Is Ash vs Evil Dead Scary? The Verdict and the Whole Plot
Somewhat, 4 out of 10. It plays demon-possession horror for laughs, with a lot of gore.
Ruling: Watch it in daylight if you can handle gore, because it is funnier than it is frightening.
Ash vs Evil Dead runs three seasons and thirty episodes. Ash Williams begins it as a stock boy living in a trailer, and a book locked in his trunk ruins that arrangement almost immediately.
The premise, briefly
A stock boy named Ash Williams reads from the Necronomicon while high, wakes an old curse, and has to pick his chainsaw back up with the help of two coworkers.
The verdict above is spoiler-free. Everything below, including the ending, stays hidden until you pick a depth.
Ash kills a sixty-foot demon named Kandar by firing a dagger-tipped tank round through it, then comes to in a ruined future with a new augmented hand, asking after his daughter.
In the eighth episode of season two, Baal slashes Pablo across the stomach and cuts him in half. Pablo is brought back to life in the season finale.
A dog dies in the series. A pet lizard is also found as a skeleton.
It is a splatter comedy with jump scares, and knowing the plot mostly tells you how much gore to brace for.
How it ends, the scene you're dreading, what happens to the dog, and the bottom line. About twenty seconds to read.
What actually happens
Thirty years of not thinking about a book in a trunk
Ash Williams stocks shelves at a Value Stop, has a trailer for a home and does his drinking alone at bars, about thirty years after his last fight with the Deadites. His coworkers are Pablo, and Kelly, whom Pablo likes. After reading from the Necronomicon aloud while high, Ash wakes the curse again. Pablo and Kelly work out that it is his fault, and Ash picks his chainsaw back up. Kelly's mother turns up after months of being feared dead, and Ash is sure she is a Deadite. She reveals herself at dinner and kills Kelly's father with a fork. Ash kills her, the three bury the bodies and drive away. Detective Amanda Fisher is following the trail of deaths toward Ash, and the mysterious Ruby Knowby is following her. At an occult bookstore, the owner summons a demon named Eligos, who escapes the circle and possesses Kelly. Pablo's uncle the Brujo performs an exorcism, and Ash gets a vision that tells him to bury the book at the cabin in the woods.
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Back at the cabin with a book that talks
A diner and a militia bunker later, Amanda has joined Ash's group and the Brujo's funeral has gone badly for Ruby. Ash returns to the cabin armed with a chainsaw, a shotgun and the Necronomicon. His old girlfriend Linda's severed head taunts him, and an evil double of Ash impales Amanda on a deer head. Pablo and Kelly kill the double, and Amanda comes back as a Deadite. Ruby arrives and says she has been cleaning up Ash's mess. She tells him the book has to be dismantled instead of buried, and Ash cuts off its face. Ruby then claims she wrote the Necronomicon and starts a ritual to unleash the evil on the world, and the face of the book attaches itself to Pablo. Ruby offers Ash a peaceful retirement in Jacksonville. He takes a deal that lets her release spirits she says she can control, and he drives off with Kelly and Pablo while sinkholes open around the world.
An asylum run by a demon with a lot of faces
The deal falls apart in Jacksonville, and the group goes to Ash's hometown of Elk Grove, Michigan, where his father Brock and his old love Linda still live. Ruby's demon children have turned on her, and her ex-husband Baal is the reason. The possessed Delta, Ash's car, goes on a killing spree with the book inside it, and Baal begins wearing people's skin. Ash is locked in an asylum where a doctor says the Necronomicon was a delusion. The doctor is Baal. The scene people dread is near the end of the season, in episode eight. Ash pretends to give in so he can get Pablo and Baal into one room, and Pablo reads the incantation that sends Baal back to hell. Before he vanishes, Baal slashes Pablo across the stomach and cuts him in half. Ash and the others travel back to 1982 to stop young Ash from reading the book. It goes wrong, and Ash ends up in a fair fight with Baal, who has taken over Pablo's body. Ash wins, the cabin burns, Baal and Ruby are banished and Pablo comes back to life.
A high school with a mascot problem
In season three the Necronomicon is found and read again, and Ash meets Candace, a former lover who has a daughter with him named Brandy. At Kenward County High School a possessed girl decapitates Candace, and Ash fights the possessed school mascot before Kelly and a Knight of Sumeria named Dalton arrive. Ruby drinks blood over a drawing of Ash and becomes pregnant, then gives birth to a demonic spawn modeled on him. She disguises herself as a guidance counselor to turn Brandy against Ash. Ruby also resurrects Ash's father Brock, and Ash has to fight him in front of Brandy. Pablo is possessed, bites Kelly and infects her, and Brandy stabs him with the Kandarian Dagger. In a realm between life and death, the Brujo explains that Pablo must take his place as the next Brujo. Pablo finishes the ritual and returns to the living. Ash tries to capture the spawn to prove his story to Brandy, and she chooses to believe him.
A school dance with two Ashes and one chainsaw
The Knights of Sumeria help Ash open a rift to the Deadlands, which sit somewhere between the human world and hell. A knight who goes through returns as a demon and kills most of the others. Ruby kills Kelly with the dagger and uses her body as a vessel for the sorceress Kaya. At the school dance, Ruby's spawn has grown into a full clone of Ash, called Rash, who attacks the students to make Brandy believe her father is a demon. Ash kills the clone, but Brandy dies when she steps in front of a thrown dagger. Ash has Pablo kill him with the dagger on purpose, so he can go through the rift and rescue Brandy and Kelly. Dalton sacrifices himself to a shadow creature in the Deadlands. Kelly cannot return because Kaya is still using her body. The Dark Ones then take Ruby's and Kaya's souls and the Necronomicon, and they summon Kandar the Destroyer, a creature sixty feet tall.
The ending, explained
The Evil Dead spreads across the world and the military prepares to nuke Kandar, which Pablo says will only make it stronger. Ash, Brandy and Pablo bring Kelly's body to the hardware store, and Pablo goes through the rift and revives her. Pablo, Kelly and Brandy leave with the military, but Ash stays behind. He takes a tank, fixes the Kandarian Dagger to a tank round and keeps Kandar looking at him just long enough to shoot the round straight through, which ends it. The Knights of Sumeria find Ash injured afterward. He comes to in a ruined future with a new mechanical hand and meets Lexx, an augmented woman. He asks her about Brandy, and she promises to explain while he drives her out in a heavily modified Delta 88. That is the last scene of the series.
The post-credits ruling
There is one, at the end of the season two finale. An unknown traveler picks up the Necronomicon from the remains of the cabin.
Questions people ask at 1am
The whole plot of Ash vs Evil Dead is hidden, ending included. It stays that way until you ask.
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