It’s that time of year again! Time to celebrate the Resurrection with a weeklong plunge into all things zombie! Here’s the history: In 2008, Dr. Girlfriend and I decided to spend a week or so each year marathoning through zombie films that we’d never seen before, and I would blog short reviews. And simple as that, the Easter Zombie Movie Marathon was born.
For the curious, here are links to 2008, 2009 (a bad year), 2010, 2011, 2012 (when we left the blog behind), 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023 and 2024.
The back half of Ash vs Evil Dead Season Two gets off to a good start with “Trapped Inside,” as the gang takes Pablo (Ray Santiago) back to Ash’s (Bruce Campbell) house, where Ruby (Lucy Lawless) reveals that Pablo is essentially turning into a human form of the Necronomicon. Unfortunately, Baal (Joel Tobeck) convinces Sheriff Emory (Stephen Lovatt) to form a mob to capture Ash at his house.
And here’s where it gets weird. Chet (Ted Raimi) shows up in Ash’s sister Cheryl’s room, claiming he came to warn Ash about the mob, but it turns out that Chet and Cheryl were a thing thirty years ago. Not only is that weird, but it’s kind of gross. Anyway, Pablo’s transformation allows the spell required to send Baal back to Hell to appear on his skin, but before anything can be done about it, Cheryl (Ellen Sandweiss) returns as a Deadite, and Chet is killed. Ash finishes her off in front of the townspeople who finally see that Ash wasn’t lying thirty years ago. He was actually a heroic demon killer who saved the world (that time, at least).
But Baal has the last laugh, as Lady Cop knocks Ash out with the butt of her shotgun.
The best part of this episode might be the return of Ellen Sandweiss, who played Cheryl back in the first film. She was the original Cheryl in The Evil Dead, who ended up trapped in the cellar, pushing up the chained door and threatening everybody in the cabin.
The only flaw with this episode is that Kelly (Dana DeLorenzo) gets kind of sidelined plotwise.
Ash getting knocked out leads into the first part of a two-part pseudo-finale. “Delusion” opens with a montage of scenes from the first two films, then Ash wakes up in an insane asylum and Baal is his doctor. Doctor Peacock?
This episode is a classic story trope in horror/sci-fi storytelling, probably most impressively done in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, where our hero is coerced into thinking that their life has been a delusion and they’ve been locked up in a padded cell fantasizing all of the previous episodes of the series (or the plot of the film). Doctor Peacock is trying to convince Ash that he really had a psychotic break thirty years ago, murdered his friends and family, and has spent decades believing a fantasy that he was a demon-killing hero.
It’s a far more serious episode than I remembered. Baal has drug addicts and actual staff of the asylum for pawns in his illusion and is holding Lacey (Pepi Sonuga) captive to ensure the help of Sheriff Emery and Linda (Michelle Hurd). The most light-hearted part of the episode is the introduction of the puppet Ashy Slashy, which is the most amazing potential marketing option in the entire series. But to be honest, even Ashy Slashy is dark, gross, and aggressively hostile.
Anyway, the episode ends with Ash succumbing to Baal’s plan and agreeing to destroy the Necronomicon, which is now manifest as Pablo.
Which brings us to episode eight, “Ashy Slashy.” If I didn’t know better, I would have thought this was the season finale. Ruby, Kelly, and Pablo arrive at an abandoned psychiatric hospital. This is where we learn that Sherrif Emory and Linda are working with Baal to break Ash’s brain in order to save Lacey from Baal’s control. That doesn’t really work out, as I’m sure you expected.
Long story short, Lacey is a Deadite, she kills her dad, Kelly kills her, and Ruby and Pablo are being hunted by a brainwashed Ash. Episodes Seven and Eight are tight and horrific. There’s a real sense of dread in every scene, even when Kelly is confronted by Ashy Slashy. By the time we get to the point where Ash has captured Pablo and is preparing to murder him for Baal, it seems like all hope is lost.
That’s good shit right there.
And when Ash reveals that this was his plan all along, to get Baal and Pablo in a room together so they can send the demon back to Hell, it’s an amazing relief. They capture Baal and Pablo, as the living Necronomicon, recites the spell to end the nightmare and Baal explodes into black goo – once again covering all of the actors in slime.
But just when you think our heroes have triumphed, Pablo’s torso separates from his lower body. He’s been cut in half and dies.
For real.
Shit.
The penultimate episode of Season Two opens with Ash doing donuts in the Delta while drinking and doing drugs to try to cope with his grief. With Pablo’s corpse in the passenger seat. But then he gets the bright idea to go back in time, to before he ever found the Necronomicon, steal it, and change the future. I mean, hell, he’s time traveled before so why not try it again?
It’s nice to finally get a direct reference to Army of Darkness.
Ruby only agrees to read the time travel spell from Pablo’s torso under threat of impending death as Ash, with everyone in the car swears to crash and kill them all unless the spell is cast. Then, with a slight nod to Back to the Future, both in dialogue and visually, they arrive in 1982 and promptly get separated on the way to the cabin after being chased by the Kandarian demon in the woods.
Ash forgot that Professor Knowby (Nicholas Hope) had read the Necronomicon before he ever arrived at the cabin. Which means that his wife, Henrietta (Alison Quigan), is in the cellar already. But before we gets there, Ash has to deal with the cabin itself fucking with him. After stepping on a nail, Ash’s leg gets infected with evil and rather than cut it off, which is first reflex, he simply ties it off and tries to suck the poison out, which ends up sprouting an evil fetus (or something?) in his belly. We get another Army of Darkness tribute as he tries to get the thing out of him, by punching himself in the stomach before finally downing hot sauce and boiling water, which forces him to vomit the awful foul-mounthed little thing onto the floor where it can be smashed with a frying pan.
It’s funny, but kind of pointless. And that’s when he hears Henrietta and has to go into the cellar, where he finds her chained to a wall, claiming her husband has been possessed and has been torturing her. Ash doesn’t buy it until the Professor returns with the Necronomicon, the Kandarian dagger, and a student named Tanya (Sara West) as a sacrifice. Maybe.
Ash frees Henrietta just as the Professor reveals his plan of transferring the demon into Tanya, to save his wife, who, as we know, is a Deadite. Then we’re back in Evil Dead II, as Henrietta attacks. In the chaos, the Professor escapes with the book, locking Ash and Tanya in the cellar to die. Then we get full-blown Deadite Henrietta, played once again by Ted Raimi!!
While all of this is going on, Ruby and Kelly are attacked in the woods by possessed trees, who are much less rapey than they were back in the day. Which is a good thing. There may be a little too much homage in this episode, though. It’s fun but doesn’t really move the plot forward very much.
Back in 2016, Ash vs Evil Dead showrunner Craig DiGregorio was interviewed by the AV Club about why he left the show after Season Two and how much interference there was in the Season Two finale (this is also where I found out Tapert didn’t like the possessed colon bit in Episode Two). According to DiGregorio, it seems it was a shit show behind the scenes. He claims that Producer Rob Tapert, who had been with the franchise from the beginning with The Evil Dead, didn’t care for the direction DiGregorio was going and scrapped most of the original finale script, only keeping the opening scenes.
That’s why this one starts very strong and then turns into a whole heap of bullshit.
Tapert allegedly didn’t want to lean into the comedy as much as DiGregorio did and objected to the canceled reveal that while in the past, Ash was going to hook up with Kelly’s mom, and the timeline would change, changing her into his daughter and part of the prophecy of the Chosen One. There are seeds of this idea planeted all through Season Two.
These are odd objections because as we’ll see in Season Three, there’s still a lot of comedy and – SPOILER WARNING – Ash discovers he had a daughter he didn’t know about.
Anyway, more on that stuff next time.
But back to the finale. In the cellar, Tanya is killed, but then Ash kills Henrietta. Outside, 1982 Ruby (Lucy Lawless, but blonde) kills the Professor, gaining the Necronomicon and the dagger. Kelly and our Ruby arrive at the cabin and are confronted by 1982 Ruby, as Ash emerges from the cellar. There’s some banter, a threesome joke, and then 1982 Ruby goes off after learning that her children were all murdered and Baal was dead.
You see, she’s there to make evil babies and bring Baal back in 1982. There’s a scuffle and our Ruby is stabbed and sacrifices herself to allow Kelly and Ash to get away with the Necronomicon. As they get to the Delta, Ash’s hand has returns and Pablo is alive in the car. They’ve succeeded in changing the timeline.
That’s when things go sideways, scriptwise.
Kelly’s arc this entire season has been about deciding to make her own way and stepping up to become a hero, not just someone obsessed with revenge. So instead of the original finale’s ending (where Kelly becomes another Chosen One, but after getting away to the present is captured by 1982 Ruby, Baal, and their evil kids, who have been out and about for thirty years), we get Pablo actually being possessed by Baal, who orchestrated the time travel shenanigans in order to resurrect himself, killing Pablo yet again.
He captures Ash and Kelly, knocking them unconscouis and taking them back to the cabin, where as Ash wakes up, 1982 Ruby is busy making evil babies with the Necronomicon. Ash challenges Baal to a fist fight, with Baal promising not to use his powers, and the winner lives and the loser dies horribly or is banished to Hell.
So there’s an extended fight scene and of course, eventually Baal cheats, turning into Chet (Ted Raimi) and shoving Ash’s head into a piano, then he cuts Ash’s hand off again for no reason other than to restore the status quo. Gotta have the chainsaw hand. Then Baal appears as Cheryl (Ellen Sandweiss), and then Ash is confronted by his dad (a returning Lee Majors), but believing it to be another trick, despite Brock being as old as he was in the modern timeline, Ash drowns him in a bathtub.
Then for some reason, 1982 Ruby seems to change her mind about everything and banishes Baal, herself, and her children to Hell. Kelly and Ash escape the cabin as it goes up in flames and then collapses in on itself, disappearing into the ground. Then, miraculously, I guess because it was part of the deal Baal agreed to, Pablo rises up out of the ashes and is back safe and sound.
They then return to present-day Elk Grove, and Ash is treated as the hero who saved the world, with a huge citywide party and parade. And Linda is with him now, for some reason. This is all despite the fact that they literally just changed the past. There is no cabin for 1982 Ash to arrive at, and no Necronomicon for him to read from and become a world-saving hero. Linda’s family probably should still be alive, too, and Ash shouldn’t know Kelly or Pablo in the new revised timeline.
Hell, none of the movies should have happened now.
Oh, and somehow 1982 Ruby is back, watching Ash from the back of the crowd. As are the “Force Ghosts” of Brock, Chet, and Cheryl. What the fuck?
But everything has been reset to give the third season a fresh start with the status quo returned to normal.
Bummer.
Overall, Season Two of Ash vs Evil Dead really did the job, upping the ante in just about every way from Season One. Despite a disappointing finale, the rest of the season excelled at both the horror elements and the comedic, with Bruce Campbell, Dana DeLorenzo, Ray Santiago, and Lucy Lawless all turning in totally committed performances, despite being hosed down with blood and gore on a regular basis.
I’m very curious to see what happens with Season Three. I started it when it originally aired but never finished watching it. Let’s go!