Welcome to this week's Ash vs Evil Dead episode discussion thread! Some additional ground rules to the basic ones on the forum for those who want to participate:
1: This and all future threads will be a choose to warn experience; IE you will not need to use spoiler bars to talk about things that happened in this and previous episodes.
2: It is, however, advisable to use spoiler bars if you want to talk about spoilers for an unaired episode.
3: Please be respectful of the opinions of your fellow Deadites; some people may not love the episode as much as you do; some may love it more. Discussion and debate are good things.
Ash, Ruby and Kelly battle the past to secure the future where Pablo is alive and the world is safe from evil, but the family from hell has other plans.
Episode is directed by Rick Jacobson, who directed last season finale and this season's premier as well as last week's episode, and was written by Luke Kalteux.
All news, spoilers, clips and reactions pertaining to the episode are welcome!
Episode is now out on-demand, enjoy the finale everyone i'll be back later with a in-depth review plus my overview for s2 as whole and what they can do better for s3 next year !
what a awesome finale, wrapped up the story quite nicely for this season and left it wide open for s3 for what direction they wanna take it. (BTW stay after the credits as it pertains to s3 as well !)
I'll be back much later with my full thoughts on this plus my review of season 2 overall.
Man, Starz doesn't give a damn about the live ratings at this point, do they? I can almost see them dumping the show on Netflix and doing DVD sales, both would be more profitable than the pittance they're doing in live ratings and DVR numbers.
Hey guys?
RE those Reddit spoilers?
And wow, what a mess it actually feels like when you watch it. Everything about it screams 'we didn't think we'd get renewed, have this weird almost-happy-ending.' The ridiculous amount of CGI on Henrietta was as unforgivable as that blonde bob wig on Lucy. The plot was...eh, okay. Pretty morally heavy-handed? The fact that Ash knew that Baal was behind everything but the initial Pablo-Resurrection swallowed a lot of the suspense.
The continuity is an even worse mess than when this show started (if they changed history and the cabin burned before everyone got there HOW DID ANYTHING IN THE FIRST TWO MOVIES EVEN HAPPEN? WHY DO THE SHERIFF AND LACEY AND EVERYONE ELSE STAY DEAD IF HISTORY WAS SOMEHOW CHANGED?). The lameoid death they gave Knowby's assistant was unforgivable. Why did Baal ultimately defer to 80s!Ruby when he spent so much time rebelling against her? The fucking CGI ghosts guys. THE FUCKING CGI GHOSTS (which was almost worth it to see Cheryl lean her head on her dad's shoulder). Linda standing there smiling LESS THAN A MONTH AFTER HER CHILD AND HUSBAND DIED OFFERING TO SLEEP WITH ASH.
The best part was Ash and Kelly's dad and daughter relationship. That was beautifully realized. It makes the deus ex machina of the way they brought Pablo back to life forgivable. Almost.
This whole season, at large feels like an exercise in futility. What was the point of Chet? What was the point of Ash's dad? What was the point of there being two Rubys? Of the sheriff and Lacey and the distraction of the possessed Delta? Of Ruby's discovering her mortality if we're going to have her mildly mentor Kelly in the same way Ash was mentoring her, only to have her die for no reason? The effects took an upswing and the characterization was slightly less of a nightmare but the plotting was a fucking mess all goddamned year, churning the show's wheels for an unforgivably long time until we got to episode 5 and Baal was introduced. It feels like an encapsulation of the unholy messiness that was this season, veering between good and bad.
And that hook for next season: let me guess: yet another young person grabs the book and messes around with it, screwing everything up and young Ruby manipulates them? Her redemption arc was a total waste of time because they painted themselves into a corner with the Jacksonville thing and couldn't have her reveling over her victory.
*Heads into the bunker and locks the door tightly until s3*
Welp better get my thoughts out of the way quick on this one and i will be taking my s2 overview to the general discussion.
IN-DEPTH REVIEW
PRO'S
The fight scenes were all great in this episode, ash and baal's in particular was probably the highlight for me (That floatover northern lights suplex transition nearly had me on the floor, guess those years of watching wrestling paid off !)
Ash and Kelly's father/daughter relationship fully realized as maid mentioned above. plus there reaction to
pablo coming back to life nearly choked me up. kelly was being quite the hugger towards pablo there at the end i'm wondering if that isn't as small clue for there relationship heading into s3 hmmmmm....
Ash making peace with chet,cheryl and Brock (I didn't really mind the ghost effect and yes i'm willing to admit it felt very star wars esque but overall the message was quite clear with what they were trying to do there with it and it nailed it with me. but i have feeling some others are gonna not take a liking to it as much as i did)
The happy but open ended ending i wholesomely enjoyed and welcomed with open arms very much and liked it quite better then the s1 finale, even if there were some repeats from the finale last year i found it way better and more fulfilling like something was actually accomplished this season then in s1. (Don't know if anyone will notice this but ash and kelly didn't seem very happy at all during that ending they seemed quite paranoid like they both knew something is going to happen later on.)
Present ruby death scene was handled very well with some slight comedy thrown in but for the most part it was handled very seriously plus seeing ash and her bond in her final moments was a nice touch ! And i get the feeling xena fans are gonna be experiencing some severe ptsd of the xena series finale with that beheading....
Linda survived, that was quite shocking to me. Hopefully for s3 they will expand more on her character as a whole.
THE END CREDITS SONG ! (Plus the small but horrific slow down segway into the after credits scene was a very nice touch !)
The small little flashback explanations scene's were a nice touch especially the one explaining how baal came back, hell i didn't even notice that when it happened so kudos to them.
Middle's
While seeing ash and Linda get together finally was nice i couldn't help but feel they could have laid off on it until s3 considering what happen earlier in the season with her in general, overall there needs to be some serious work done here if they wanna make this work :-/
The cgi use on Henrietta pee wee neck transformation was awkward and out of place (first time this season) but i'm gonna say using stop-motion for that part would have probably ran there budget over and taken too long to do so i'm gonna forgive them on this one, the reason this is here in the middles is because the big main factor is they still used a puppet for most of the fight scene and that shouldn't be overlooked for a couple seconds of awkward cgi IMHO.
Tanya's death, i get why ash ran cause once he saw the blood and bits of her being chewed up she was a goner and his paranoia kicked in severely once he made it up those stairs.
Con's
The time travel effects not being properly explained and that's as far as i'm going on this subject, don't feel like getting a severe migraine over it. (I'm going to be going back ep9 when ruby was explaining it all to kelly before ash rudely interrupted, i have a feeling some answers might lie in there in that piece of dialogue. )
EDIT
Here's my follow-up on this which may provide some what of a answer to this...maybe, this is just a theory/speculation off bits of dialouge from ep9.
So i went back and listened to ruby's dialouge in ep9 and she mentions how there is infinite timelines but there is always a primary present version which remains constant, she goes to say something about the necronomicon before ash interrupts her. So from what i gathered they went back and changed some of there present timeline ( Pablo being alive again, ash's hand growing back, the cabin being destroyed) but all of the events from the time they came from haven't changed for the most part and only some things changed. Yes ash's hand does grow back so i'm gonna assume once they got the book and they were beginning to leave the cabin behind, the timeline was starting to change in a big way but immediately got stopped once ruby and baal got there hands on the book again, and 80's ruby mentioned altering the deal so i'm wondering if the book and her being alive again wasn't apart of the stuff she changed. So if i am correct the present timeline there in all the previous events from ed1-3 s1-2 still happened but with some slight changes.
OBSERVATIONS
I think tanya's death is going to be looked at as dick move on ash's part but let's look at what happen from ash's POV.
-Once he saw her get dragged through the steps, and the blood and gore started flying out, he knew she was a goner from the get go and high tailed it out of there as fast as he could.
- Ash had a guilt ridden look on his face once it was revealed she was still alive and it looked like he was about to pull her up before heinretta got to her quite quickly, plus let's take into account as well ash was expecting heinretta to pop up out of the cellar as well.
So in short, paranoia and fear was the main factor in tanya's death here.
Ruby was doing something to alter the deal, i'm wondering what changes she made to that deal and if those changes will be revealed in s3 hopefully.
OVERALL
This season finale IMHO was way better then last years s1 ending. It covered all the bases and left me feeling like shit actually got done this season while at the same left it open for s3 giving them a certain unpredictable factor heading into s3 and could go in any direction they wanna take it and i love that !
Wow, just wow. This was a very mixed episode. I loved the action, gore and slapstick, but storywise it was all over the place and gave us a ton of plotholes.
So the cabin burned down, meaning the events of the films and series should be erased. Yet the townspeople still remember what happened. And only Pablo's death was undone. Why is Brock still dead? Or was that really him in the cabin and not a hallucination/deadite trick? If so, how did he get there?
Don't think I've seen a time-travel story so confusing and contradictory since Terminator Genisys.
Lol at people point out continuity issues in a series where a guy builds a working robot hand in the middle ages.
I enjoyed it all for the most part. My theory on the end was that Ruby altered the deal, Ash won and got what he wanted (Pablo, Baal and Ruby leave Earth) however her alteration means that Ash/Kelly/Pablo have been dragged into a Hell dimension also, but aren't aware.
Everything seemed so perfect, which it never is in Evil Dead, plus Ruby is still in 'our' dimension at the end, which she shouldn't be. Ergo, Ash isn't in 'our' dimension either.
Wow! What a disappointing final. Sorry but it was so bad. How could they begin the season 2 with such killer climate until the Asylum arch, and throw it straight in the garbage of nostalgia? It was cheap recycling from previous movies.
Did they need to repeat everything again and again? This episode is a big mess. Please stop pulling the nostalgia trigger over and over. Just stop it!
They could have done something cool with Raymond Knowby and her assistant. I was expecting something really sick but didn't happen. So much potential wasted because the script passed over too many hands. This is the main issue with this series since Season 01.
They also F***d up the time travel elements. Nothing work at all. If they changed the time line. Nobody died in the Cabin 30 years ago and everyone is alive.
C'mon the writers need to speak to the others. The story went in every direction from episode to episode. By the way, The Star Wars Rip-off was awful and out of place.
I was not ready for this. My expectation for Season 3 are very low.
Yeah it was dissapointing, the lack of any sense of what makes fans like Evil Dead is worrying. Ive really noticed this season the 30 min format mixed with the writing isnt helping any sense of continuity or development.
@Guy - IMO there's a huge difference between doing wacky plot developments and having a universe filled with silly slapstick and putting writing that's so sloppy that half your audience has no idea what the hell is happening and why onscreen. It's something you can get away with in a two hour movie and something you can't in a five hour series. There's only so far the 'it's Evil Dead, light a blunt and laugh at the pretty colors' mantra goes when they expect you to actually care about the characters.
The whole Ruby twist would be another case of Deus Ex Machina that's worse than reversing the Pablo thing. How many times are they going to have Ruby use the book to bend reality? It should be the evil itself doing that, but Ruby has become a cipher who solely exists to Do Things With The Book, which she somehow can't control even though she wrote half of it.
ETA: they could say that the Baal/Ash cabin battle happened in some timeless stasis, but they didn't directly state it. So we can presume everything happened in 82 and Ash used Pablo's tattoos to get back to the present.
@Guy - IMO there's a huge difference between doing wacky plot developments and having a universe filled with silly slapstick and putting writing that's so sloppy that half your audience has no idea what the hell is happening and why onscreen. It's something you can get away with in a two hour movie and something you can't in a five hour series. There's only so far the 'it's Evil Dead, light a blunt and laugh at the pretty colors' mantra goes when they expect you to actually care about the characters.
Well, I was also a little concerned by SOME of the Episode. The writing and structure didn't engage like some of the excellent episodes this season. Mostly the effects were good.
I wasn't sure at first why 80's Ruby would change the deal, particularly after Baal had come out on top?
Then I just thought, it's demon double stabbing I guess. Baal's out of the way so she can take the lead.
Clearly the 'happy' ending and all the so called continuity errors are purely because this is a construct of evil magic, in the sense that it's a total fabrication in which to hold Ash in check. With him in la la land, Ruby can carry out the plan. So in that sense, it makes no sense as it's all bullshit?
The thing I missed in this episode was the real laugh out loud humour, seemed a little less sharp and the story became a bit vague. Overall though, the series has been inspired at times and mostly it's been really worthy to the original material. The only concern is that there is too much re-hashing, to the point where it loses it's strength.
That said, I would be happy if the team are dumped back in the middle ages at some point!
What do other people want to see in Season 3 and, for those that were disappointed, how can it be improved?
CGI is clearly a modern necessity and I'm OK with it, particularly when it's toned down.
Would a more cohesive plot actually be better, in the sense that...it's meant to be a wild, confusing ride?
Well, I was also a little concerned by SOME of the Episode. The writing and structure didn't engage like some of the excellent episodes this season. Mostly the effects were good.
The thing I missed in this episode was the real laugh out loud humour, seemed a little less sharp and the story became a bit vague. Overall though, the series has been inspired at times and mostly it's been really worthy to the original material. The only concern is that there is too much re-hashing, to the point where it loses it's strength.
That said, I would be happy if the team are dumped back in the middle ages at some point!
What do other people want to see in Season 3 and, for those that were disappointed, how can it be improved?
They need to explained what the hell happened in episode 10 and patch a s**t load of plotholes. (We fans aren't supposed to guess why this or that happen)
They need to write an original story and stop rehearsing old stuff...
They need to be realist and create effects that match their budget.
If they want to dump the character back in the middle age just to remake jokes from AoD this is pointless. The only valable idea could be if they went to Kandarian castle. If not the only idea could be an apocalyptic world à la Mad Max and Planet of the Ape. Where Evil rules and mankind turned into slavery.
We learned nothing this season. Except maybe, 1% of characters development that lead nowhere.
Hope they got some they'll get more competent writers to fix this. They need to stop thinking fans only want Ash do some crazy s**t and get hurt badly but with no side effect.
In my book, they just messed up the whole series with this episode only. It will be very hard to fix IMO. My guess is they will leave it as it is and continue as everything's normal. I just hope not.
I still think they should have give this franchise a Sharknado treatment and just made movies for TV.
All I have to say is there wasn't enough Ted Raimi this season for me, next season I want at least 300 Deadite Chets fighting Ash all at once like its the Matrix!!!
God, even the hucksters at Collider are stuck going "LOL THERE IS NO CONTINUITY JUST ROLL WITH IT LOL".
I know they're going to use Ruby's deal as the deus ex machina here - she'll use it as leverage, or she'll use the bubble-headed-sounding teenagers who found the book (AGAIN. UGH. ENOUGH WITH THIS HAPPENING) as leverage. The valley kids in 82 and 80s-Ruby have to interconnect somehow along with Ash's Happy Fantasy Land, but in the end it all just reads like poor plotting. They'll go back and say "we meant to do that!" but the fact that they fired their EP and replaced him and the entire writing staff is a big sign that they know this ending jumped the deadite. When you have Rob Tapert in the Behind the Scenes reel admitting they had no idea how to bring back Pablo, things look dire.
THE GOOD, BAD AND UGLY:
The Good:
* Ted as Henrietta, as always.
* The stunt work was actually top notch.
* Ash being visibly moved by Baal using Cheryl so poorly
* Not-Chet's use of the piano to cut Ash's hand off; it was clever.
* Kelly's character arc was actually satisfying.
* The fruition of Kelly and Ash's father/daughter relationship finally coming to pass, and it's lovely.
* The Team Ghostbeaters stuff was cute.
* The Original!Ruby/Kelly/Ash death scene was fairly nice.
* "I'm not dead, you moron!"
* Ash's big moment of triumph was nice.
The Meh
* The Creepy Kid birth was so simple in this instance. People suggested to me it was because Baal was present, but I don't know how he'd act as a conduit for . It was worth it for the energy they brought to the scene.
* The force ghosts were fucking chintzy as shit. Never parody Star Wars when you can originate, kids. Worth it for the sight of Cheryl hugging her father and Brock's wink of approval though.
The Bad:
* The non-entity existence of Tanya. I get that we have to have spam in a can fodder every once in a while, but this season has been laden with it.
* Ash being forced to nurse on Henrietta's breast. This show's always had some amount of body horror and bile fascination, but this season has been a desperate game of top-that chicken.
* I know the big joke is LOL EVIL DEAD HAS NO CONTINUITY JUST ROLL WITH IT, but this universe used to have baseline logic. The evil was afraid of daylight, changing stuff in the past meant there were future repercussions (IE: Ash not waking up from his slumber in the Euro ending causing nuclear Armageddon). If they burned the cabin down in 1982 (which the valley speaking person grabbing the book in the tag scene hints at), then ASH SHOULD NOT HAVE GONE THROUGH ANY OF THAT. Cheryl should still be alive. EVERYONE SHOULD BE INCLUDING ANNIE AND KNOWBY.
* If Ash's good deed released Chet, Brock, and Cheryl from Deadite purgatory, why not Linda, Annie and Shelley and Scotty? Or even Jake? And, for simplicity's sake, why is Henrietta's soul still burning in hell?
* They made a huge deal about how Baal used to intimidate, abuse and boss Ruby around. Yet he was completely cowed by her order to follow the deal (probably because she changed it to favor them both slightly, but I'm not sure he would know that.).
* Linda's suddenly happily raring to go bounce on Ash's baloney pony after his team was involved in the death of her husband and daughter. I credit that her marriage to Thomas was probably shitty, but if I'd just lost a beautiful teenage daughter having sex with a man who couldn't remember our old make-out spot would be low as hell on my priority list.
* Ruby's entire arc this season - about her humanity and vulnerability - has dead-ended so we end up with the same result we would've had had she gotten what she wanted RE her kids being obedient.
* CGI extendo!neck Henrietta. Replicating something everyone's seen a million times in claymation in CGI sticks out like a sore thumb.
All I have to say is there wasn't enough Ted Raimi this season for me, next season I want at least 300 Deadite Chets fighting Ash all at once like its the Matrix!!!
I'd say we got a good sampling of Ted, and I'm sure he will be back on some way for season 3. I was just ill prepared for the Star Warsesque reappearance of Brock, Cheryl, and Chet at the end... but had no doubt Ruby even if it is the 80's version would fall back on her evil ways at some point. Also dueling chainsaws will always top dueling banjos.
/Glad to see Pablo is back too.
//I'll have more to say at some point.
