Liv Moore’s Best Brains: A Look Back at Her Wildest Personalities

Zombies are never not in fashion, but in the 2010s, they were definitely in vogue, hitting an all-time cultural high on TV. The decade gave us AMC’s juggernaut The Walking Dead (2010–2022) and Netflix’s gonzo horror-comedy series The Santa Clarita Diet (2017–2018), along with zillions of assorted mini-series and pop-culture Easter eggs in between. Somewhere in the undead meat sweats middle was iZombie, a crime-solving, gross-out adventure and undead bildungsroman whose absurdist tones were in perfect sync with its time.

Appearing on The CW for five seasons, it didn’t exactly set the ratings on fire, but it certainly found an audience. A cult series if ever there was one, it built up a base of hardcore fans who fell hard for its witty writing, its warm and compassionate performances, and its gleefully original reimagining of the “zombie genre.”

Inspired by but not nearly as invested in hewing to the source material, iZombie was created by Rob Thomas and Diane Ruggiero-Wright and based on the Vertigo comic series of the same name by Chris Roberson and Michael Allred. While it took some liberties with the comics, iZombie didn’t mess around with the walking dead.

The original iZombie series followed Gwen Dylan, a zombie and gravedigger living in Eugene, Oregon, who has to eat brains every 30 days to keep her memories. Her weirdo clique of supportive friends includes a ghost and a were-terrier. The comic adds a supernatural, supernaturalist twist on the theme of friendship, identity, and what it means to be human.

But the live-action series took another direction entirely, and it starts with the first episode (yes, the title is also intentional). Set in Seattle, the series introduced us to Liv Moore, the titular zombified main character. Played by Rose McIver, Liv is the prim and organized type-A medical student who is set to graduate, until she skips work one day to attend a boat party that ends with an ugly zombie outbreak. A designer drug called Utopium, laced with a new energy drink called Max Rager, plus Liv’s subsequent blood loss from being scratched by an infected person, combine to create her new undead life.

Liv’s journey to zombie-hood is long but worth rehashing. After climbing into a body bag as zombies swarm her at work, waking up to discover she’s dead and being buried alive, she returns to a life where she cuts ties with her human fiancé, Major (Robert Buckley), her roommate Peyton (Aly Michalka), and her medical program. Hiding out in the shadows, she eventually finds a way into her new life as a medical examiner’s office employee, allowing her the opportunity to have access to brains.

Her secret soon gets out to her new boss and self-described “sweet and patient” mentor Ravi (Rahul Kohli). A former CDC scientist who eventually works for the Seattle medical examiner’s office, Ravi is perhaps the perfect combination of not only kind-hearted but also endlessly supportive while being a glutton for punishing the occasionally obnoxious zombified Liv (mainly, when her borrowed brain is that of PhD scientist Johnathan Malick, Ravi’s been known to make his distaste known).

Brains, Bad Guys, and Goodbyes We Didn’t See Coming

Liv’s zombified secret is that whenever she eats a human’s brain, she not only lives, but she also gains all of their memories and mannerisms. Those with brains they want to “donate” to Liv quickly get solved as Liv tries to piece together clues in their pre-death lives. This puts her in a partnership with Det. Clive Babineaux (Malcolm Goodwin), who is also often kind and always patient with Liv, but who—at least at first—also happens to think she’s psychic. Liv’s brains, in a way, become an open door for some of the wildest transformations McIver has ever had to embody while also allowing her to flex a wide range of comedic talents.

Chief among iZombie’s rogues’ gallery is Blaine DeBeers (David Anders), the impossibly cool vampire as undead zombie of an uncle who scratches Liv at that boat party, but also ends up serving as the ultimate hero-villain of the whole series. Eventually graduating from a small-time dealer of knock-off tainted Utopium (he was selling cocaine as Utopium but with no positive “happy” effects) to a large-scale brain trafficker and hipster mobster, Blaine parlayed his mysterious adventuring ways, his daddy issues, and his need for emotional support into creating an entire vogue of well-to-do zombies dependent on his highly illegal business, acting as a recruiter, dealer, and brain connection hub all at once. His aristocratic sneer, his OCD over physical items (particularly, memorabilia), and his twisted charisma were truly impossible to look away from.

The humor was razor sharp and unabashedly drenched in both puns galore (Major Lillywhite, The Scratching Post bar, and Ravi’s dog “Minor” alone should see the show rewarded for its meta writing) as well as food-based grotesqueries. The brains-eating transformations created all kinds of culinary opportunities (and revolts) from stir-fry to hush puppies to protein shakes.

One episode in particular sticks in the brain after all these years. “Flight of the Living Dead” sees Liv eat the brain of her former sorority sister, Holly (Tasya Teles), who died on what she claimed was a “skydiving accident” but was just that: a living death. Holly’s libertine and bold spirit also seeps into Liv, infusing the chronically controlled Liv with an energy and life she hadn’t realized she needed until, well, she was in a skydiving accident of her own. For fans, it’s just one of the moments that stick out as why iZombie was, at its best, a story about how we find a new version of ourselves sometimes in the least expected of places.

It had the dead. It had gore. It had grisly murder mysteries. But also, it had a heart.