"Brainless in Seattle, Part 2" Features 'iZombie's First Retcon

iZombie is really and truly a comic book show now, having introduced a major retcon to its timeline.

A "retcon," for those who doin't know, is a piece of "retroactive continuity," generally a piece of storytelling set in the past of the characters and inserted in such a way that it changes the timeline as it had previously been known to happen. It is unique to serialized entertainment, since making such changes within a single story would simply be a twist.

In "Brainless in Seattle, Part 2," the retcon is the origin of Renegade. Seattle's most wanted coyote explained herself to Liv in this week's episode, revealing that she, too, had been scratched by Blaine, and that he had been selling her brains during season 1. After learning that he was kidnapping and murdering teenagers to get the brains, Renegade had tried to turn Blaine in, but got nowhere (due, the audience knows to the complicity of Lt. Suzuki at the police department). Shortly thereafter, her husband was murdered -- and she was called into the morgue to identify the body, seen standing next to Liv and Ravi.

This inserts Renegade deeply into the series' mythology, making her a part of Liv's, Ravi's, Suzuki's, and Blaine's stories. It is also interesting that Blaine killed her husband to send her a message, but did not recognize her when he saw her in a vision...although that is likely just the kind of guy Blaine is.

There is a difference between a retcon, and simply inserting a heretofore-unknown event into the history of the series. Each new character introduced, of course, brings with them personal baggage, and unless a given character's history ties in directly with that of the main characters, few would call their addition a retcon. The assumption is that while we do not know everything about the entire universe of a show (or comic, or whatever), audiences have a reasonable level of confidence at any given time that they know every important thing that happened to the main characters during the lifespan of the series.

With the introduction of Fillmore-Graves, for instance, their inciting zombie incident became a part of iZombie's in-universe timeline...but it was merely something that the characters did not know about, not something that added directly to their own backstory.

iZombie airs on Monday nights at 9 p.m. ET/PT on The CW, following new episodes of DC's Legends of Tomorrow.