Spoiler Space: Evil Dead is heading towards its Endgame

Spoiler Space offers thoughts on, and a place to discuss, the plot points we can’t disclose in our official review. Fair warning: This article features plot details of Evil Dead Burn.

Like the two previous entries in the new wave of Evil Deads, Evil Dead Burn lures another unsuspecting group of housebound victims into reading from the Book Of The Dead and sealing their fates. Over the last decade, the series found success by avoiding sequelization, legacy or otherwise. Starting with Fede Álvarez’s 2013 remake of Evil Dead, the series left Bruce Campbell’s Ash behind and made its homegrown tropes the star. A book inked in blood and a cryptic recording were all that audiences needed to bring them into a new film. Bringing in a new crop of horror filmmakers who enjoy a crash zoom and a deafening cut as much as Sam Raimi, the films were not only distinct from the originals but from each other, leaving room for three seasons of Ash Vs. The Evil Dead while the movies figured themselves out. But in the last minutes of Evil Dead Burn, the loose threads that never quite connected these movies tightened into a tangled cameo from a returning star. Mommy’s home and she wants her souls: But at what cost?

The post-credits scene for Evil Dead Burn returns to the crematorium where Will (George Pullar) escaped and doomed his family to a Deadite infestation. The cremator tells her young daughter that they keep unclaimed urns for several months in case someone turns up to take them. When her daughter touches the urn of Ellie Bixler (played by Evil Dead Rise‘s Alyssa Sutherland), Ellie’s Deadite form, Mommy, returns to snap the girl’s neck. (Why would a woman liquified by a woodchipper need cremation? Let’s just say evil magic.) Evoking the kind of tacked-on stingers affixed to every Marvel film, the cameo promises to collect the loose pages of this franchise’s Necronomicon into one fleshbound volume.

Continuity was never the series’ strong suit (See: The Evil Dead and Evil Dead II). However, while the in-house mythology made little sense, it did have a bona fide star to hold the center: Bruce Campbell. But ditching Campbell and his character was the smartest thing the resurrected series could do. The core fanbase would reject a recast Ash faster than they did Jackie Earle Haley’s Freddy Krueger. Transitioning to an anthology structure, Evil Dead instead made its recurring tropes and props the stars, remixing the story while maintaining a nastier and more visceral tone.