| Season 2 | |
 | |
| Premiere | September 11, 2015 |
| Finale | December 18, 2015 |
| Channel | Syfy |
| Episodes | "The Murphy" "White Light" "Zombie Road" "Batch 47" "Zombaby!" "Zombie Baby Daddy" "Down the Mississippi" "The Collector" "RoZwell" "We Were Nowhere Near the Grand Canyon" "Corporate Retreat" "Party With the Zeros" "Adiós, Muchachos" "Day One" "All Good Things Must Come to an End" |
| previous Season 1 |
next Season 3 |
Season 2 of Z Nation was confirmed on October 20, 2014 and it featured 15 episodes. It started filming during first part of 2015, and the first episode of season 2 aired on September 11, 2015, on SyFy at 10/9c PM. The season finale was scheduled on December 18, 2015.
Plot info
"The Murphy"
As the nuclear weapons are activated, Doc, Roberta and 10K avoid the fallout by taking cover in a tunnel.
All of this is happening while Citizen Z is dealing with the Northern Light post being overrun by zombies. He subdues them before sending an emergency broadcast telling anyone listening to be on the lookout for Murphy and as an extra incentive, announces that the CDC will hand out cures and large bounties for Murphy's safe delivery.
Mack rides up on his ATV to discover Addy killing the last reanimated member of the Sisters of Mercy. Addy explains to him that Sam, the child banished from the camp on his 13th birthday returned, burned the camp to the ground and released the zombie bear. The two ride off to see what they can find. They decide to get the message out to the others that they’re alive, but their commandeering of a radio transmission reveals that the entire world is now looking for Murphy as well as the reward for his captivity and escort to the CDC lab. Addy suddenly picks up a strange numeral code on her ham radio, repeating excessively.
Murphy, meanwhile, strips of his decaying skin and now has a rather shiny silver color. He also has his own posse of zombies and they've all gone looting clothing at a thrift store when he runs afoul of a survivor who wants to take him in for the bounty. The plan goes awry, though, when Cassandra appears and impales him. Cassandra appears to be a half zombie half human, like Murphy.
Meanwhile, Roberta is starting to have a breakdown as she's gone off on her own in search of help for 10K and the wounded Doc. Just before going through with giving herself mercy rather than dying of starvation, thirst or exposure, she hears the sound of a young girl being attacked by a large amount of zombies. She saves the girl and is taken in by her family. They give her water and supplies and she meets up with Doc, 10K, Mack and Addy, all of whom have been reunited.
The group travels to Cheyenne, Wyoming, where they find Murphy running a zombie strip club. Roberta demands he accompany them to California, but Murphy shows them zombified strippers. Suddenly, when a bounty hunter named (Vasquez) arrives to take Murphy, Pandemonium arises and Murphy and Cassandra escape.
Finally, Roberta and the gang resolve to find Murphy and get him to California, while Citizen Z runs off to find help. Serena, a Sister of Mercy member who had intercourse with Murphy roams the countryside alongside her baby in search of Murphy.
"White Light"
The team continues to try to get Murphy out of Cheyenne and to the CDC, a ton of bounty hunters have descended upon the place. And among them: a chubby dude in a black suit who carries a damn bazooka. Because while everyone else is trying to capture Murphy for the bounty they've been promised, this guy doesn't seem too worried about actually killing him.
Cassandra is still running around in a bathing suit and a fur coat and she seems to have started attacking people much like the zombies do. Mack and Addy still don't seem to have made up and gotten back together. But it gets way worse for 10K. The guy with the bazooka shoots at 10K and he falls and hits his head. And, actually, starts to go toward the light. He comes back from the light but comes back deaf, which is hard on Doc, who treats him like a son. The two run off together to try to find Murphy, who's used his zombie-whispering powers to convince a zombie about his size and build to trade clothes and be a decoy. When Vasquez tracks down the decoy, he's attacked by Cassandra.
As Doc continues to try to protect 10K, he runs afoul of a sniper and ends up getting choked almost to death in a hotel room. We almost lose Doc as his spirit floats above his body, but he catches sight of a weapon and uses to kill the guy who was choking him. Citizen Z up in the North Pole, he's being chased by a bunch of zombie soldiers. But even though he sees an incident from his past flash before his eyes Citizen Z pulls through.
Roberta is saved by Vasquez from a particularly nasty bounty hunter, but not before she sees a vision from her past, of nearly drowning in a pool. Murphy, tired of it all and just wants all the running to stop, jumps off the roof of the hotel and lands in the pool, filled with zombies that break his fall. Addy desperately tries to save Mack from a zombie-infested stairwell, but she’s too late. Mack turns into a zombie and Addy gives him mercy. The guy with the suit reveales he has a "Z" tattooed on his hand.
Addy rejoins the team, expresses her anger and sadness by using Murphy as a punching bag for a while, and they all decide to head west as fast as they can. Because they're going to have to beat the storm cloud that's kicking up all kinds of nuclear fallout.
"Zombie Road"
As the radiation clouds are building, the team has to conjure a new plan to get to California. However, there's a few new things to worry about, too: Cassandra really seems to be having a hard time in her new life as an almost-zombie; there's a new breed of super-scary zombie out there; and, out of nowhere, a wagon train of survivors and some new bounty hunters have turned up.
The cavalcade of trucks n' cars is owned and operated by a guy named Sam Custer, who's leading his people to Edmonton, Canada. It's cold there and the zombies don't like it. But they've got a long way to go and they're in an area that's been overrun by Blasters, mega-zombies who were killed in the nuclear blasts. As the team decides to match up their fortunes with the convoy, a likable simpleton named Wrecking Ball takes Murphy and Doc aside and gets them stoned on Z Weed, which is pot made using zombie corpses as compost.
When Custer busts them, Murphy is required to ride in the medical wagon with the people dying of radiation poisoning or, as Addy and Roberta call it, "a zombie bomb waiting to go off". When Murphy gets Cassandra Z-stoned on Z-Weed, she becomes a little more Z-tastic than we've seen her be in the recent past, though also a little more coherent, too.
As the convoy is attacked by a group of bounty hunters, Roberta and Vasquez learn that they actually make a pretty good team while Cassandra saves Doc and Wrecking Ball by jumping onto the hood of the car and chewing a guy's face off. It buys enough time for Doc and Wrecking Ball to bail out, though their car is successfully carjacked and races off with the convoy's entire water supply.
The team manages to catch up with the water car (and a bloody Cassandra, who made short work of the carjackers), though Murphy manages to carjack the vehicle himself, accompanied by Cassandra and Wrecking Ball. Then, just as predicted, the medical wagon turns into a zombie day care center, where one guy dies, attacks another, and so forth until Addy is caught between regular Z's and terrifying Blasters coming at her from the road.
Addy is saved just in time by 10K as Roberta gets the team through a Blaster barricade and safely off the convoy. Sam Custer, who'd been slowly but surely losing his mind due to radiation exposure, is not so lucky as a Blaster eats his face.
Murphy, Cassandra and their new sidekick, Wrecking Ball are an route to the lab in Minneapolis that grows the Z Weed.
"Batch 47"
On the hunt for more Z Weed, Murphy and Cassandra (sans Wrecking Ball, for some unknown reason) have come to a Minnesota lab, where they find a group of survivors desperate to get their hands on Batch 47, a supposed herbal vaccine against the zombie virus. Unfortunately, the greenhouse wherein this Batch 47 resides is overrun with zombies actually, even worse, phytozombies: half-plant, half zombie hybrids. Murphy finds the guy in charge, Odegard, just as the lab workers are about to send more harvester-types into the greenhouse to collect this mysterious Batch 47. And then Dr. Walter Kurian shows up, the bad guy from the Season 1 finale that created the ZN1 virus, adn who might be responsible for the outbreak of the zombie virus in the first place. He is badly burned on the side of his face.
Meanwhile, Operation Bitemark, in pursuit of Murphy, has rolled up to the lab and started to snoop around. They come upon a blonde woman with a little girl, and she turns out to be their kind of people: a woman raising a kid she's not related to because her real mom is dead. The problem is the little girl is very sick and she keeps asking the blonde woman to not let her turn into a zombie.
Murphy can feel the pain of the plant zombies, a psychic connection that seems to work both ways. He manages to get a sample of Batch 47 for the good lab doctor and they try it out on some zombies who are just heads in jars. All this while Addy makes contact with Citizen Z, who gives her the new coordinates for the CDC in California. The number she writes down was also seen by Dr. Kurian.
The team gets roped into helping harvest the rest of the seedpods in order to make more of the herbal zombie vaccine. They trade in their guns for garden tools as defence for the phytos and head into the greenhouse, where they encounter the terrifying phytozombie leader, all green, shaggy, covered in vines and powerfully psychically connected to Murphy. Murphy flees and runs into Dr. Kurian, who tells him that the only hope the world has left is people like Murphy: half human/half zombies.
Escorpion is in charge of a cartel known as the Zeroes (which explains the 'Z' tattoo on his hand). When the lab doctor protests his order to shut down all Batch 47 experiments, Hector suddenly insists on human trials and shoots the resulting "alive zombie" in the face. When Murphy tries to free all the phytozombies in the Giant Shop of Horrors, they suddenly come after him and the team has to fight for their lives. When they end up killing the phytozombie leader, Murphy is bereft. Finally, Doc finds the little girl and her not-mother in the barn and hands over the Batch 47 leaves, which the little girl chews on before she dies.
The episode ends when Serena, the pregnant lady wandering around looking for Murphy, encounters the group.
"Zombaby!"
As our intrepid band of zombie-battling, Murphy-getting-to-Cali badasses make their way through the U.S., we come to the great state of Wisconsin, where the team has encountered a Z-infested cheese celebration parade. There are too many zombies for Murphy to control, so it's best that everyone just makes a run for it, with Serena in tow. It should be noted that Serena may give birth at any minute to Murphy's angry zombie baby. Roberta takes a moment to roll a giant wheel of cheese through town and the team watches in awe as it picks up zombies in its giant cheesy clutches. When the team comes under fire, they head off to a local Mennonite community upon the suggestion of Vasquez, who seems to be developing some kind of plan by listening in on the goings-on of the Zeroes cartel. After 10K saves some Mennonites from a pretty scary zombie (and a zombie sheep), he's sprayed with a mysterious white substance that's later revealed to be anthrax.
When the other Mennonite zombies attack, both Doc and Addy are also sprayed with anthrax. Even though Doc has been immunized against a whole lot of things, this is still not good at all, no matter how you slice it. When 10K passes out, the team learns that the Mennonites are hoarding an antibiotic called Cipro. While it could save 10K, there's not enough of it to go around, so Addy, Vasquez and a young member of the community ride into the nearest town, kill a meth head and discover that there are no more antibiotics for miles. All this while Serena has gone into labor in the barn. Everyone tries to help her, but she is not a good patient and the baby itself is clearly quite the special case. When Addy goes down from anthrax exposure and the team is faced with saving her and 10K or watching them die slowly with the other Mennonites, Roberta makes a decision: they steal the Cipro, apologize to the community, and leave town.
When Serena has the baby, the zombies come a'callin', as the child in swaddling clothes is something of a messiah for them (complete with a single star above the barn in which she was born). Eventually, the Z's attack Serena and are furious when Murphy escapes with his daughter, whom he names Lucy. Roberta gives Serena mercy, and with the help of some antibiotics, 10K and Addy seem to be on the mend.
"Zombie Baby Daddy"
In Springfield, Illinois, our team of heroes is battling a group of Abe Lincoln zombies, as Murphy and Cassandra do their best to keep the peace with their magical zombie powers. There's a lot at stake as the zombie baby, Lucy, has no mother and has only eaten sugar water, and nobody really knows what to do with her. As 10K continues to worry about Cassandra, he's also starting to worry about what Vasquez is up to. Roberta decides to find out what is Vasquez up to and leaves the team to check in on Lucy. Addy, Doc and 10K offer to take care of Lucy for a while to give Murphy a break but the Zombie Baby Daddy tells them he doesn't trust them. He goes off into the woods with his daughter and leaves Cassandra to look after the team, ordering her to make sure nobody leaves.
Roberta catches up with Vasquez only to find he's in trouble with the Zeroes cartel. A gunfight turns a lot of the cartel members into zombies and wounds both Vasquez and Roberta. Looking for a place to patch up their wounds, they head to a local hospital, where we learn Vasquez's backstory: he was a DEA agent, forced to work for the Zeroes after they kidnapped his wife and child and said they'd kill them slowly if he didn't. What happened instead was that a rival cartel member said he'd kill them quickly but Vasquez would be owned; in order to give his wife and daughter mercy, Vasquez was forced into working for them. And just as Vasquez reveals this, his pulse stops. Roberta prepares to give him mercy but he wakes up in the nick of time.
Meanwhile, the team decides to confuse Cassandra by running in three different directions, the hope being that she'll chase one of them as the other two go look for Murphy and Lucy. It doesn't quite work out: Cassandra makes a tactical decision to go after Addy, which leaves 10K and Doc with the conundrum of having to save her. However, when 10K attempts a heart-to-heart, it goes pretty poorly. Doc and Addy manage to escape, leaving this former budding power couple to duke it out.
Murphy stumbles across a house in the woods where he asks a heavily armed couple to take Lucy and raise her as their own. Everyone's sort of on board with this plan until the would-be foster parents get a good look at the little monster, which prompts them to tell the Zombie Baby Daddy to take his kid and get lost.
10K is forced to kill Cassandra in order to save his own life. Things get tense when Murphy tells 10K he had no right to give mercy to Cassandra and Roberta asks where the baby is. Turns out Murphy bit that nice couple right in the face and left Lucy behind to be raised by whatever kind of Cassandra-like almost-zombies they'll turn into shortly.
"Down the Mississippi"
The team comes to the mighty Mississippi, not an easy river to cross unless you have a boat and so far, the only boat available is covered in zombies. After quickly dispatching of the Z's, the team heads south and runs into Sketchy and Skeezy. They've just looted Graceland and are practicing a new hustle called "The Murphy," where they pass Skeezy off as the Zombie Messiah.
It's all shady charm until the boat is overrun by a zombie jam and the team is separated from 10K. 10K gets caught up in the various shenanigans of Sketchy and Skeezy, including a run–in with a pack of gun-toting hillbillies from whom they narrowly escape by claiming to be able to immunize from the Z virus via Skeezy's rather artless bite.
Meanwhile, on the other side of the river, the team starts to argue about whether they should go back and look for 10K or keep moving. Per Doc's insistence, they agree to spend 24 hours looking for him, but Roberta tells Doc that if they don't find 10K by morning, they're going to have to move on without him.
Sketchy and Skeezy come across a dentist's truck and drive it to a nearby town. The truck is part of an organized scam to traffic humans, kill them, turn them into zombies and use them as slave labor in a town run by a guy named Tyler Burr, who's basically a dandy in a televangelist suit. Sketchy, Skeezy and 10K are all welcomed into the fold because the truck had zombies in it. Murphy is still pretty angry over Cassandra being killed, and the team is starting to disagree over the idea that the mission is to get Murphy to California and everything that stands in the way is expendable.
Back in Burrville, there's a new love interest for 10K and that never goes well. We're instantly worried for this girl, though she ends up being the only person who takes 10K seriously when he says that he was traveling with The Murphy. And when Sketchy and Skeezy are put on trial by none other than Escorpion for stealing the truck, she's the only one who can save 10K's neck.
After Sketchy gives impassioned yet ultimately ineffective pleas for justice, The Scorpion sentences them all to hanging. Luckily, 10K's new love interest finds the team and leads them to the town. They arrive with guns blazing, freeing the zombie slaves, grabbing 10K and hitting the road once again leaving Sketchy and Skeezy to close the episode with their own Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid-style freeze frame.
"The Collector"
The team is low on supplies and Murphy wants to eat brains, which is a new development and probably sort of a serious one. In fact, when Murphy and Doc go off to look for something to eat, it's Murphy’s lust for brains that actually gets him captured in a pit with another zombie. It turns out it's a crazy nerd type named Dean, aka 'The Collector,' and it doesn't take him long to learn the identity of his latest catch: The Murphy.
Dean puts a shock collar on Murphy and takes him on a tour of his insane zombie museum. They discuss classic zombie movies like White Zombie (with Bela Lugosi, 1932), eventually making their way to George Romero's Night of the Living Dead and agreeing that much like what we're watching, the best kind of zombie stories are the ones that are both scary and funny. As Murphy gets the chance to take a shower, the team continues to look for him throughout the town, only to find that there aren't a lot of people 'round these parts.
After Murphy attempts to escape, Dean ties him to a chair on a makeshift television studio set and commences with an exclusive interview with The Murphy. Dean collects DNA, takes a plasma and bone marrow sample and keeps shocking his guest with the collar. And then something that seems kind of important happens: Murphy tastes brains for the first time, during which new kinds of synapses go off in his head and he actually gets a little upset when talking about the baby daughter he had to give up.
It turns out that Dean is collecting various forms of Z's, most of which we've seen before: the radioactive Z's, the phytozombies, the Blasters. He's got them all, including celebrity zombies, such as George RR Martin, the Game of Thrones creator himself, all done up in zombie get-up. Dean is keeping him in a room where he just signs copies of his books over and over again.
When Murphy tries to escape again, Dean shows his even crazier side, brutally electrocuting his guest as 10K shows up asking if Dean has seen "a blue guy." 10K sees through Dean's ruse and sneaks into the zombie museum, where he's captured and Dean decides that he wants to see what happens when Murphy bites a human: namely, 10K.
Finally, Murphy convinces the zombie peanut gallery to sneak up on Dean and eat him alive, after which he passes out from weakness and has to be wheeled out of the zombie museum by 10K. As the team reassembles and prepares to get back on the road, Murphy makes Roberta promise that she won't leave him alone when they get to California.
"RoZwell"
As Team Z rolls toward Roswell, New Mexico, they encounter something they can't really explain: a flying saucer that scans them with bright light. Curious about what they've seen, they stop at what used to be downtown Roswell, where they find a cult-like group of "extranauts", people who believe they'll soon be going to outer space with a race of aliens. Their leader and chief visionary is a gorgeous blonde named Bernadette.
Bernadette claims the "visitors" have told her that a group will arrive and bring with them "the Emissary", the ambassador of humankind to the aliens, aka Murphy. The team is understandably skeptical and so is one of the extranauts named Dan Scully, who tells them that the zombie apocalypse was actually instigated by aliens who live in the hollowed-out spaceship we know of as Pluto. He also tells them not to believe anything Bernadette says.
Bernadette gives the team a quick tour of the abandoned base, claiming that the aliens have chosen to rescue only a few people from the zombie apocalypse wasteland once known as Earth. She then leads them into a secret room that turns out to be an elevator that descends several miles underground at top speed. When they enter the underground bunker, they come face to face with a zombie alien. The team blasts it to all to hell and it explodes all over the place.
Shortly thereafter, Addy discovers what appears to be an advanced technology computer that has control of the entire base and that contains a lot of video of Murphy. More interestingly, it also features a star map and something called "Zona." Meanwhile, Bernadette insists that the team shouldn't be killing the aliens at least until one of them abducts her. When the team chases after the otherworldly kidnapper to ground level, they find that Murphy and Bernadette are in contact with the alien spacecraft and may soon be going to outer space.
10K and Roberta find an incredible Men in Black kind of gun and shoot down the UFO. When they find the alien pilot inside, they take off its mask to reveal Dan Scully. He's been masquerading as an alien as he salvages the technology left at the base and flies it back to Zona.
After Scully explains that the "aliens" in the base were actually just zombie test pilots, he dies from his wounds and the team gives him mercy. Bernadette then tells the good extranauts of Roswell that the aliens told her they should wait just a little longer for that mass exodus off the planet.
And with that, the team heads off on their next adventure, getting ever closer to California.
"We Were Nowhere Near the Grand Canyon"
Roberta and Vasquez kill a bunch of zombies and then they totally make out and then, Vasquez is a zombie and it's a dream. Citizen Z has returned, he's still in the North Pole and there are still zombies with him, but he's managed to keep up his spirits and ammunition.
The team's current problem is the Zunami, a horde of zombies many miles wide making its way across the desert and destroying everything in its path. The team decides to split up: Roberta, Vasquez, Murphy and Addy all ride off on ATVs and find the Northern Quest Casino Resort, a place that isn't taking in any outsiders, while Doc and 10K decide to get to higher ground on their own. It doesn't go well for the duo, as the son of Chief Dan Firecloud, the man who runs the casino, ambushes them.
Chief Firecloud doesn't think the Zunami is as bad as Roberta says it is, but his daughter thinks differently. Meanwhile, Addy tries to establish a radio connection with Citizen Z whilst trouble is brewing for Doc and 10K, who have been taken to camp and tended to by the Chief's daughter. The tribe is wary of the zombie virus infecting their community; the call it 'Zendigo' and describe it as a "disease of the soul."
Doc heads off with the Medicine Woman and she gives him a good deal of peyote, which seems like it might be fun until he and 10K are ejected from the camp and get caught in a net. The tribe's looking to have an early warning system for the invading horde of zombies, and they leave 10K and Doc to be that system. When a Z enters the scene, Doc uses astral projection (via that far-out peyote, we assume) to kill it.
Finally, the Chief's daughter rescues 10K and Doc and brings them to the casino. The team reunites.
When the Chief sees the impending zombie horde, he orders his tribe to head for the 'Sacred Cliffs' but decides to go down with the casino himself. Meanwhile, Citizen Z, via successful radio contact established by Addy, asks the team for help when his missile launcher won't fire. Roberta pitches in and Citizen Z is able to blow a Z to kingdom come.
When the zombie horde finally arrives at the casino, it's so strong that it brings down the entire building. The Chief's daughter leads everyone to the Sacred Cliffs, where she reunites with her brother. Doc, still hallucinating from his vision quest, gets an idea from the drawings of the tribe's ancestors: namely, guiding buffalo towards the edge of a cliff, where they would fall to their deaths. The team directs the zombies away with a wall of fire and watches them tumble into the Grand Canyon.
Murphy has a very hard time with seeing his own "tribe" fall to their deaths and Roberta and Vasquez have to restrain him. Roberta provides some tough love and tells Murphy that the time is coming when he has to decide which side of the humans vs. zombies battle he's on and, while he's deciding, he should remember which side is trying to keep him alive and which side is trying to eat his brain. Roberta wipes a tear from Murphy's face and the team is off again.
"Corporate Retreat"
Fresh from running a Z-herd straight into the Grand Canyon, the gang's fighting zombies in a smoke-filled field. They need shelter and fast. Murphy can still keep the zombies at bay using his super zombie psychic abilities. The team comes to a hotel in which resides a squad of businesspeople who make a lot of decisions based on voting, a talking stick, and an obnoxious level of corporate leadership groupthink. They were in the hotel when the outbreak began and they've been here ever since, in one big horrible corporate offsite. They're led by Dr. Gideon Gould, a world-renowned expert in conflict resolution and corporate conversation.
As Addy and Roberta split off to negotiate some resources with Gideon and his right-hand woman, Dana, 10K and Doc head off with Iggy, who is a bit nuts. It turns out Iggy is in charge of the food and has the keys to the kitchen. Just as everyone starts settling into a nice routine where they might start getting along well, gunshots can be hear. Everyone rushes to find Murphy and Greg unconscious on the kitchen floor with gunshot wounds.
Gideon pulls out the talking stick and the attempt at peaceful conflict resolution commences. Meanwhile, Doc and Vasquez realize that the bullet must have passed through Murphy and into Greg, which in theory should turn him into one of those Cassandra-sort-of-zombies. He's healing pretty fast thanks to Murphy's blood. When 10K is accused of being the shooter, he says that yes, one day, he will probably kill Murphy, but until then, they're all on the same team. And that's when Vasquez enters with news that someone has been stealing food. The hotel team thinks that Iggy's the thief ‘cause he has access to the kitchen and the food storage locker. So Gideon banishes him to the Z-infested outdoors with only a mallet for a weapon.
Meanwhile, there's been more treachery. The guy they call Washington has been killed and goes all Z on poor Sheila, one of his fellow hotel denizens. While looking for the villain, Addy and Dana take refuge in a closet and are saved from a Z attack by Roberta and Vasquez. It turns out that Murphy's dreaming of the "tribe" he lost at the Grand Canyon is attracting more Z's to the hotel, which leads to everyone being trapped in one room. There's a lot of shouting and aggression until Doc realizes that Greg is awake.
Greg, who's now a Cassandra-sort-of-zombie, points out the shooter: Travis, one of the hotel residents, who's been planning on leaving the hotel with Dana for some time. He gets shot by Greg, turns into a Z and is killed by Addy. Suddenly, a blood-soaked Iggy enters, having survived his banishment. His fellow residents give a hearty cheer when he cracks Gideon on the head with the talking stick.
With the hotel denizens now free from Gideon's manipulative control, the team hits the road once more.
"Party With the Zeros"
When the team reaches the U.S.-Mexican border, they come across a 2,000-foot long wall they can't go around or over, they quickly run out of ammunition, and Murphy's psychic ability to control zombies seems to not work anymore. It looks like the end until they're rescued in the nick of time by Escorpion, head enforcer of the Zeros cartel. Escorpion leads them through the wall, under a tunnel, and into a lush compound where everyone is seemingly completely fine with torturing zombies by leaving them to rot as compost. This gorgeous paradise is run by La Reina de los Muertos, and she is serious business.
La Reina is basically looking to be the purveyor of the zombie cure, and has a doctor who can cook it up with Murphy's blood: mean little Walter Kurian. He's basically responsible for the Z outbreak in the first place and more or less for setting off all those nuclear weapons in Colorado. Roberta absolutely wants to kill him but La Reina talks her out of it; after all, Kurian is the only one qualified in the immediate vicinity to conjure the antivirus.
When La Reina offers the team a bounty and membership in the Zeros in exchange for Murphy, Vasquez tells Roberta she should accept. She reluctantly does and the team is whisked off to their initiation: a gladiator pit where they're forced to kill a whole bunch of zombies. They do this handily (and in the dark, at that), and while they're at it, Vasquez finally finds who he's been looking for all this time: the man who killed his wife and daughter in front of him years ago. That guy turns out to be Escorpion.
Then there's an '80s makeover montage where everyone looks spectacular in new clothes and makeup and Doc gets his beard put up into pin-curlers. Meanwhile, Kurian is testing the vaccine with human subjects, which is producing half-zombie Cassandra types that follow Murphy's movements to a T. Roberta confronts Murphy as everyone is making an offering to the Man Whose Blood Saved Humanity, demanding to know exactly what it is that Murphy has promised Kurian. Murphy plays innocent, but let's be honest, the thing about Murphy is that he will always be out for himself. Roberta also tells Vasquez that she's cool with him killing Escorpion but to wait until they have a real plan.
Vasquez, though, takes matters into his own hands and prepares to shoot Escorpion in the back of the head. Roberta acts fast and diverts the bullet, an action interpreted by the Zeros as saving La Reina's life. Vasquez is dragged off to be tortured, and during the interrogation session, Escorpion mentions 'Zona'. Kurian prepares to inject his vaccine into Vasquez as his nefarious plan is revealed: inject the serum into a person, have Murphy control him to make it look like the vaccine is a success, and then inject it into La Reina so that Murphy can control her, too and thusly, the entire world.
"Adiós, Muchachos"
Team Z is still trapped in La Reina's Mexican compound. Walter Kurian and Murphy have come up with a plan to create a fake 'vaccine' that will turn all of the Zeros gang into blended half-zombies under Murphy's control and Vasquez is about to be the first one injected. Luckily, Roberta intervenes and convinces La Reina that the first injection should go to Dr. Kurian. There's some hemming and hawing, but ultimately Kurian injects himself and when he's bitten by a zombie as a test of the stuff's effectiveness, it seems like the vaccine actually works.
La Reina's minions all get injections, which makes them a little bit woozy. When La Reina demands that Roberta should be next, Murphy intervenes and saves her from the vaccine. It all seems very suspicious to Escorpion, who asks for permission to continue beating up Vasquez. Vasquez wants nothing more than to kill Escorpion because Escorpion shot his wife and daughter. So now that Dr. Kurian is completely under Murphy's control, Roberta discovers that Murphy is starting a blend-army and she is furious.
The plan is still for the team to get to California, even if they have to take Murphy by force but first, there's going to be a go-for-broke rescue mission for Vasquez. Then something happens to everyone who's gotten an injection: they suddenly come after Murphy. Apparently he can't really control his new "army" as all they seem to want is his blood (and probably his brains, too).
Roberta saves Murphy by decapitating Dr. Kurian and the gang rescues Vasquez. And in a last desperate attempt to escape the compound, they let in all the real zombies to fight the blended ones. It’s an insane plan, but it works. As the team reaches the outside world, they are met by Escorpion. After an intense round of vengeful fisticuffs, Vasquez throws him back down into the bunker, where he's eaten by zombies. They then ride off into California in a fleet of really badass El Caminos.
La Reina and Dr. Kurian's talking heads seem to have survived the whole ordeal.
"Day One"
The episode starts with Citizen Z. Prior to the zombie outbreak, he was arrested on espionage charges for his hacking shenanigans and then offered a job at the NSA, where he was stationed at the Northern Light listening post. Meanwhile, in the present, Citizen Z realizes that he himself has been hacked by unknown forces. Things aren't going terribly well for the team, either, as their fleet of El Caminos is busted. They're on foot the rest of the way through California to get Murphy to the CDC, and they're walking through what remains of Disneyland (not much).
When Roberta wonders, "How did it all get like this?" and so, to Roberta Warren's origin story. She was a Lieutenant with the National Guard and forced to kill some good soldiers who'd been turned at the base where she was stationed. Doc, it turns out, was an addiction counselor and worked at a center where he was pretty good at keeping people calm with the power of hugging. When the zombies showed up, he escaped after patients and colleagues went all Z. Addy's origin story marks the return of Mack Thompson, sort of. It's a flashback, it turns out that Mack and Addy met at a hockey game where everyone turned Z, after which Addy had to get home to her brother and mother (and we know how that turned out). 10K was alone in the woods when he was suddenly attacked by some Z-hunters and a park ranger. After a good deal of running, 10K (then known simply as 'Tommy') was rescued by his father (and we know what happens to that poor guy).
But by far the most impressive and terrifying origin story has to be Vasquez's. It turns out the funeral for his wife and daughter was on the first day of the outbreak, and the first zombies Vasquez encountered were the funeral director and zombie versions of his wife and daughter, crawling out of their damn coffins.
Meanwhile, back in the present, Citizen Z is tracing the hackers and discovers they've been tracking Operation Bitemark all along. When he realizes that he may be leading a potential threat to Murphy, he destroys his servers. Murphy himself is growing increasingly worried about what's going to happen at the CDC, which prompts his own dark Day One flashback. Murphy was in prison (for postal fraud), where a jailyard murder went awry after the inmates began turning Z. It was every man for himself as Murphy managed to escape and lock the gate so that others couldn't get out, including those who hadn't been turned. It's a pretty awful thing to do, so maybe he's indeed looking to redeem himself as what Roberta calls the "hope for humanity".
When the team arrives at what they believe to be the coordinates for the CDC, they find a run-down restaurant populated by a sweet lady who offers them tea. The episode ends.
"All Good Things Must Come to an End"
Citizen Z tries to undo any of the damage that's been done by the hacking, he also tries to reach Operation Bitemark to tell them they're compromised and to abort the mission. Unfortunately, he's too late, as the team has already arrived at the coordinates they were given for the CDC, which is actually a quaint little restaurant in the middle of nowhere.
The team chats with Auntie, the owner and proprietor, who also happens to be the person to see if you're seeking the bounty on Murphy. As the team settles in, a group of bounty hunters turn up with a fake Murphy. Things quickly descend into a gunfight, and while all of the bounty hunters are killed, 10K is shot in the stomach.
Auntie contacts the CDC, which turns out to be based on a submarine. Military types and Marilyn Merch arrive, promising they'll help 10K as they take Murphy off to make a proper vaccine. The team says a pretty touching goodbye to Murphy, and the mission seems to be over, that is, until the CDC departs and someone else fires at the team. Yep, it's the Zeros, led by a now completely crazed La Reina. Luckily, Auntie's got some spare weapons and ammo hidden behind the bar.
On the submarine, Murphy learns that the crew belongs to a society currently living on a zombie-free island called Zona. Murphy notices that everyone on the sub has weird glowing eyes, a side effect of the current vaccine, which only slows down the effects the virus. Murphy is about to go along with tests for the new vaccine but suddenly incapacitates Dr. Merch, claiming he's going to do something he should have done "a long time ago."
Meanwhile, there's a big shootout at Auntie's restaurant, during which Auntie turns Z and Doc gives her mercy. Roberta and La Reina fight like crazy until finally La Reina is vanquished by Escorpion. Escorpion apologizes to Vasquez for murdering his family, saying he can have his vengeance if he wants it. Vasquez spares Escorpion's life, after which he says goodbye to Roberta and runs off into the woods.
Roberta, Doc and Addy take Escorpion up on his offer: join him on the road, as he's got enough food, water, ammo and Z-Weed to last a month. "Worst case scenario, we kill him and take the truck," muses Addy. At the ocean, they see that Murphy has escaped the submarine and is now racing toward the shore on a speedboat with Dr. Merch(who's gay) and the Captain, who both have Murphy bite marks. 10K is not seen.
The Season 2 finale ends with the team being ambushed by Chinese soldiers, Citizen Z coming across a mystery female as he traverses the frozen wasteland of the North Pole.
And young Lucy (Murphy's daughter) have quickly grown to the size of a six year old, she is last seen enjoying a tea-party with two zombies.
Cast & Crew
Main Cast
- Kellita Smith as Roberta Warren
- DJ Qualls as Simon "Citizen Z" Cruller
- Michael Welch as Mack Thompson
- Keith Allan as Alvin Murphy
- Anastasia Baranova as Addison "Addy" Carver
- Russell Hodgkinson as Steven "Doc" Beck
- Pisay Pao as Cassandra
- Nat Zang as Thomas "10K"
- Matt Cedeño as Javier Vasquez
Supporting Cast
- Emilio Rivera
Episodes
| No. | Title | Writer(s) | Air Dates | U.S. Viewers |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 01 | "The Murphy" | John Hyams, Karl Schaefer | September 11, 2015 | 0.94 million |
| 02 | "White Light" | John Hyams | September 18, 2015 | 0.88 million |
| 03 | "Zombie Road" | Dan Merchant | September 25, 2015 | 0.99 million |
| 04 | "Batch 47" | Michael Cassutt, Alexander Yellen | October 2, 2015 | 0.90 million |
| 05 | "Zombaby!" | Jennifer Derwingson,Rachel Goldenberg | October 9, 2015 | 0.88 million |
| 06 | "Zombie Baby Daddy" | Tim Cox, Craig Engler | October 16, 2015 | 0.84 million |
| 07 | "Down the Mississippi" | John Hyams | October 23, 2015 | 0.76 million |
| 08 | "The Collector" | Dan Merchant | October 30, 2015 | 0.87 million |
| 09 | "RoZwell" | Craig Engler , Jason McKee | November 6, 2015 | 0.84 million |
| 10 | "We Were Nowhere Near the Grand Canyon" | Eric Bernt , Juan A. Mas | November 13, 2015 | 0.67 million |
| 11 | "Corporate Retreat" | Jodi Binstock, Micho Rutare | November 20, 2015 | 0.77 million |
| 12 | "Party With the Zeros" | Abram Cox, Lynelle White | November 27, 2015 | 0.92 million |
| 13 | "Adiós, Muchachos" | Jennifer Derwingson, Abram Cox | December 4, 2015 | 0.97 million |
| 14 | "Day One" | Dan Merchant, Michael Cassutt | December 11, 2015 | 0.83 million |
| 15 | "All Good Things Must Come to an End" | John Hyams, Karl Schaefer & Daniel Schaefer | December 18, 2015 | 1.10 million |