*Spoiler warning for iZombie season 5, episode 13.
Ravi, Peyton, and Clive on the final episode of iZombie. Photo courtesy of the CW, screenshot by Linda Maleh.
Well, it’s finally over. Not all shows know how to end their stories in a satisfying way, but iZombie sure does. The series finale has the big job of wrapping up a season packed full of drama, but it does it admirably. With the civil war between zombies and humans erupting in episode 12, the final episode has to get the cure back to Seattle, convince everyone that it’s real, and that they should stop fighting. A lot happens, so let’s dig in.
To start with, Liv, Ravi, and Clive still have to get back from the CDC in Atlanta to Seattle. They consider driving, but Clive wants to get back to his pregnant wife as soon as possible, and there’s not really any time left, so they take their fake IDs and take a plane to get as close to the city as possible. The problem is, Liv is a famous face because of her Renegade documentary, and the woman in the seat next to her becomes sure she’s recognized her from somewhere. When she won’t let the matter go, the group decides to dose her with some sleep medication, which works, except a flight attendant sees the article the woman had pulled up on her iPad about Liv being busted. When they land, Liv, Ravi, and Clive are pulled aside by the flight attendant and a Portland police officer. They think they’re toast, but the flight attendant tells Liv that Renegade helped a family member of her’s and that the cop is her brother and he’s going to help them get back to Seattle. I guess it helps being the good guys sometimes. This is good since Clive gets a text on the plane that Dale has gone into labor, so he’s anxious to get back.
Also still with some good will out there – Major. He calls Lieutenant Collins, since she was pretty loyal to him back when he was the head of Fillmore Graves. He needs to get into the Fillmore Graves facilities so that he can get the Max Rager for the cure. Collins tells the new commander, Enzo, that Major is offering to surrender himself so that he can fight with the rest of Fillmore Graves, as he has seen the light, and wants to stand with the zombies. When he gets there, of course Enzo turns on him and says that they’re going to turn him into a Romero zombie and he can fight that way. But Collins kills the other soldier assigned to take Major away, and helps Major get the Max Rager and escape. Enzo kills her for it, but her actions made all the difference.
If you recall, we never found out what happened to Peyton and the kids after they got kidnapped by Blaine and Don E. This episode we find out that they were taken back to Blaine’s old morgue (haven’t seen this set in a while) and are being held there. Peyton lures Blaine downstairs, however, and knocks him out with a piece of furniture. She takes his car keys, and she and the kids run out the door. The kids make it into the car (one of them is old enough to drive thankfully), but Peyton gets shot by one of Blaine’s cronies as she’s running to join them. They leave without her, and it kind of looks like she’s about to die, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves.
Clive runs to the hospital when they get back (and makes it just in time), but Liv and Ravi run to Liv’s house and find it empty. As they’re freaking out, the kids arrive back from escaping from Blaine’s (well, only half of them, since the Freylich kids didn’t want to be where Blaine could find them). They tell Liv and Ravi what happened and that they think Peyton is dead. Since Ravi has to go to the morgue to make the cure, Liv decides to go to Blaine’s to find out if Peyton is really dead, and to get revenge.
Cut back to Blaine’s dining room and … surprise, surprise, Peyton’s alive! Right before she died Blaine found her and gave her a zombie scratch that saved her. (Blaine might be evil, but he still cares about Peyton enough to not want her dead.) They sit eating brains in his dining room, when Blaine has to run out to the old well out back (you remember the one, it’s the same one he kept his father prisoner in for such a long time) to through some clorox down there to stop it from smelling. While he’s there, Don E. sits down with Peyton just as she’s having her first vision – one of Blaine smothering Darcy, Don E.’s dead fiancé. Don E. runs outside and pushes Blaine down the well (see, I told you Darcy would be the end of their friendship). While he’s yelling down the well about how Blaine betrayed him, Liv arrives, picks up a large rock, and throws it at Don E., who falls down the well himself.
Blaine and Don E. are hence trapped down in a well together forever (although I assume they’ll go Romero soon enough), which I guess is a pretty fitting end for them, although I do wish that Blaine had a more grande and devious master plan this final season since he’s the only villain on the show who’s in it from beginning to end. Right after Liv puts and end to Don E., Peyton runs out of the house, giving Liv a huge relief to find out that her best friend is not dead.
Meanwhile, Ravi is in the morgue setting up the supplies necessary to make the cure when Major arrives with the Max Rager. It’s going to take too long to mass produce it, so they decide to make just one dose to prove to everyone that the cure works. They take it to the news station and try to convince the anchor to take the cure on live TV (since he’s one of Seattle’s most well known zombies), and then are going to prove to everyone that the cure works while cutting him or something, but when the station gets news that Enzo and his soldiers are coming to make an announcement they come up with a new plan.
Major decides to take the cure on live TV, and have Enzo shoot him in the heart and kill him to prove to the world that the cure works (remember: only head shots kill zombies). He calls Liv and leaves her a voicemail telling her that he still loves her, and she’s always been the one. All of this goes off as planned for the most part, except this: Ravi didn’t want Major to die, so he filled his syringe with Max Rager instead. Right after Enzo shoots Major a bunch of times (which, even as a zombie, is enough to knock him out), Ravi runs out and tackles Enzo, and sticks him with his own syringe that’s filled with the real cure. With Enzo now human, Graham Moss (Dejan Loyola) – the tutor Liv employed for a while but was blackmailed by Martin Roberts and Enzo into spying on her – shoots Enzo for killing his friend. So Enzo dies – a win for team Liv.
The fighting continues outside of the station, and Dolly Durkins kills her own son, who’s a zombie, when she comes across him. Back at the morgue, Liv is freaking out wondering where Ravi and Major are. She gets a call from Clive telling her what happened, and she listens to Major’s voicemail thinking that he’s dead (Major doesn’t wake up until after the cameras stop rolling). There is a lot of characters thinking the people they love are dead happening this episode. Right when Liv finishes listening to the voicemail, Michelle comes down to the morgue looking for Clive, but she turns aside and says to someone off screen that they aren’t supposed to be down there, and then there’s an explosion and the screen goes black.
Don’t worry, that’s not the end of the episode! They then cut to ten years later. (Yup, a time jump – a classic in series finales.) Clive, Ravi, and Peyton go onto this virtual reality talk show to discuss the events of what’s being called “The Battle for Seattle.” They say that Michelle and Liv were killed in the blast and the rubble – apparently the guy who wasn’t supposed to be down there was a Dead Ender suicide bomber. They say that the fighting stopped when the cure was shown to the world, and that all zombies, except for the ones who used to be humans dying of terminal illnesses, have taken the cure. Also, since the cure now exists, there’s no longer any fear of a zombie apocalypse, and any terminally ill people who want to get scratched can do so legally.
We also find out what’s happened in the ten years since to our characters. Peyton and Ravi are still together and living in Atlanta. Ravi is the head of the CDC and Peyton is the district attorney. Clive and Dale are co-captains of the San Francisco police department, and they’re raising both their daughter and Michelle’s son since she died. No of them stayed in Seattle because too much has happened, even though Seattle has rebuilt, the wall is down, and zombies and humans live side by side with each other just like Liv always dreamed. Major and the kids, they say, disappeared after the Battle, especially since Dolly Durkins never gave up trying to kill zombies, and is still trying to hunt down the notable zombies that are left on her list (which includes Liv and Major).
Again, don’t worry, this isn’t one of those shows that kills off its main characters at the end (even though it teases doing that more than a few times). It is revealed that Liv and Major have been living in secret, and raising the kids Liv had taken in, on Zombie Island – the original plan Fillmore Graves had for what to do with zombies living in the world. Liv and Major are still zombies, and they are very happy together, though they miss their friends (who are the only one’s who know they’re alive). And that’s the end.
A lot of shows run out of story line before they hit the end and have to use a whole lot of filler (ahem Game of Thrones), but iZombie has, impressively, never had to do that. The CW show created by Rob Thomas (Veronica Mars) has been a non-stop plot machine since it first came on air five years ago. It has constantly delivered zany murder of the week cases, while keeping its villainous plots, romantic drama, and the tension over the fate of human and zombie-kind going strong. It’s such a different kind of zombie show than anything else out there, and I’m really going to miss it.
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