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.
Well, I was kinda right. “Tales from the Rift” is a definite step in the right direction for Ash vs Evil Dead. There’s still a ways to go to get back to last season’s highs, but at least there’s some mythology-building going on, even if the Knights of Sumera never link up to Army of Darkness.
Sigh.
So, we open Episode Six with a group of Knights arriving at Ash’s house where Ash (Bruce Campbell) and Brandy (Arielle Carver-O’Neill) are bonding over Pop Tarts. Unfortunately, they arrive just as Brandy goes to take a shower, so when Ash suddenly leaves with them to the hardware store basement, she has no idea where he’s gone.
In the basement, the Knights agree that the mural is designed to open the Rift to The Deadlands, the world between the living and the dead. Kind of a purgatory, with hints of Stranger Things’ Upside Down. Pablo (Ray Santiago) then arrives and proves it to be true, opening the Rift allowing one of the Knights, Marcus (Colin Moy) to go through and do some recon.
As one could probably guess, he doesn’t come back safely. He comes back as a demon who slaughters all but one of the other Knights, Zoe (Emilia Burns), fusing them all to him in a pretty disturbing piece of practical effects magic. Of course he falls pretty quickly to Ash, who instructs Pablo to figure out how to close the Rift for good.
Meanwhile, Kelly has decided to face off with Ruby (Lucy Lawless) once and for all, in a pretty dumb idea that really only serves to give us some ass-kicking action before killing Kelly to make her body a vessel for the Dark One, Kaya (Chelsie Preston Crayford). We also see that Ruby’s spawn is now gestating in a huge fleshy external womb-thing. It’s kinda gross.
And with Kelly’s body under Dark One control, she returns to Ash with the Kandarian Dagger, ready to spoil Ash’s plans.
Episode Seven is where we really see the difference between the first two seasons and this one. “Twist and Shout” climaxes with a bloodbath at a school dance, that is brutal and violent in a way that avoids a lot of the fun exuberance of the past seasons. This is just straight-up, cold-blooded murder of teens that feels more like the real world than the Evil Dead world of Sam Raimi. This is more like the 2013 Evil Dead, and while that’s not necessarily a bad thing, it’s a tonal shift that bludgeons rather than finesses the gore.
While all that is going on, Pablo gets a message from Kelly in the Deadlands, through the basement mural. She tells him that she’s dead and doesn’t know where she is or how to get out. After their communication is cut off, Pablo heads to the school to let Ash know what’s what.
Unfortunately, Ruby has the now full-grown Ash clone dressed up as our Ash, chainsaw hand and all, who goes on the aforementioned killing spree at the dance. The plan is to break Brandy’s faith in her dad, so she can kill him with the Kandarian Dagger, allowing Ruby’s spawn to take his place in the prophecy.
However the hell that’s supposed to work.
Ruby even forces our Ash to “kill” her in front of all the already traumatized students at the dance, trying to convince Brandy that her dad’s a demon, not a demon-killer. Unfortunately for Ruby’s plan, Brandy can’t do the job. Meanwhile Pablo arrives and discovers Kaya in Kelly’s body but manages to escape and stumble upon the Ash clone who he immediately clocks as sus af.
So Pablo helps reveal that there are two Ashes running around our Ash blows his double’s head off, ending Ruby’s plans. In a rage, hacked up Ruby gets up, proving once and for all to everyone watching, and Brandy in particular, that she’s an evil demon playing a long con. She throws the Kandarian Dagger at Ash, but Brandy leaps in the way, saving her dad, but sacrificing her own life.
As Ash mourns and Ruby and Kelly get away, Brandy wakes up in the Deadlands.
Picking up almost immediately where “Twist and Shout” left off, Episode Eight “Rifting Apart,” gives us the most realistic portrayal of the aftermath of an Evil Dead murder spree that we’ve really seen before. Police and ambulances are everywhere, and a state-wide APB is put out to find Ash. Seeing as how we’ve only seen maybe one cop in this season so far, and never had a serious police presence in the series, this also stands out as a tonal shift from what’s come before.
Ash and Pablo, hiding at the school, realize that they need Brandy’s body if they’re going to save her from the Deadworld, which they just naturally assume is where she ended up, since that’s where Kelly is. So they steal the ambulance she’s in after seeing the paramedics load her up, and even though there’s another body in the back with Brandy, Ash rationalizes it away.
But, being Ash, he brings the wrong body down to the basement. And once in the basement, our boys, after wondering where Zoe went, figure out that they can’t just go through the Rift without ending up like Marcus. Whoever goes has to die by the Kandarian Dagger or Evil. After some hemming and hawing, Ash kills himself and wakes up the Deadlands, going on the hunt for Brandy and Kelly.
Meanwhile, in the Deadlands, Dalton (Lindsay Farris) returns, rescuing Brandy before meeting up with Kelly as they all try to avoid a huge shadowy monster that drags those trapped in the Deadlands down to Hell. And at the moment there’s a huge surplus of recently murdered school dance attendees.
Before too long, they hook up with dead Ash and thanks to Dalton sacrificing himself to distract the shadow creature, Ash, Brandy, and Kelly make it back to the basement where Pablo can open the portal and help them escape. But there’s a problem. Remember when I said that Ash didn’t check the body bag?
Yup. There’s a Deadite in the store and Pablo has to deal with it before he can open the portal. As far as Deadite fights go, it’s not bad, ending with the demon’s head stuck in a pneumatic paint shaker machine before exploding and separating from its body.
Anyway Pablo wins and opens the Rift, but only Ash and Brandy can return to life, since Kelly’s body is occupied by Kaya, who has captured Zoe and put her to use in Ruby’s plan to avoid the Dark Ones inevitable return.
The two-part series finale is written and directed by Rick Jacobson, a creator who’s name I didn’t recognize, but it turns out he’s been working since the early 90s. He got his start directing fighting movies like Full Contact (1993), Bloodfist VI (1994) and VIII (1996) before moving into TV, starting with episodes of Baywatch Nights – but in the second season, when David Hasselhoff fought monsters.
Seriously. Go check that shit out.
He then moved on to Hercules: The Legendary Journeys, Xena: Warrior Princess, and one of my all-time guilty pleasures, Cleopatra 2525. So there’s our Sam Raimi connection. He did more TV work before ending up here at Ash vs Evil Dead, but his credentials are solid. And having a writer/director with a singular vision is a huge benefit here.
And despite every complaint I’ve had about this season, Episodes Nine and Ten are pretty epic, and if this is where we leave Ash forever, it’s a good place to end up, despite some false starts along the way. And we can forget about the APB on Ash. That plot point has been jettisoned.
Let’s just say that “Judgement Day” is a time where nobody’s plans are working out. That includes Ruby and Kaya, who torture Zoe, cutting a piece of her back skin off in order to make a new page in the Necronomicon that supposedly will allow them to hide from the Dark Ones, because those bad boys are here now and shit’s going down.
Pablo discovers this firsthand when he tries to close the Rift, but can’t, and is then confronted by the Dark Ones themselves. They take the missing pages of the Necronomicon, ignoring Pablo, who discovers that his Brujo powers cause them to ignore him, believing that he’s one of them. Okay. I’ll allow it.
In a sequence that is entertaining, but ultimately pointless, Brandy is attacked by her possessed phone in a tribute to Evil Dead II, getting her thumb mostly bit off, but it doesn’t really amount to much other than allowing her to get her Ash on and violently kill a demon and get herself covered in blood. It’s a sequence that is more suited for the earlier part of the season, but you can’t fault Jacobson for wanting to write and direct an old-school Evil Dead scene.
While this is happening, Ash shows up at Ruby’s but is defeated fairly quickly and his chainsaw is destroyed. It’s kind of emotional, really. Anyway, before Ruby and Kaya can make Ash tell them where the Rift is, the Dark Ones arrive and rip Kaya’s soul out of Kelly, replanting it in Kaya’s actual body, which they cough up. While the Dark Ones destroy Kaya and then Ruby, Ash steals the Necronomicon (and Kelly’s corpse) and high tails it back to town, only to discover that Elk Grove has been overrun by the Evil Dead.
And things are looking even more grim than that as the Dark Ones retrieve the Necronomicon with barely any effort and summon a sixty-feet-tall creature that Pablo recognizes as Kandar the Destroyer, and he’s here to test the mettle of man.
And by “man” we mean Ash. The Prophesied One.
The Evil Dead outbreak has spread all around the globe as “The Mettle of Man” begins, and the world’s militaries are taking action, with martial law declared and this finale turning into an all-out kaiju vs the military attack. While the world goes to hell in a handbasket, Pablo takes Kelly’s body and Brandy and Ash try to get to the basement through the sewer. Surely there won’t be any Deadites in the sewer, right?
Wrong. The sewer route is another one of those plans that just don’t shake out, but the Williamses make it to the basement, of course, and once there Pablo figures that since he’s got one foot in both worlds, he can just go through the Rift and bring Kelly back, rather than anybody having to die again.
And so he does while Brandy and Ash fend off Deadites. Simple as that. We don’t even see it. He just goes through the Rift and after a minute, pops back out.
This is why I wish the first half of this season hadn’t been so wishy washy. It feels like they didn’t really know where the season was going to end up and so had to give the back half short shrift to fit in all the action beats.
Kelly is revived, after a fake-out “Oh no! She didn’t make it!” scene and while she’s kind of gross for a little bit, having been dead for a while now, she’s quickly back on her feet and in the fight.
Out in Elk Grove, though, the fight is getting out of hand. The army is trying to fight Kandar with tanks and fighter jets, but nothing works, and they are ordered to fall back so they can nuke the gigantic beast. Returning to the Harryhausen feel for the final Big Bad is extremely satisfying. Anyway, Pablo senses that this will only make Kandar stronger and as everyone falls back, Ash takes it upon himself to face Kandar alone. The gang says their farewells, with Ash tasking Kelly to become a leader, and names Pablo the new Jefe.
With everyone off to safety, Ash discovers an abandoned tank, and after a quick self-taught lesson, figures out how to drive it and heads off into battle with Kandar. After a duct tape conversion of a tank missile where the warhead is replaced with the Kandarian Dagger, Ash takes it to the monster, destroying it in a life-threatening one-on-one that nearly kills him.
His tank falls to the ground from Kandar’s grasp and the giant demon collapses on top of him. Is this the end of Ashley J. Williams?
Not quite.
As Ash fades in and out of consciousness, we find some surviving Knights of Sumeria who get him out of the wreckage, and when Ash wakes up, he is in a postapocalyptic future with a cyborg hand. He is greeted by a cybernetically enhanced hottie named Lexx (Jessica Green), who leads him to his heavily modified Delta 88, promising to explain what’s happening on the way, to wherever she is leading him.
The Dark Ones are on the move, and Ash, with Lexx by his side and his Delta 88 equipped with armor and massive guns are on their way to take the fight to Evil.
While it’s a little disappointing to not get real closure on the characters we’ve been following to three seasons, at least this ending gives us the opportunity to return to them in the future.
Ash vs Evil Dead pulled itself together in those final five episodes so successfully that I can only imagine what could have been done if the focus was this consistent in the opening five episodes. In the end, it wasn’t the same show as Seasons One and Two but became its own new thing with more in common with the first film and the 2013 iteration. It wasn’t as fun, and the violence was more serious and almost nihilistic.
And while Episodes Six through Eight were an improvement, it really wasn’t until the two-part finale that Ash vs Evil Dead firmly regained its footing, giving us a send-off that lived up to the legend of the franchise.