more militant, than Vivian.
I was actually going to ask about Vivian. What kind of character is she supposed to be? Is she an antagonist, or can she be trusted?
Well, we want that to be a mystery. We want the audience asking that exact question. Can she be trusted? Should Liv put her faith in Vivian? In many ways, we want Vivian to look like the idealized female role model. You know, here is a powerful woman who is responsible for all these zombie lives doing the best she can, and shouldn't Liv admire her? Or is Vivian taking a really dark stand? What does it mean to arm yourself to go down swinging? It would be hard for Liv to imagine mowing down humans, should it come down to a zombie/human bloodbath. So that is going to be a central question.
It was intentional that when Vivian gives a tour of Fillmore Graves and sort of lays out their mission statement that Major is totally on board and thinks this is great. Clive is not at all on board, and Liv is kind of left somewhere in the middle, where it's the Goldilocks version of it. It's not quite Goldilocks, but…that's going to be one of the central mysteries. What is Fillmore Graves up to? What is Vivian Stoll up to? Are they people we should put our trust in? Are they our friends? And that is the central question of season three. And that central question plays out almost down to the final scene of the season.
So does this debate put Liv, Clive, and Major against each other throughout the season?
Well, they don't split up and become enemies over that question this season. They would all remain friends on some level throughout the season. I mean, Clive and Major have never been particularly close, but there are times when it's strained where Clive might be pretty suspicious of people Major considers his friends and people he believes in. So it will create some conflict throughout the season.
Another big debate this season is the cure. Obviously you can't cure all the zombies or the show would be over, so what is the deal with the cure in season three?
There are doses of the cure available, but the erasing of memories is not something Liv is willing to do. And we do have fun with the cure. The cure becomes a central focus of storytelling in the middle of the season. The will they take it, won't they take it, is a big deal this season, starting, I think, pretty much midseason. People make decisions. People make decisions that will hurt other people. And yeah, we get a lot of quality storytelling out of that.
What can you tell me about the Blaine/Peyton/Ravi triangle? It seems a little complicated, given Blaine's memory loss.
We're really interested in that question of who is Blaine if he can't remember any of the bad things he's done? If he has no memory of those, and everything that he's doing is good, whether that's rescuing Peyton or getting brains for Liv when she couldn't get them anywhere else, and saving Major when he's in jail, like he's doing all these good things, helping Peyton with her case, then who is he? Is he still a bad guy if he can't remember? Could you put a guy in prison who has no memory of the bad things he did? And that's not really even a question, because putting him in prison isn't really something we're wrestling with, but obviously our characters are going to have different responses to that.
And Ravi's response to that is going to be complicated by the fact that they are both interested in Peyton. And Ravi is really struggling at the beginning of the season because he has been essentially emasculated by Blaine. I mean I think if you ask Blaine, he left Ravi in the car because Ravi had no business with a gun in his hand, going in and doing the job that Blaine did, but for Ravi, being the guy who sat out in the car while Blaine rescued Peyton is something he's finding very hard to live with.
And switching over to Liv, Rose told me that for once, she gets a boyfriend who doesn't die. What can you tell me about her love life this season?
That's a thing I can promise you, because I just didn't want to repeat season one and two. I just didn't want to do that three times. I wanted to promise the audience that we would not do that to them three times in a row. Now that is not to say there won't be serious complications in her relationship, but one of the nice things for Liv is we went from a world where it was rare for her to run into a single eligible zombie male to a world where there are 200 physically fit zombie soldier guys that she suddenly has access to. So yeah, she meets a young zombie suitor. I don't know why I used young. She meets an appropriately-aged zombie suitor, and they hit it off, and he does not get killed.
So Liv almost has a normal dating life this season?
Yeah, she does. Yeah, it works out better than usual for her.
I loved the nods to the death of the other Rob Thomas. Did you talk to him about the tribute at all? You even named the premiere after Carlos Santana's tweet.
I told him that we were going to name the episode that, and I told him that because we needed to get permission from Carlos Santana to use a fake tweet from Carlos Santana, even though it was fictional, and so yeah, I did get approval from Rob, and he put us in touch with Carlos.
So did you have to explain to Carlos Santana that you killed Rob Thomas on your TV show?
I was not the one who presented it to Carlos Santana. I think someone from Warner Bros. legal actually got him to sign something to say it was OK. But yeah, that was very cool that both Rob Thomas and Carlos Santana were OK with us using that for the show.
Any Veronica Mars nods this season you can talk about?
Jason Dohring is in season three, and Enrico Colantoni directs and episode in season three. And then we get to see a lot more of Johnny Frost, Darren Norris, who gets promoted from weatherman to lead anchor. We figured out that we could use him much more as an anchor than as a weatherman.
Can you tell me about Jason Dohring's character?
He plays the brother-in-law of Vivian Stoll. He plays her brother-in-law, and he comes in midseason. He may have a different notion about how Fillmore Graves should be run. He also, in some form, has his own claim on the throne, so to speak. Vivian is the widow of the founder of the company, and he is the brother of the founder of the company. And he may be even more militant than Vivian.
iZombie airs Tuesdays at 9 p.m. on the CW.