iZombie Finale: Rob Thomas Explains Why the Show Will Never Be the Same

Warning: Spoilers for the iZombie Season 3 finale below. Read at your own risk!

The world ofiZombie will never be the same. In the Season 3 finale, the zombie cat got out of the bag after Chase Graves (Jason Dohring) had Fillmore Graves employees inject all the flu vaccines in Seattle with zombie blood, creating a mass outbreak of zombie-ism. But before Chase could gain full control of the narrative (and the population), Liv (Rose McIver) had Johnny Frost (Daran Norris), a fledgling zombie himself, break the news on TV.

Although Clive (Malcolm Goodwin) and Peyton (Aly Michalka) weren't injected with the vaccine before the truth came out, Clive's former partner and lady love Bozzio (Jessica Harmon) wasn't so lucky and is now a card-carrying member of Team Z. Major (Robert Buckley) also decided to give up his human life when he purposefully got scratched by Chase in order to rejoin the Fillmore Graves forces, effectively pitting Major against his more centrist friends.

As for Ravi (Rahul Kohli), his fate remains unknown. After the zombie outbreak went public, he convinced Liv to scratch him in order to test out a new vaccine he had created. Whether his vaccine works or Ravi is about to develop some very intense cravings for human brains is a question that will be hanging over us until iZombie returns in 2018.

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Fortunately, we won't be without any hints about what's to come. TVGuide.com spoke with creator Rob Thomas about what this new zombie world order means for the show, Ravi's heartbreaking decision and more of our biggest burning questions about Season 4.

Zombies are public knowledge now, which means that the way the show has operated for three seasons will be turned on its head.
Rob Thomas: Actually, and this is a bit of a spoiler, we find out that the finale was just a dream episode and it just goes right back to the way -- no, I'm kidding. This season, Season 4, zombies are absolutely public knowledge.

How will this twist affect the series moving forward?
Thomas: Oh, it's a brave new world. We're in week two right now of breaking Season 4 and god, it's craziness because we're doing things like thinking, OK, what does the new justice system look like? What does the zombie prison system look like? Are there zombie-only restaurants? It is like having to build a new world. Some of this we thought about last [season] but we're having to drill down on a lot of these things. And they're really interesting questions like, how many people would flood out of Seattle and interestingly, who would flood in? Like, would old people rush to Seattle because they would want to be scratched and not die? Would terminally ill people come to Seattle because they didn't want to die? Would brave humans come to Seattle because suddenly it would be like Detroit and you could get a $3 million home for $20,000? What are all the things that would happen if this really happened? And we're trying to figure out answers to all those questions and figure out our new reality. And how would Chase Graves manage all of this and how would the U.S. government handle all of it? And how would America respond to a city that had sort of declared its own independence? And in essence, Seattle is kind of its own weird, nuclear power. So all of this has occupied all of our discussion time and it's funny sometimes what we get paid to do. A group of writers sitting around a room deciding what happens if Seattle becomes a free zombie city.

With the zombie secret out of the bag and the knowledge there's a working cure somewhere out in the world, it feels like the show is closer to the end than the beginning. Are you going into next season thinking it will be the last or are you open to continuing beyond Season 4?
Thomas: Oh, definitely not. We're definitely not thinking that this is going to be the last. You said there was a working zombie cure out in the world. We're not thinking there's a working zombie cure out in the world. There are 17 vials of a cure somewhere and nobody seems to know where they are, but they're definitely not out in the world. In fact, as far as I know, I'm the only person who knows where those cures are in the world. They might pop up at some time, but nobody knows where those 17 syringes are with the cure.

I loved the introduction of Jason as Chase this season and how he shook things up. Will Jason return next season full-time, and what can you say about how Chase and Fillmore Graves factor into this new world?
Thomas: Jason came in, he was sort of a back-up plan [after Andrea Savage's show got picked up] but he kind of did us a solid there. But yes, you will be seeing him throughout Season 4. But [Chase is] trying to hold things together. Politically, he's got people on his left and people on his right. He's holding things together by a thread. Now, he's certainly taken a pretty militant stance, but he's got a city full of people who aren't pleased with him. He's created 10,000 new zombies who aren't particularly happy that they are zombies now. They're essentially being used as a bargaining chip. He's got a city full of humans who aren't happy that, among other things, the Seahawks have left town and that some people in the U.S. want to nuke Seattle. And so he's under a ton of pressure.

Ravi chose to have Liv scratch him in a really emotional scene. How soon into Season 4 will we learn whether his vaccine worked or not? And what does that decision say about him and his relationship with Liv?
Thomas: You'll find out in Episode 1. You'll find out right away what happened. And yeah, I think they are -- you know, it's funny. I was about to say best friends, but I don't want to take away anything from her relationship with Peyton. Certainly, it's her best guy friend. I think they care deeply for each other. They would go to the end of the world for each other. They tell each other they love each other in that moment, which they have never done before. So I think there's something very deep between them. It felt like the right time to say that out loud. My producing partner Dan [Etheridge] directed that final episode. He was the one who asked me to do a callback to the first episode in that scene. I hadn't written that in initially, but he thought it would be fun to have him call back to the pilot and his discovery that she was a zombie and take us back to that moment, which I think played nicely.

When Major and Liv thought they were both going to be human again, they seemed excited at the possibility of getting back together. Now that they are both zombies, how much will we see that romance be explored again season?
Thomas: Politics will create a divide between Major and Liv this season. Major will be a gung ho defender of Fillmore Graves. Liv will become more and more disenchanted by what she sees as a heartless occupying army. Season 4 won't be one big fight, but there's enough of a gulf that it will get in the way of romance.

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Peyton was investigating this big murder conspiracy all season and now she's the Chief-of-Staff to the first zombie mayor of the first zombie city. Where do those storylines take her in Season 4?
Thomas: She'll have her fingers in a couple of pies next season. Half of the prosecutors working in Seattle escaped the city before the wall went up, and Peyton will get called in on occasion to fill in when the case load becomes such that they need an extra hand. Working the mayor's office, she will be on the front line of mediating disputes between zombies and humans. Turns out humans don't want their children going to school with zombies, or sharing restrooms, or sharing city parks. There is a lot of work to be done.

Over the course of the season, we saw Blaine (David Anders) really return to his evil roots. Do you think the inevitable conclusion of his arc is to come full circle and have another showdown with Liv and the gang or is redemption still on the table?
Thomas: If it were Blaine's fate to go full circle, I wouldn't admit it. We'd just have to watch it happen. I will say that Blaine is like a pig in slop this season. New Seattle is the perfect city for him. When there's a thriving black market, odds are, Blaine is doing well. And the black market is alive and well in Seattle. Whole brains are worth their weight in gold and Blaine has a pipeline to them and a handshake deal with Chase Graves to leave him alone. He's raking it in.

In a heartbreaking twist, Bozzio was turned into a zombie. What can you say about her place in the show next season and how Clive will cope with her transformation?
Thomas: I can say that Clive and Bozzio are together as the season begins. They've been making things work for the past three months even though they can't have sex. They're going to have to go through the same things Liv and Major had to go through. The thing I'll promise is that they'll make different choices than Liv and Major made, and we'll see how those choices turn out. I think we'll watch the relationship evolve across the season. We're going to slow play it, feel it out, see how it feels.

iZombie Season 3 heads to Netflix on July 1. It will return to the CW for Season 4 in 2018.

(Full disclosure: TVGuide.com is owned by CBS, one of the CW's parent companies.)