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Evil: Fear of the End

“Actually kind of satisfying.”

Well, it ended. Not with a bang or a whimper, but with some cool Italian sunglasses and just enough possibility for the future that I’m going to hang onto hope. “Despair is Satan’s masterpiece,” after all.

I didn’t expect this episode to provide a climactic end to four seasons of demonic activity, and it didn’t. We did get some closure on the idea of the sixty demonic families: they’re moving into the digital realm, using apps to sow discord and strife and evil.

That the sigil map of the sixty families maps onto the regions of the human brain was…okay, I’ll admit, it’s the sort of pat answer that I find deeply unsatisfying. Especially because it’s not really an answer. It’s one more layer of meaning to the map, not an explanation of, for instance, how demons work or the nature of evil or the possibility of good winning out. It’s a graphic-overlay imitation of an answer.

But I’m not mad, because my expectations for plot closure were not high. This season never seemed headed toward a real end, and I like to think this isn’t the real end. Also, the Kings are great at many things, but they’re not genre people. They do legal dramas, with great, complicated characters, that demonstrate a willingness to focus on timely issues. They don’t seem to have a science-fiction/fantasy fan’s need for complex lore and systematic closure.

The best parts of the episode gave me what I needed. Kristen was willing to kill Leland, but her friends stopped her. He’s now in that demon cabinet from that silent monastery (“S is for Silence”), where Sister Andrea lives. (She’s making friends with Fenna from that same episode.) It’s a perfect resolution to the problem of Leland. If the show gets renewed, he can come back. And Kristen won’t have another murder on her conscience.

The last scene was pleasing. Although Ben is still in New York, he knows that he is loved. David and Kristen are now assessors in Rome. The girls have amazing Italian schoolgirl uniforms. David wasn’t wearing a clerical collar, which is either meaningless or meaningful. (Another example of leaving open some windows of possibility.) Baby Timothy just might be evil again, and of course Kristen isn’t mentioning it, because this show thrives on a lack of disclosure.

At the fireside scene, after a quick review of past cases, David said that he doesn’t have many friends: “Not many that I can talk to about things. Deeper things. Death.” Kristen responds: “I understand what you’re saying. Nobody talks like that anymore. About…real things. It’s all about, you know, influencers and TV.”

Kristen, Ben, and David have spent some time talking—theorizing, perhaps—the deeper things, but they’ve also spent the past four seasons caught up in life’s minutiae to the point that they’ve missed some crucial opportunities to understand the demonic world. (And/or the multiverse theory, which hasn’t actually been disproved, right?) But maybe that’s the point: we’re all distracted all the time, both by demonic apps and just regular life. It’s hard to see a bigger picture when you’re living in the middle of it.


The Mother Midnight goggles that pretended to show the future did a good job of helping us realize where our characters were and where they needed to go. David wanted to feel like he was saving the world from demons. Kristen worried about her parenting skills. And Ben needed to be there for his sister.

By the end of the episode, they’ve all resolved those issues. The goggles help explain why Ben couldn’t go to Rome. Why David wanted to continue the assessor program. (I think it matters that neither David nor Kristen had fears about each other.) And why Kristen needed to, somehow, recalibrate her relationship with her girls.

This episode did leave many questions unanswered. A few that occur to me: Did the screaming actress die? What’s up with Ben’s djinn? Why doesn’t he need tinfoil anymore? Is there really a portal to hell that runs under the particle accelerator and past Kristen’s house? Did she have to disclose that when she sold her house? Do Italian schoolgirls really wear awesome hats? Will David still wear his phenomenal sweaters in Italy?

We may never get answers to those questions. We may never get resolution to the big horror-movie concepts even if the show gets picked up by another streaming service. But I’m glad we got what we did. Here’s hoping it’s more of an arrivederci than a ciao.

Things that Made Me Laugh:
  • Katja Herbers’ physical comedy as David’s succubus.
  • Kristen tazing Leland over and over.
  • Sister Andrea booping the demon.
  • The combover-lawyer-demon asking “What else is in a Black Mass?”
  • Sister Andrea telling David people will trust him because he’s tall.
  • Norm, the goat demon, struggling with Zoom. “No, you’re still muted.”

By the way, the AVClub has a great article on the practical effects behind the demon costumes.

Four out of four cubicle farms.

Josie Kafka is a full-time cat servant and part-time rogue demon hunter. (What's a rogue demon?)

10 comments:

  1. I've just discovered this show on Netflix. Josie, I really, really hope you'll go back to cover more of the early seasons ... :-)

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  2. I'm so glad you've discovered Evil! We definitely want to catch up on past reviews. It's just a question of time.

    I think Netflix only has the first two seasons. It is absolutely worth a few dollars to get Paramount+ for a month to watch the rest of the show.

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    Replies
    1. Okay, this is a cautionary tale about always fully reading something before replying. Oof. Yes, Netflix= just 2 seasons. My dork-hood has been (again) confirmed.

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  3. Robert King just posted on his Twitter/X feed a deleted Kristen/Leland scene from 'How to Split an Atom.'

    https://x.com/RKing618/status/1827054946711187579

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  4. First and most important -- Josie, thank you so much for reviewing this final season. I'm such a fan of your reviews and they add so much to my viewing experience.

    I enjoyed a lot of this episode. My favorite thing was the three assessors burning their files and reminiscing. It made me want to rewatch the entire series. My second favorite thing was Kristen tazing Leland repeatedly. It was so enjoyable and cathartic.

    Leland went out to the Roger Miller song, "Dang Me." Sort of perfect.

    And it did feel as if the door is open to more Evil. I really hope so, because this just wasn't enough. At least we *got* an ending. Late cancellation with no closing up plot threads could have made it so much worse.

    And there was a final skipping ghost bit: "For old time's sake, don't skip this intro." Sigh.

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  5. I really liked this show. I think. No I didn't. Wait, yes I did. This sums-up my feelings about Evil (the show....I know what I think of evil in the real world).

    Probably the best compliment is that I always looked forward to watching it. The production values and set designs were fantastic. I wanted to physically live in this world of gothic cathedrals, heritage duplexes under brick railroad overpasses, and 2 story loft apartments. The actors were great, and each actor that joined the cast in later seasons only made the show better. Ben and his sister may be my modern era favourite TV characters. The elevator episode lives rent free in my head.

    But why isn't it a show I can recommend? It's because I didn't emotionally live in this world. Roger Ebert once said that for science fiction to work (and in this case I'll apply it to the supernatural) it must still "play by the rules" so we can relate to it, and Evil did not. Characters never faced consequences (Kristen is the big offender here with her horrible mothering and literal act of murder!), continuity was non-existent (Leyland was afraid of the cathedral building, except for all those times he wasn't), and entire plot lines would just be forgotten (okay... admittedly a lot of genre show have this issue). Too much of this meant I knew I was watching a TV show and not visiting a different reality for 50 minutes.

    Fringe is my "desert island" sci-fi show because it nailed the world building and I believed in an Earth 2* that was coping with Walter's shenanigans. In 1993 I did believe that aliens were real with Mulder and Scully hot on their trail (yes, I'm that old). I enjoyed my time with David, Kristen, and Ben, but when the end credits rolled I knew they were gone and not still out there somewhere fighting the good fight.

    * Completely unrelated... my wife and I are going to England next month for our first time. We're calling it our trip to "Earth 2" where everything is the same as here, but yet slightly different :)

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    1. That's a really insightful explanation. I always looked forward to the episode, but it just didn't quite work as longform narrative.

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    2. Great comment, Dr Johnny. You really articulated just how I feel about Evil (and, as it happens, Fringe … I miss Fringe).

      Thanks to you as well, Josie, for your always insightful and entertaining reviews.

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