YMMV / Ash vs. Evil Dead

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• Angst? What Angst?: Deconstructed twice over.
  • Like in the movies, Ash doesn't think back about his experiences fondly, but he tries to block them out with snarky one-liners just so he can get the job done. However, over the course of the first season, he actively dreads the thought of anything happening to his new friends. This is why he abandons them to go to the cabin alone (and is ultimately proven right, when tracking him down gets Amanda killed) and later accepts Ruby's Deal with the Devil. "Ashes To Ashes" also shows he's still carrying around a lot of regret for what happened to Linda.
    • Subverted in season two, episode three. Ash is very clearly broken and has a strong moment of Heroic BSoD when Brock gets run over by the Delta, especially since they had JUST made up after 30 years of being dead to each other relationship-wise. He's forced to snap out of it quickly when the possessed Delta returns to finish the job with Ash himself.
  • It's been observed that Kelly took what happened to her family in tremendous stride. Following episodes, though, show that she really takes to killing Deadites. Pablo suggests she's focused on revenge. In the sixth episode of season one, Kelly finally has a cathartic freak-out when she puts the deadite's face in the meat slicer and then beats what's left with a meat tenderizer. Ash even lampshades that she "needed that."
  • Played Straight when Season 2 ends with Linda B. apparently rekindling her romantic relationship with Ash, seemingly unconcerned that her husband and teenaged daughter have recently died. Her lack of grief over Thomas is somewhat understandable, but the fact that she doesn't seem troubled in the slightest by Lacey's death strains credibility, even in a goofy and darkly comic setting like this show. She's never seen or mentioned again in Season 3, so we never learn what was going on with her.
• Base-Breaking Character: Heather. Most see her as a Nice Girl and Innocent Bystander who is genuinely endearing due to some cute interactions with Pablo and the sheer Trauma Conga Line she has to go through. Others find her constant screaming in the face of deadites to be annoying and feel she contributes nothing to the plot though.
• Broken Base:
  • The season two finale. The entirety of the season two finale. People are mostly fine that Pablo is alive, the group are celebrated as heroes and Ash is given the praise he deserves, but others feel that Pablo shouldn't have been the only one to come back — Lacey, Chet, Brock and especially Amanda all should've been brought back as well, and they were ticked that Ash didn't even think to mention them when making his deal with Baal. Others don't really care because they feel Ash has a one-track mind and of course would only want Pablo back. Also, Ash getting together with Linda B. One camp is made up of Ash/Amanda shippers who are pulling Die for Our Ship, another is made of people who just think Linda B. shouldn't throw herself all over her ex-boyfriend so soon after losing her daughter and her husband. Others are fine because it means that for the time being, Ash can be happy with a woman he loves.
  • The final moments of the series finale. Kick ass homage to Army of Darkness's originally intended ending and a perfect way to end the franchise, or an extremely frustrating cliffhanger that will probably never be followed up on?
• Complete Monster (season 2): Baal, the Greater-Scope Villain of the entire franchise as a whole, was the demon responsible for the Deadites as their creator and father. Intending to allow evil to dominate Earth and enslave or slaughter humanity, Baal has his children turn on their mother and sends them to attack and slaughter humans. Baal then infiltrates the town of Elk Grove by skinning and impersonating multiple people before capturing Ash and subjecting him to mental torture where he traps him in a fantasy, making Ash believe that the entirety of the past 30 years have been an elaborate delusion, intending to use Ash to murder his own friends to destroy a threat to Baal. Upon being sent to the past, Baal has his ex-wife Ruby murdered by her still-evil 1982 incarnation and attempts to kill Ash in a duel, mocking Ash for ever thinking he would have intentions of honoring the deal should Ash win. Responsible for the loss of countless lives thanks to the Necronomicon Ex-Mortis and the actions of the Deadites, Baal stands apart from the other Deadites for his ambition and cruelty.
• Creepy Awesome: The series is able to expand the franchise's rogues gallery from just the Deadites.
  • Eligos manages to be a truly scary new addition to the mythos, bringing the heroes face to face with something far above a Deadite. A creepy design complimented by unsettling abilities and camerawork, made for a fun villain.
  • Baal: progenitor of the Deadites, skin-flaying Soft-Spoken Sadist, and a marked escalation of the threat level in the show.
• Creepy Cute: The Ashy Slashy hand puppet. When Kelly encounters it in Ash's room at the asylum in season two, she admits that after everything she's witnessed so far, it's actually adorable, and plays with the "mini-Ash" briefly, until it reveals it's as evil and possessed as everything else, and attempts to kill her.
• Crosses the Line Twice: Much like the movies that spawned it, this show is not short of brilliantly disgusting humor and violence. Probably the best example has to be Ash's brutal battle with a giant zombified, fanged, rectum in Season 2 and a woman from a porno magazine in Season 3.
• Designated Villain: Thomas, at least before his alliance with Baal. Before then, he was regularly beaten, humiliated, and shot in the leg just for doing his job as a cop.
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • Joanie the prostitute racked up quite a few fans, especially since she is one of series first LGBT character and the first to be a T; being a transgender woman. Veers into Too Cool to Live and We Hardly Knew Ye as she's killed off in her first episode.
  • Ashy Slashy the Perverse Puppet quickly became a fan favorite. So much so that he's included as a cosmetic option for the Ash vs. Evil Dead DLC in Dead by Daylight, and the description of the Ash vs. Evil Dead house at Universal Studios Halloween Horror Nights 2017 was quick to point out to guests that yes, Ashy Slashy is featured in the house.
• Genius Bonus: In the final episode, Ash states that he's just a bumpkin from Elk Grove, Michigan, while pointing to his palm. He's showing the location of Elk Grove within the state by using his hand as a map, which is something Michiganders (like Bruce Campbell) actually do.
• He Really Can Act: Ash is still the same snarky Idiot Hero we know and love, but a few episodes (like "Ashes To Ashes") give Bruce Campbell a chance to flex his dramatic muscles, as Ash thinks back on his life and the tragedies he's experienced.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • During Ash's Mushroom Samba in "Brujo", one of the images we see is Nancy Reagan's famous "Just Say No" speech. Bruce Campbell played Ronald Reagan on Fargo, concurrently with this show.
  • The fact that Lucy Lawless is playing Ash's Token Evil Teammate is a bit of a switch-up for those who watched Xena: Warrior Princess, where Campbell played Lovable Rogue Autolycus. It somehow feels apt since Dynamite Comics already did a crossover between that show and Evil Dead.
  • In the final issue of the Freddy vs. Jason vs. Ash sequel series, the characters use time travel to retcon the entire Elm Street series out of existence. Ash ends up doing nearly the same thing to his own timeline at the end of season 2. What's more, if you consider the three horror franchises to still be canon then Ash may have also retconned Elm Street back into existence by his actions in this series.
  • In season three, the purgatory the spirits go to called "The Rift," has a fair number of similarities with "The Upside Down" from Stranger Things. There are duplicates of the Elk Grove downtown, and even a rift version of the Delta that Ash eventually uses. Also, it's patrolled by a large shadow spirit that sends everyone it catches to Hell, not to far removed from things such as Vecna that patrol the upside down and try to kill humans that enter.
• Les Yay: Ruby frequently seems to be hitting on Amanda when the two of them are alone together; it gets much more blatant as the series goes on. Deadite!Amanda later laments to Ruby that "they could still be together", though just who is projecting that thought is anybody's guess considering the revelations of the last couple of episodes. Also she almost seems to hit on Kelly in the third episode of season two in order to persuade her to join her in getting the book.
  • Ruby is seduced by a female cop and kisses her with no qualms, though it turns out to be Baal in disguise and its unknown if he was using some form of compulsion as he is known to do.
• Magnificent Bitch: The 1980s Ruby is one who never had the present day version's Heel–Face Turn. Doing away with her demon husband Baal to be free of him when he loses his duel with hero Ashley J. "Ash" Williams, Ruby births a demon spawn of her and Ash so she can subvert Ash's chosen one prophecy. Becoming a guidance counselor to turn Ash's long lost daughter Brandy against her, Ruby uses her child to kill others to frame Ash so she can make him the savior of humanity and keep her fellow Dark Ones sealed so she may rule the world and keep a tight lidded control on the forces of evil, while also using her close friend Kaya as a mole in Ash's team. Even when defeated and left to the mercy of the Dark Ones, Ruby goes out Defiant to the End, vowing that Ash will destroy them in turn.
• Moe
  • Heather, due to her innocent facial expressions, Humble Goal, Trauma Conga Line suffering, and the way she flirts with Pablo at first but is quick to back off when she thinks he has a girlfriend.
  • Tanya from the last two episodes of season 2, due to her Bespectacled Cutie appearance and her earnest, yet socially awkward demeanor.
• Nausea Fuel: It's the Evil Dead franchise, practically a given.
  • In "The Morgue", Ash fights the possessed intestines of a cadaver that shits on him and falls on his head, and his head is slowly forced up the cadaver's anus. To make matters worse, he shoots the intestines, splattering excrement all over his shirt.
  • Ash's rematch with Henrietta is as absolutely gross as you'd expect from having to fight a corpse that should be a skeleton by now but instead is still rotting and absolutely bloated. Key gross-out moments include but aren't limited to, Ash trying to mulch Henrietta's insides but there's so much pus inside of her intestines that it instead stops the chainsaw and fills the blade and chains up with pus. Then there's Henrietta trying to breastfeed Ash with what can only be described as ';'pus breast milk', and she even succeeds''.
• Pandering to the Base: Sam Raimi has admitted that the show's very existence is this, being made for the small, yet dedicated group of fans of the franchise, and even having Bruce Campbell back in the role of Ash. The fans seem to love it, so it's not like it was a bad thing.
• Retroactive Recognition: Samara Weaving has a three episode arc in the final three episodes of season one as Heather, part of a group of hikers who are targeted by the evil.
• Signature Scene:
  • Poor Heather's drawn-out, horrific death in the season one finale is one of the first things about the show many fans think of, albeit not always in a good way.
  • The morgue and sperm bank fights in "The Morgue" and "Booth Three" are infamously the show's most disgusting Squick moments, with the latter also benefiting from some fantastic Soundtrack Dissonance with A Ha's "Take On Me".
• Special Effect Failure:
  • In the first episode, when Ash is slapping the rear end of his bathroom conquest, it's pretty easy to spot Ash's wooden fingers moving, revealing that he's wearing a brown glove.
  • There are quite a few painfully obvious CGI blood splatters.
  • A few CGI animals show up in "Fire in the Hole" for a few seconds.
  • The eyeball that appears on Ash's severed hand in "Ashes To Ashes" is a pretty obvious composite shot.
  • The CGI animated skeleton from "The Killer of Killers" looked like an enemy from a PS2 or original Xbox game.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: A lot of good characters with potential tend to get killed off.
  • Heather. People feel she could've been a good Foil to the more brave and serious Kelly, and that the amount of suffering she went through was disproportionate and didn't add much to the plot.
  • Heather's two friends can also inspire a little bit of this, as they could have provided a bit of Action Survivor humor and naiveté (considering they had attempted to brandish a flare gun and bear spray when first accosted). The fact that they were given little to do despite both being played by experienced, somewhat prominent Australia and New Zealand performers adds to this.
  • The survivalist militia could have been used to provide a bit of serious muscle against the Deadites (maybe even with Ash rallying a bunch of fighters like in Army of Darkness) but mostly just get used as canon fodder and take a while to even figure out what's going on.
  • In season 2, Chet and Lacey get anti-climatically killed barely half way through the season, and with a lot left to potentially contribute.
  • Professor Knowby's student Tanya feels like just a Sacrificial Lamb when she could have been saved and provided a Fish out of Temporal Water subplot.
  • Linda B. simply disappears before Season 3, while her presence would've created an interesting dynamic between her and Brandy, who has been going to the same school as Lacey.
  • Zoe and her fellow Knights of Sumeria had the potential to be The Cavalry instead of just Red Shirts and expand the series mythos further than they did.
  • While their running, hiding and watching wasn't completely uninteresting, Amy and the other people hiding from the Larked Ones in Purgatory being rallied by Ash to help break out of there could have been interesting.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: Former show runner Craig DiGregorio stated in an interview that there was an alternate version of the Finale for Season 2 that had been considered that sounded pretty interesting. TL, DR version: Di Gregorio's set up of season two would be that the drunken Ash and a drunken, down in the dumps Suzy Maxwell would hook up while Ash was time traveled back into 1982, and thus become Kelly's father after a bathroom rendezvous. Bruce Campbell has stated in interviews that it was an early idea in the process, but it was never finalized, and as viewers know, season three went with an entirely new character for Ash's daughter, rather than Kelly.
• Unintentionally Sympathetic: Thomas is meant to be a Hate Sink for antagonizing Ash and the humiliation he faces was meant to be Laser-Guided Karma. However, most of his actions are due to being Locked Out of the Loop, and Ash's actions to an outsider look suspicious. Working with Baal does make him lose some sympathy, but it was implied that he was under a combination of mind control and manipulation. He doesn't even get an Alas, Poor Villain treatment after he gets killed by a possessed Lacey.
• The Woobie:
  • Brandi's life has gone down the utter tubes. Not only has she had to see her best friend possessed and killed, she then witnesses her beloved mother Candi killed in front of her and is stuck with Ash, who has no idea how to be a father and whose well-meaning, but clumsy attempts to bond with Brandi only terrify and upset her more. Then Ash has to destroy a Deadite version of her mother at Candi's own funeral which traumatizes her even more, and then Ash has to destroy an undead version of Brandi's hitherto unknown grandfather. Making it worse is that Brandi has no true understanding or context of any of this, making her an ordinary teenager hit by one trauma after another with a father who's best known for being a local serial killer.
  • Heather sees her friends (one of whom might have been her sister, based on dialogue) horribly killed, suffers a succession of painful injuries while before becoming isolated and alone in a very frightening situation, And then she's turned into a deadite.
  • Present Day!Ruby has been put through all sorts of hell during the second season. After reclaiming the Necronomicon from Ash, she swears that she will end the war between humans and Deadites, and is true to her words on wanting the war to end. Unfortunately, her remaining children, who still don't believe peace between mankind and the Evil Dead is possible, decide to desert her and resume the war, stripping her of her immortality and power in the process, which she spends the entirety of the season trying to get back with Ash and the team's help. While she helps Ash kill any of the deadites in their way, it's clear that Ruby is regretting having to become the Hunter Of Her Own Kind just so everything could go back to normal. Most tragically, when the team went back in time to save Pablo and make sure the Necronomicon will never be used again, she was unceremoniously murdered and replaced by her 1980 incarnation after attempting to pull a Heroic Sacrifice to save them from Baal.

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