iZombie season 5 premiered on May 2 on CW. And considering this is the final season of the undead dramedy, you don’t want to miss a second of it. Season 5 takes off from where season 4 ended: Liv has gone public as a zombie hero, New Seattle is under new leadership, and human-zombie relations are strained. (When were they not?!) If you’ve missed a few details during the season premiere, fret no further. We’ve got a recap of iZombie season 5 episode 1 to fill in the missing gaps for you.
A Brain Shortage in “Thug Death”
The iZombie season 5 premiere not only stuck to the show’s perfect balance of comedy and drama, but it also got politically relevant in episode 1, titled “Thug Death.” The season opens six months after the events of the season 4 finale.
Peyton (Aly Michalka) is the righteous new leader of Fillmore-Graves after Chase Graves was killed last season. But New Seattle is grappling with a big issue: hundreds of zombies to feed and the brain supply cut off!
ICYMI, the government decided to cut off the brain supply to New Seattle. It hoped that either the humans would kill the rogue zombies or the situation would escalate enough for them to nuke New Seattle entirely—and kill the zombie virus along with the zombies and humans there.
The brain shortage is adding to the existing tensions between humans and zombies, as it becomes clear in the opening of the episode. A store clerk is talking to a customer about how zombies don’t come into his store, while a camera feed outside shows a zombie attacking a woman. The store clerk doesn’t realize, though, that his customer was a zombie who sneaked away with multiple bottles of tanner.
The situation gets worse when a video of zombies goes viral in the town.
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Liv Investigates the Viral Video
So what has Liv (Rose McIver) been up to since giving away the zombie cure? She’s cooking up one of the last brains in the morgue before Ravi (Rahul Kohli), during one of his zombie flare-ups, eats it. Rude, much?
Meanwhile, Blaine (David Anders) learns about a viral video of a zombie attack from Don E (Bryce Hodgson). Major (Robert Buckley) is not happy about it, because a vicious zombie attack means Blaine is not doing his job of smuggling brains across the border. So Major tasks Blaine and everyone else with cleaning up this mess.
Then it’s over to Liv and the gang, where they are at the police station to watch the notorious video. And Ravi is channeling “Thumb Breaker” Barnes, the bad guy whose brain he ate.
Ravi’s ‘70s gangster style aside, the video is the same one from the opening of the episode. Two rogue zombies are seen diving into a car and attacking the woman inside, and it’s causing a lot of hostility towards the innocent zombies.
Peyton sets the team on getting to the bottom of this attack. They have to not only find the zombies, but also figure out who is the victim.
So Clive (Malcolm Goodwin) heads down to the store on a seemingly innocent chocolate run for Dale (Jessica Harmon). Clive gets down to checking the footage from the store’s cameras when Liv and Ravi arrive.
The very unfriendly store clerk is livid when zombie Liv enters his store. Thank goodness for Thumb Breaker Ravi, who is frightening enough for the man to stand down.
Meanwhile, Clive has a breakthrough with the surveillance footage when they figure out the victim was on the phone right before the attack.
Liv Goes Renegade
Major at Fillmore-Graves and Liv and Peyton are facing parallel dilemmas: Who should leave Seattle and who should be brought in? The ladies find a teen who needs to be rescued from his abusive foster parents by Liv as Renegade.
While Liv is on the job, Peyton goes on the local TV show, Frost Bite, to quell the human-zombie tensions. On the other side of the morgue, Ravi learns from a new scientist that they might have a breakthrough in the zombie cure. But that cure could cost 300 innocent lives.
Liv is meanwhile multitasking with her dual personas. She and Clive are checking the 70-plus phone numbers that pinged the cell tower at the time of the attack.
Elsewhere, she’s tasked her Renegade accomplice, Baron (Francis Capra), with meeting the teen. To Baron’s surprise, the boy brings another two girls who need to be rescued from the foster home. Smuggling three kids into Seattle isn’t difficult for Baron on any other day, but he’s still worried how he’ll pull this off on short notice.
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An Anti-Zombie Activist Takes a Stand
The woman who was sparring with Peyton on Frost Bite meets a man at her food truck. After the strange man makes a very odd order, he’s led to a secret truck where the anti-zombie activist lady is waiting for him.
The woman turns out to be leading some anti-zombie terrorist group. She asks him for a video as the very scared man says “they” have his kids. In exchange for the tape, the woman gives him a time and place before leaving. Cut to the back of the van that’s laden with explosives.
While Liv and Clive are close to identifying the victim from the viral video, the man from earlier drives the van filled with explosives to a checkpoint. Major and his team arrive too late and the man has driven through the checkpoint before the van explodes.
At Blaine’s, he and Don E have rounded up the people who were responsible for supplying him brains. He wants to know why they stopped honoring their end of the deal. Blaine’s suppliers tell him that they changed their minds about helping zombies after they saw the video of them attacking the woman.
After a little threatening, four out of five brain smugglers agree to continue supplying the brains. The fifth dude, though…
While the explosion at the checkpoint has prompted all hands on deck, Baron is in the bus with the foster home escapees. Baron and the boy escape suspicion, but the girls are found without their IDs.
Towards the end of the episode, Liv and Clive think they’ve found the woman from the zombie attack video. Instead, they find the victim’s boyfriend with her abandoned phone and jacket, who tells them he thinks she’s dead.
The hunt for the zombie attack victim continues when iZombie airs Thursday at 8:00 p.m. EST on CW.
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