Bruce Campbell now saying as clearly and plainly as he can that he's done playing Ash

And while we’ll note that that “tap out,” after the conclusion of the Starz TV series in 2018, wasn’t entirely complete—Campbell recorded new Ash dialogue for Evil Dead: The Game in 2022, and provided a small voice cameo for Lee Cronin’s Evil Dead Rise in 2023—it now sounds like he’s formally bowing out of the good/bad/guy with the gun game. Further in the post—itself a quote-tweet of one loudly declaring “Bruce Campbell has officially retired from any and all Ash William roles”—Campbell writes that “Mostly, the reasons were ability and interest, in equal measure. I didn’t want Ash to be compromised by declining skills and as a borderline Geezer, my interests have diverged.” That being said, he ended by asserting, “I’ll always love Evil Dead to death – literally.”

Campbell has presumably been fielding a lot of questions on this topic lately, given that he’s currently stumping for his new film Ernie & Emma, which he stars in, directed, and wrote. The film, about a widower who takes his wife’s ashes on a cross-country road trip, is about as far from gore-soaked horror as you can get, which feels very much the point. Meanwhile, Campbell’s also living with a recent cancer diagnosis, which he revealed to the world in March. He gave an update on his condition during a podcast appearance last month, telling fans, “I think I’m doing as well as you can do for having cancer.”