Spoiler alert for anyone who hasn't yet watched the Season 2 premiere of Ash vs Evil Dead.
After Ash vs Evil Dead made its beyond fabulous debut last year on Starz, I began to grasp the knowledge that the Halloween season will never feel as perfect as it does when there's another season of Bruce Campbell's Ash Williams destroying deadites and taking names (and appendages). Season 2 of the splatter-driven horror comedy kicked off this weekend, and the first episode is quite possibly the bloodiest 32 minutes of TV you'll see this year. At least until next week's episode, and so on.
Here are the 5 craziest moments that the premiere, "Home," shoehorned into our brains, with more than enough viscera around for lubrication. It is so, so, so, so, so good to have Ash vs Evil Dead back on TV again, especially now that he's back in his hometown with his not-so-proud papa. Let's celebrate it.
That First Bar Fight
Just when our heroic trio seems free to enjoy some much-deserved binge-drinking and flirting, the waterfront bar festivities are cut short when a handful of possessed ghouligans attempt to take down Ash, Kelly and Pablo. It's a wild ball-smashing affair, and one that required a lot of fake blood and guts. Both Ash and Kelly get hilarious moments involving dripping limbs flopping and flying, and that bit with the severed legs slipping in the blood could not have been a funnier or more fitting sight gag. Plus, this is where we get the instantly memorable "Ashy Slashy" rhyme, on top of many more great moments. This goes down as one of the sweetest scenes of 2016, dismembered hands down.
Pablo's Horrifying Hallucination
Admittedly, I'm going to enjoy almost everything Ash vs Evil Dead does in its lifespan on Starz and possibly beyond, but giving Pablo those Necronomicon-inspired hauntings and hallucinations is, to me, a perfect way to give that character his own instantly interesting narrative territory to cover. It also allows for the show's effects team to go hardcore in showing off their talents, and that absolutely happened during Pablo's most elaborate mind-fuck in the premiere. (The possessed scribbling stuff is really cool, too, and hopefully leads to some eye-popping fan art.) Watching Pablo rip his own face off was a gloriously disgusting mix of Peter Jackson's Braindead and The Mask, and someone should make a video game using only that striking CGI aesthetic he saw when he came out of the alley. Groovy shit, that.
Ash's Shadow Strikes Back
For its entire existence, Sam Raimi's Evil Dead universe has been championed not only for its over-the-top gore and physical effects, but also for its broad and slapstick humor, and the premiere brought out its most overtly goofy laugh when Ash discovered his shadow had a mind of its own. Well, the goofiness started just before that, when Campbell clocked his head on a pipe (the first of several times), but the scene dipped into true Looney Tunes wackiness when Ash and his shadow played The Mirror Game. You gotta love how this demonic spirit has the talents to morph into a two-dimensional shadow on a wall, but gets fooled when required to hold up the correct arm. Duck season! Wabbit season!
Kelly's Little Swim
Bless actress Dana DeLorenzo, because she must have been one uncomfortable person while filming the Season 2 premiere. She spent part of the third act soaking wet and thigh-deep in some mucky looking waters, and she had to film two entirely different parts, since we got to see that fantastic Kelly vs. Kelly hallucination fight. ("We're gonna get you.") In trying to prove her badassery by shooting the walls, falling short of finishing a Die Hard catchphrase in the process, Kelly only made things worse, since the walls started bleeding both blood and that grody silver demon gunk. Having to fake a fear of drowning in that mess all while a skeleton creeps up nearby can't be a blast of an afternoon at work. But it was pretty awesome to watch.
The Death Of Ruby's Silver Demon Spawn
After spending the episode trying to track Ruby down with vengeance in mind, Ash eventually teaming up with the former antagonist by the end of the episode. (Which rocks, because who wants to see Bruce Campbell and Lucy Lawless on opposing sides, anyway?) Those ugly silver beasts of hers got plenty of solid screentime in the episode, and the best moment, obviously, was Ruby having to kill her own creepy kid, which resulted in a death moment as visually repulsive as it was emotionally sound, evoking the weirdest iota of sympathy when the demon squeaked out "Mom..." That ugly bugger will do no more squeaking or growling, though, as its head was blasted all over the wall. A fist-pumpingly nasty climax to one hell of a season premiere. I love this show.
Ash vs Evil Dead will continue saving the world in Season 2 every Sunday night on Starz at 8:00 p.m. ET. Get ready for more Six Million Dollar Man jokes and Ash using his boomstick to make things explode. While waiting for the next episode, check out our fall TV schedule to see when a whole bunch of other far less bloody shows will make their debuts.
