At the end of Bruce Campbell and Ted Raimi’s fantastic onscreen reunion in “Last Call,” Ash vs Evil Dead delivered a shocking (though somewhat expected) surprise to its fans. Ashley “Ash” J. Williams (Bruce Campbell) and the cantankerous Brock (Lee Majors) were in the midst of having a much-needed heart-to-heart outside of Chet’s (Raimi) bar, where the titular hero saved his father from a flirtatious deadite. It seemed a long overdue reconciliation between the two was on the cusp of happening when, without warning, Ash’s possessed Delta 88 plowed through Brock’s body as if it were nothing more than a special effects dummy weighed down with fake blood.
The episode concluded with Ash screaming beside his dad’s mauled corpse while Roy Rogers and Dale Evans’s “Happy Trails” played through the credits. A week later, “DUI” confirmed Brock’s death with Ash’s cheesy, exposition-heavy review of their strained relationship: “You can’t be dead now. Not after everything we’ve been through — with all the bitterness and the hatred, and now we’ve finally made peace with each other.” After all, Brock blamed his son for the death of Cheryl Williams, Ash’s sister, in the first Evil Dead film. Yet like Ash and his companion Pablo (Ray Santiago), the story leaves Brock behind as quickly as it decided to toss him under the Delta 88.
Perhaps the creative team wants Ash vs Evil Dead‘s audience to do the same, but this is The Six Million Dollar Man we’re talking about. You don’t just go and add a legendary actor like Lee Majors to the Evil Dead mythology, then kill him. Or at least that’s the go-to argument many viewers were probably considering as soon as they saw the tires turn Brock’s head into jelly. However, concrete clues from the past four episodes, Ruby’s (Lucy Lawless) increasingly paranoid utterances about the villainous Baal (Joel Tobeck), and an upcoming episode’s description suggest there’s more to Brock Williams than decorating a random street with brain matter. Hell, even the second line of the chorus to “Happy Trails” says “until we meet again.”
Aside from a few ridiculous details about the “The Morgue” and his first experience with blood spatter in “Last Call,” Majors didn’t have much else to say about the plot, which is to be expected when avoiding spoilers. Then again, the 77-year-old actor let slip he’d filmed “most of [his] stuff there at one time,” suggesting his involvement in Ash vs Evil Dead won’t extend far beyond his character’s death. So maybe Brock really is dead and gone, and Ash’s heartfelt-but-seconds-long goodbye to his dad is it.
Then again, as Brock admits in his final moments, “there’s something [he’s] kept from [Ash], something so vital that the fabric of [his] life may begin to” change. The kind of twist “Last Call” and “DUI” writers Noelle Valdivia and Ivan Raimi wouldn’t scrap at a moment’s notice. Whatever he was going to say was important, and with six more episodes to go in season two, there’s a good chance Ash vs Evil Dead will finally reveal Brock’s “something” to Ash.
And with the help of Baal, perhaps a reanimated, deadite version of the elder Williams will be just the one to break the news to his horrified son. (Considering Mimi Rogers’s turn as Kelly’s (Dana DeLorenzo) back-from-the-dead mother in season one, it’s not like this hasn’t happened before.) According to the plot description for “Trapped Inside” on November 6th, “an angry mob corners Ash and the team in Brock’s house while Ruby tries to summon the spell to send Baal back to hell.” The people of Elks Grove and Ash somehow come to an understanding, but not before “a familiar deadite comes for him.” Seeing as how they’re holed up at the house, said deadite may be Brock himself.
Or another reanimated version of Cheryl. Or both. Per Ruby’s conversation with Dana about Baal, one or both of these characters’ return as a deadite is all but inevitable for the sole purpose of torturing Ash. “Baal has a power over me, and not just me. Everyone,” explains Ruby. “He’s not a typical demon. Baal doesn’t use brute force. He breeds paranoia. He gets into people’s psyches, turning them against each other until they annihilate themselves.” How better to torment Ash than with an evil version of his own father, the very man who’s hate for him began to loosen minutes before his demise.
Not only would this do more to mind-f*ck our hero than the first season’s Linda episode, but it would give Lee Majors more of the screen time and Ash vs Evil Dead fan adoration he so richly deserves. Plus, it’d let The Fall Guy adhere to the tradition of Evil Dead actors donning ridiculous prosthetics (in addition to the copious amounts of fake blood and gore).
Ash vs Evil Dead airs Sundays at 8 p.m. ET on Starz.
