This week’s episode begins with a cold opening of a Dodge Challenger racing down a rural road to the sound of Verdi’s Requiem, implying we’re dealing with a slightly better class of Deadite Hunter.
The muscle car arrives at Kelly’s family home and out steps Lucy Lawless’ still unnamed (in-show) character, inspecting the fresh graves of Kelly’s parents.
She does not seem surprised when Kelly’s father rises as a Deadite. Impaling him on the cross of his wife’s grave, she starts torturing him by twanging the fork still impaled in his left eye. He won’t talk, until she pulls out an item Evil Dead fans haven’t seen for 28 years; the Kandarian Dagger. The Deadite starts screaming over the title card as the mystery woman starts cutting up his face with it.
After the “cut”, we’re back with Team Ash (I will not be using the suggested team moniker “The Ghost Beaters”) as they park outside the titular “Books From Beyond”. Pablo is glad that this rise of Evil will soon be over, but laments that the team will soon be breaking up. Ash states he prefers working alone, but he doesn’t sound too convincing.
Heading inside the bizarre and creepy looking bookshop, Ash meets Lionel Hawkins, the proprietor he’d spoken to years before, as he is finishing a conversation with Michigan State Trooper Amanda Fisher. She gets a good look at Ash as she leaves, making a phone call to a colleague to have the suspect sketch from the trailer park sent to her phone.
Still inside with Ash, Lionel is excited by the presence of the Necronomicon; his opening it seemingly spurring Lucy Lawless’ character on and awakening the EvilCam in the woods once more…
Outside, Pablo is fighting a losing battle trying to impress Kelly whilst waiting in the Oldsmobile before he notices Amanda getting a gun out of her car and heading back into Books From Beyond.
Amanda gets the jump on Ash and Lionel. However Pablo gets the jump on her, knocking her out with a femur from among the bookshop’s bizarre stock before freaking out that he’s assaulted a cop. Handcuffing her, Ash sets Lionel to work translating the book with Pablo watching as Kelly guards Amanda.
Lionel explains what the Necronomicon is to those who don’t remember the introduction from Evil Dead II or Army of Darkness, and Ash in his haste to end the Evil quickly likes the idea of summoning a puny demon to explain to them how to finish this mess. They settle on Eligos, a Demon of Secret Knowledge. Ash says he sounds like a “total nerd”, so they get on with it.
Meanwhile, Amanda is trying to psych Kelly out into releasing her, but Kelly’s resolve is unbreakable with all the horrors she’s seen. That’s until the summoning spell works and a demon is brought into the circle Lionel prepared earlier.
Naturally, it’s going to go about as well as you’d expect…
To be fair, Eligos is contained in the circle until Amanda, once released by Kelly, distracts Ash into breaking the circle, leaving him having to face the most dangerous opponent he’s encountered so far; a bona fide demon from the Underworld…
Unsurprisingly, ‘Books From Beyond’ doesn’t answer any of the questions it really could have, either for Ash or the viewer. But given we’re only one third of the way through the season, what else could we expect.
We do however get a lovely exposition scene explaining who wrote the Necronomicon and what its purpose was. The animation and narration here are surprisingly effective, animated in the same style as the closing credits.I’ve meant to wax lyrical about how fun the losing credits are, but it’s kept slipping my mind. They’re awesome; they and the animation shown here are a nice update of the old stop-motion sequence used in the original film. Also, is it wrong that I’d love a copy of the Necronomicon prop from this show?
What is surprising is that this episode is nowhere near as gory or as action oriented as the previous two. The major set piece is the summoning and subsequent fight with the demon Eligos, and it is effective in how unsettling and painful the fight looks. One has the wonder if the damage Ash and Pablo took in that battle was permanent or not.
The most important new question this episode has Amanda asking both Kelly and the audience is; what do we know about Ash? Seemingly locked mentally and emotionally in the time when he first encountered the Evil despite having physically aged, and at least some of his behaviour being put down to stupidity and some more down to PTSD, it’s very true that even after 30 years, we still don’t know a lot about this guy.
We also still don’t know how Lucy Lawless’ character is tracking Ash, but the quick cut to her once the Necronomicon is opened by Lionel would suggest she’s linked to it somehow.
This episode looks and sounds great, but what brings this episode down a little is the characterisation of Lionel, the proprietor of Books from Beyond. Power Rnagers staple Kelson Henderson does a decent job with what he’s given, but it doesn’t seem like he really had much to work with in the first place sadly.
It’s also annoying that Amanda falls into the “Cops Are Useless” trope of the supernatural/horror genre far too easily; still trying to play the Javert and bring her man in no matter what wackiness she’s seen. Ash’s continued carelessness leaving her in the predicament she finds herself at the end of the episode probably isn’t going to endear him to her any further.
Remember when you used to completely dismember Deadites, Ash? You might want to start doing that again just to be on the safe side. To be fair though, he didn’t really know about those last two Deadites.
With this avenue of book research a literal dead end, Team Ash will go looking for new leads through Pablo’s Witch Doctor uncle next time.
‘Books from Beyond’ feels like it’s missing something (aside from the gore) compared to the previous two episodes. However, it’s still entertaining if only for all the players finally being on stage and almost all interacting with one another, and closes out the first arc of the series and kicking us on to the next.