Ensuring that its comedy-apocalypse hybrid Z Nation keeps on shambling for another year, Syfy has announced that it’s renewing the Kellita Smith-starring series for a fourth 13-episode season. Smith stars as the leader of a survivor group tasked with escorting half-zombie ex-con Murphy (Keith Allen) to the West Coast for study, a job made far more difficult by Murphy’s growing abilities and megalomaniacal ambitions.
Although it started out as a sort of Walking Dead knockoff lark, Z Nation has picked up some healthy critical buzz in the last year or so. Much of that praise stems from the series’ clear-eyed honesty about its own ridiculousness, whether that comes in the form of survivors bowling over a horde of undead with a giant wheel of cheese, or George R.R. Martin appearing as his own zombie self, still signing books from sheer, ingrained muscle memory. The show will return to Syfy sometime in 2017.