Evil fam, you’re going to want a couple canned margaritas on standby for this one. We’ve reached the penultimate outing of season three, and that means that a lot of pieces are coming together, some in hilarious ways (I’m looking at you, bag of frozen fries guy) but also in one very tragic way. If you know, you know. Also, if you know, did you scream when it happened? Me too. Let’s talk about it.
Kristen’s dealing with a whole host of emotions after that devastating incident with Valerie. At a base level, she’s horrified, of course. But she also feels guilt both for not warning Valerie about how agitated her husband was and for the little twinge of relief she feels now that a child born from her egg won’t be out there walking around in the world. It’s awful, but it’s true. In fact, she tells Kurt in a much-needed therapy session (although, how do we even take Kurt seriously anymore when he’s turned to the dark side so handily?) that she’s been having a lot of dark thoughts like that and that it feels like dark wishes coming true. She mentions thinking about how Andy never coming home from Nepal “might be simpler†and Kristen, honey, I hope you don’t regret saying that. But you might!
While Kurt suggests regular therapy again and David wants her to at least take the week off, all Kristen wants to do is get back to work. The case of the week isn’t the most interesting part of this episode, but there are some of your standard freaky-as-hell Evil moments within it and it also hits closer to home than most of these typically do.
The assessors are sent to check up on a parishioner named Henry who has holed up in his yacht to hide from a demon he believes has been stalking him. He was a regular ol’ bank teller until a customer gave him a stock tip, he bought some, and it made him rich as hell. (Babe, that pun is always intended). As soon as he made his money, the demon showed up. He even has it on video surveillance — it looks like a man dressed in black hoodie, but the way it moves might give one pause.
The assessors discover that the woman who gave Henry the stock tip, Tamara, went through the same exact thing. It was only once she got rid of every single thing she bought with those stock dividends that the demon left her alone — her house, her cars, she gave it all up. Tamara, it turns out, got the stock tip from her uncle, who also had to give up everything he bought with that money in order to get rid of the demon. Unlike Tamara, the things he bought with the money included some Lasik surgery on one eye and a nose job. People, PEOPLE, this man just up and took out his eye and cut off his entire nose!! And then, the kicker: “The worst thing was my wife’s breast implants.†Evil is smart enough to know that we don’t need to see that in order to realize how horrifying it is. Anyway, my skin is crawling!
The assessors relay as much of that story to Henry as they can, but he refuses to return the money. It’s not even all greed — he paid for his mother’s hip replacement! — but poor rich Henry ends up dead after a tussle with the demon. That’s sad for him, but, like, they told him what he needed to do?
The part where it gets a little anxiety-inducing is when we find out that Karima, who Ben called in to assist with the case, bought some stock in the same company Henry did and now the shadowy demon figure is following her, too. Since Karima didn’t make that much money, the gang figures out that it isn’t about the money, but the stock tip itself. Ben can’t believe Karima, of all people, is buying into this thing, so he has her “pass†the tip to him. Lo and behold, he has an unsettling run-in with the figure outside of his apartment. He doesn’t know what’s going on, but it spooks him more than we’ve seen him in awhile and remember, this is the man who was recently almost sacrificed by a cult. Kristen comes up with a brilliant plan to at least get this thing out of their immediate orbit: She takes the stock tip from Ben … and then she pays a visit to that awful, awful dude she slammed with a frozen bag of fries, who is very much still terrorizing people with his brand of assholery, and says she’d like to make a truce by giving him this stock tip. Is it kind of awful to do to a person? Sure. But also, that guy is the worst, so it’s not that bad, right?
In the end, there are two important things to know about this case. First, that the logo for the company all these haunted people have been buying stocks in is also a sigil, the Royal Sigil, which is apparently one of the most important ones. The other is that when the team looks into the company, DF Global industries, they learn that it is “a conglomerate that covers real estate, social media, and crypto trading.†And if that description doesn’t sound eerily like another company we’ve been following closely on this show to you, well, you haven’t been paying attention.
Hey, speaking of Sheryl and Leland, they, like Ben, get more spooked than we’ve ever seen them and that is thanks to the return of our dear prophetess, Grace Ling.
Now, if you haven’t revisited season one of Evil in a while, you might need a quick Grace refresher: When the team first found her, she was doling out prophecies in a day care in Flushing. She said God spoke in a whisper and when it grew difficult to hear him, she would blow up an inflatable toy and that would help. The church was interested in her because many of her prophecies matched up with the prophecies in an ancient document called the Poveglia Codex, one of which was about the end of the world, no big deal. You also might remember that sometimes Grace gets hit with an image that she needs to draw, and many of these have been missing pieces to the Codex. She is quite important and good at her job!
Since Grace is having a tough time being back and overworked and David knows how much she loves kids, he introduces her to the Bouchard girls. It’s Kristen’s birthday (!) and apparently Bouchard tradition is to head to a local indoor playground, and you know what? Grace has the best time. She especially takes a liking to Laura, who at one point asks Grace if she knows when her father will come home. Grace responds, “next Thursday.†Now, as to what condition he’ll return is, well, that’s anyone’s guess. Signs point to … not great.
Things look especially dire after Grace shows up at Kristen’s surprise birthday party the girls throw for her (they are big fans of Grace) and she has an ominous conversation with Kristen. Well, it starts out kind of nice: Kristen decides to ask Grace about Lexis. Grace assures her that Lexis is “a good girl†(that’s great!) but she warns her that Kristen will need to “protect her†(that’s unsettling!). On top of that, the moment Grace touches Kristen’s hand, she gets hit with a vision and she needs to draw something. She doesn’t know what it means, just that it is about Kristen’s husband and that he needs her help. Friends, she draws the closet where Sheryl and Leland are keeping him! Now, Kristen has no idea how to interpret this drawing, but you know who is peeping the whole conversation from the other room? Sheryl. And she’s already worried about Grace since when she went and introduced herself to the prophetess, Grace took one look at her and says, “I won’t blame you for tomorrow night.†Sheryl is rattled.
She shows up at Leland’s place in tears and demands he take care of the situation. Honestly, when Leland goes to get his secret satanic blade, I thought Andy’s time was up, but nope, he has a different target: Grace. And thus, Michael Emerson goes on to scare the shit out of us.
Grace is up in her room in the rectory praying when Leland shows up downstairs and quickly slits the guard’s throat (where is her entire entourage of priests in sunglasses when you need them?!). Grace can see — and feel — the entire thing happening. Leland takes his time, taunting her as he walks up to her room, but before he can kill Grace, Monsignor Korecki busts in! He’s going to protect Grace at all costs!
The two men fight and tumble down the stairs. Leland stumbles away, badly injured. Grace finds the Monsignor on the ground and they both know he’s dying. Grace prays over him and he asks her to hold his hand. His last words are — I can’t even type them I am starting to cry again!! — “Father Ignatius, tell him I love —†and then he dies. HE DIES. And before he dies, he finally admits he was in love with Father Ignatius! Did Evil tell one of the most tragic love stories in, what, like four scenes total?
The Monsignor and David didn’t always get along, but this loss is surely going to hit David hard. And not just because Monsignor Korecki is a mentor figure, but because David has had so many chances to do something about Leland. It sets the stage for what should be an intense final chapter to the season.
Church Bulletin
• And then there is Kurt. He gives Kristen the first half of his manuscript to read and she discovers the first half is basically gibberish and the second is … typed backward? She is growing increasingly concerned about her shrink.
• It certainly doesn’t help matters that Lila finds it, holds the backward part up to a mirror, begins reading the story, which is about a woman with four daughters and one of them kills their mother (!), and shares it with her sisters. The girls are obsessed with it. When Kurt calls the house looking for Kristen, Laura tells him how much they love it and demands the next chapter. Kurt, who has lost his muse, is back in the game. “I am good!†he yells out after the call before diving right back into that satanic mantra.
• “I guess I forgot about the part where Jesus talked about the yachts.â€
• You guys, he really cut off his entire nose.