iZombie 3×13 Review: Looking for Mr Goodbrain, Part 2

While I had no idea what to expect from the iZombie season three finale “Looking for Mr Goodbrain Part 2”, I have to say that I certainly didn’t expect anything like what actually happened.

The first three seasons of iZombie were very focused on the Seattle zombies trying to keep themselves a secret, and with the Zombie Truthers story line being so prevalent this season, I didn’t believe that would change anytime soon. In fact, even last week’s “Looking for Mr Goodbrain Part 1” – which seemed to give us the end of not just Harley Johns but of just about everyone in his Truthers group – didn’t quite prepare me for last night’s finale.

“Looking for Mr Goodbrain Part 2” was, like so many other episodes this season, very busy…but somehow they managed to wrap all of these separate story lines up into a nice little package. And yet that package still left the show with quite a bit to explore next season, which I’m *extremely* grateful for.

My biggest complaint with the finale is that Justin and Major’s actions didn’t exactly sit well with me. I was torn about Justin’s reaction to finding out that Liv slept with Chase Graves – don’t get me wrong, her doing so was pretty darn awful, and Justin certainly had good reason to be angry that she cheated on him (even with the ‘excuse’ of Katty’s brain). But was he always part of the plot to turn unsuspecting Seattle residents into zombies via tainted Aleutian flu vaccines? Or did he decide to become involved because of what Liv did? Either way, he ended up joining Chase Graves’s side in the end (more on that in a bit), but that doesn’t mean his involvement with the tainted vaccine situation should be forgiven. Originally I thought I could take or leave his character, now? Leave him, definitely leave him.

As for Major, yes, his decision to ask Chase to turn him back into a zombie made more sense than whatever was going on with Justin – Major was upset about Natalie’s untimely death at the hands of zombie-hating (and self-hating, in the end) Harley Johns – but that doesn’t mean it makes for a good story. That said, I suppose it’s a bit of relief that he merely became a zombie again and didn’t go back and forth between siding with Carey Gold and Chase Graves like Justin did.

Don’t get me wrong, I agree with Carey Gold that Zombie Island probably wasn’t the best idea. I can’t imagine it would have taken very long for the outside world to realize that something strange was going on there and to “take care of things”, as it were. But Carey’s plan was surely even more stupid! How would turning basically the entire population of Seattle into zombies really be any safer than hiding on an island? If anything it would just expose them sooner and Seattle would be wiped off the map.

Unfortunately, the rush for everyone to get Aleutian flu vaccinations meant that a lot more people ended up receiving them, and as they were apparently tainted from the beginning, there was really no stopping the events that Carey and her people put into motion. This led to “Looking for Mr Goodbrain Part 2” ending with the one thing Liv and friends have been trying to prevent for so long – an all-out zombie outbreak. But once it happened, I was still shocked at how it was handled. Johnny Frost (who received a vaccination and was therefore a zombie himself) made a live broadcast about the situation, only for Chase Graves to march in, take over, and lay out a plan to keep the zombies fed, and to therefore [hopefully] keep everyone, zombies and humans alike, safe.

But of course there will always be Zombie Truther types out there, and considering the fact that the last we saw of Justin and Major, they were shooting at a mob of humans that was coming after the zombies at one of the ‘brain stops’, it appears we’ve been given a taste of what the major conflict will be in season four. And while Liv saved Clive from getting a tainted vaccination, Clive wasn’t able to get to Dale in time. As for Ravi, he may have escaped getting a tainted vaccine, but his discovery of some old Utopium means there’s once again hope for a cure – one that he’s insisting on testing himself, leading to him asking Liv to scratch him.

And that’s it – that’s how “Looking for Mr Goodbrain, Part 2”, and season three, ended…with Liv agreeing to turn Ravi into a zombie. That scene was a tear-jerker, but not because it was necessarily sad – because their friendship has been such an amazingly positive force throughout the show, and seeing its culmination, hearing them admit that they love each other (only as friends, of course!) was beautiful and refreshing…even if so many other things about the finale were a hell of a lot darker.

Do you think we’ll actually get to see Ravi as a zombie? Will season four suffer from the ‘too many sub plots’ issue that season three had, or will the writers stick with the humans vs. zombies conflict? Let us know what you think in the comments!

Author: Tara Lynne

Tara Lynne is an author, fandom and geek culture expert, and public speaker. She founded Ice & Fire Con, the first ever Game of Thrones convention in the US, and now runs its parent company Saga Event Planning.

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