iZombie EP Breaks Down Major S3 Twist, Teases New Directions

We've got some good news and some bad news. The good news? Team Z has found a true cure for zombism! The bad news: someone stole all of the remaining injections from the morgue. In "Some Like It Hot Mess," the latest episode of iZombie, Liv and her friends discovered the cure works without any permanent side effects and that Blaine has been faking his amnesia all along. As such, Major is human again and he has retained all of his memories, but his joy was short-lived when he and the others discovered the morgue had been burglarized and all remaining doses of the cure were gone -- including any that might have been left over for Liv herself.

iZombie executive producer and co-creator Rob Thomas spoke to CBR about this big mid-season twist and the fallout from it, as well as what's in store for Team Z. He also teased new directions for Ravi, Peyton and Blaine specifically and revealed just when we'll find out who stole Ravi's zombie cure.

CBR: How possible is it for us to see an iZombie without Liv as a zombie?

Rob Thomas: Not very. I feel like that would be tough. However, that's a good question to ask me right around the time we're approaching syndication, because I think it might be easier for me to see it then.

Will the next episode pick right up where the last left off, or will we circle back to learn more about Liv's reaction later on?

The next episode is going to be a direct pickup. It will pick up in that very moment.

Is it safe to say we'll be seeing Natalie again in light of this revelation about the cure?

I would say that's a pretty safe bet.

Blaine has never exactly been a trustworthy character. After this latest revelation, just how much can we trust his new motivation and his feelings for Peyton?

Well, trust is a funny word to use with Blaine! The thing that I'll say is that I would trust that his fondness for Peyton is real. I don't know if I would trust him on any other front. Yeah, he's about to go into a pit of despair that is earned and then I think there will eventually be a return to form for Blaine -- and by "return to form," I mean the evil Blaine we all know and love.

There's a pretty long list of potential suspects in the stolen cure case: Blaine, Don E., Angus, Doctor Cups, Fillmore-Graves… Will this mystery continue for the rest of the season?

Liv and Ravi are going to spend time investigating that. Our intention was to pay that off in the season finale, and it got cut due to space, but we will pay it off. It will just have to be early in Season 4. You'll get an answer to that! Liv and Ravi do try to find that out, but the payoff that was supposed to happen this season didn't quite make it into the cut of the finale.

What's the next step for Ravi, seeing as he's all out of supplies?

We've got really fun stuff for Ravi! Over the next episode or maybe two episodes, he and Liv are going to be looking for those stolen cures, but then he's going to get rolled up into the whole Harley Johns mystery. We're going to get to see Ravi outside of the morgue more in the back half of this season and being more involved in an investigative storyline than we've ever seen him. If the first few episodes for Ravi was about this love triangle and a lot of Ravi moping, you're going to see Ravi as man of action in the back half of the season.

So if I were Peyton, I'd be feeling pretty jaded about the men in my life. Will she continue to pursue her love triangle?

Yes. We're going to play some Ravi/Peyton stuff, but it's going to be more about Ravi earning back some trust than getting them in a headspace of romance. I don't think Ravi impressed Peyton during this whole Blaine ordeal. He's got his work cut out to ever turn that back into a romantic relationship.

Peyton, now, also gets wrapped up in this storyline. You see a little bit of it in this episode. She picks up the ball on the case that Liv solved in the dominatrix case. It has been assigned to Peyton to prosecute it, and Peyton starts seeing a bunch of holes in the case. This story will sort of turn back in on some of our mythology, and so it's about Peyton sort of pulling on a thread of an investigation and it leading to some big storytelling.

Circling back to Fillmore-Graves, Vivian and her crew seem pretty content with being zombies. How will they take the news about the cure, particularly where Major is concerned?

Well, that is a very good question and one that definitely does get answered in the back half of the season. That, we have quite a bit of fun with. The thing that I can tell you is that, for Major, who is recognized pretty routinely as the guy accused of being the Chaos killer and suffers all of the infamy that goes along with that among the humans in Seattle, he's pretty accepted at Fillmore-Graves headquarters. He has found a home with these zombies and, even though he's human, he's not anxious to leave Fillmore-Graves. So he thinks he can get by by just not telling them he's human, and that's a bit of the fun we're going to start playing with right away as we move forward in the show.

How will Major's attitude towards Liv and his friends change after this brush with amnesia?

In the episode you just saw, when he realized he wasn't going to lose his memory and he thought that there were more cures available and he had what I would describe as a spectacular night with Liv -- you know, like a "we poured our hearts out to each other, we love each other, we fall into bed together" -- Major starts to think, "Wait a minute. We can be together!" And on that whole trip home from Walla Walla, the way I picture Major is he's got their next ten years planned out. You know, she'll take the cure, and we can resume the life we thought we were going to have. Then he gets that ripped away from him. That's a tough blow, and one that he's dealing with.

For Liv, Liv always thought it was just for a moment because she thought he's going to take the cure, he's going to become a different person; this is just a sweet moment for old times. So she's not quite in the same headspace.

His relationship with his friends -- the cast of the show, our series regulars -- remains pretty much steady. He's going to continue to become buddies with Justin, the character we've introduced, one of his Fillmore-Graves compatriots. Justin will become involved in some stories, and Jason Dohring shows up at Fillmore-Graves as kind of a military badass and that changes some of the dynamics at Fillmore-Graves. [Major] has got many hurdles to come this season. We always seem to put some hurdles in front of Major. [laughs]

Airing Tuesdays at 9 pm EST on The CW, iZombie is produced by Rob Thomas and Diane Ruggiero-Wright, the creators of Veronica Mars, and stars Rose McIver as Olivia Moore, Malcolm Goodwin as CliveBabinaux, Rahul Kohli as Dr. Ravi Chakrabarti, Robert Buckley as Major Lilywhite, David Anders as Blaine DeBeers, Aly Michalka as Peyton Charles, Andrea Savage as Vivian Stoll, and newcomer Jason Dohring as Chase Graves.