Hawk Ripjaw
The following recap contains spoilers for Evil S4E6, “How to Dance in Three Easy Steps” (directed by Joe Menendez and written by Louisa Hill).
In the opening scene of Evil S4E6, “How to Dance in Three Easy Steps,” Kristen (Katja Herbers), David (Mike Colter) and Ben (Aasif Mandvi) are visiting Catherine (Jennifer Mogbock), who has been dancing non-stop for two months after murdering her children. She dances until she collapses before starting up again, and won’t eat unless force-fed.
In the interrogation room, Kristen asks if Catherine will sit down, but the woman continues to dance, insisting that bad things will happen if she stops dancing. When Kristen asks who will hurt them, Catherine takes a deep breath and responds in a demonic voice, “I will.” She calls the children vermin, before suddenly switching to the terrified voices of her children begging to not be hurt, and back to the demonic voice. Kristen thinks it’s bipolar schizoaffective disorder.
Father Dominic (Chukwudi Iwuji) places a hymnal, a rosary, and a bullet on a table, telling David that several Tigrayan clerics and nuns have been captured, and David needs to use his abilities to locate them based on coordinates Father Dominic has given him. Father Dominic grows frustrated with David being unable to pinpoint what he sees.
During Catherine’s exorcism, the tortured woman’s demon begins snarling, and she manages to break one of her bonds. David begins reciting the Lord’s Prayer, and suddenly, he finds himself with the Tigrayan captives, in the body of the priest, Father Adiso (Sahr Ngaujah). He leads them in singing before being snapped back to the exorcism. Kristen asks him if he’s okay, and without saying anything to her, David takes her hand and begins singing the same song the priest was singing to the captives.
A few moments later, Catherine flatlines and dies. A sigil tattoo is found on her ankle, along with gangrene on her feet that wasn’t there before, but the sigil on the map is crossed out, meaning it’s been vanquished. So why and how has it returned?
David relays to Father Dominic that he saw through the window a five-story spire, which apparently confirms a location to Father Dominic. Dominic throws his arms around David in an appreciative hug, and later presents David new coordinates to where the prisoners have been moved.
Visiting the dance studio, Kristen meets Isabella (Stella Everett), who takes an immediate liking to Kristen and invites her to their dance performance the following night. Ben also finds Megan Tyree (Isabella Briggs), an ex-dancer who is accusing the troupe of attempting to convert her to Satanism. She claims the troupe put a hex on Catherine, and did the same to her.
The trio attends Isabella’s dance performance, where Isabella claims that Megan is a “prude” who got into Catherine’s head, convincing her that everything was either good or evil. As the girls dance, Kristen seems to be enjoying it, while David seems vaguely suspicious, and Ben just watches, emotionless. Suddenly, a woman draped in white sheets with a veil over her face rises from the center of the floor, something only David can see. She floats towards David, and (of course) screams.
The sigil the trio is investigating, Father Dominic reveals, was wiped from the Earth 200 years ago, which is why it was crossed out on the map. The sigil represents a gathering of necromancers, or witches—a term which Father Dominic hesitates to use—-and Dominic wants the trio to investigate these dancers.
Kristen is irritated. She grills David on the split between male and female-centered investigations and exorcisms they’ve been tasked with, with the skew heavily towards females. Kristen surmises that when women go against their accepted societal role, they’re labeled as possessed, whereas David thinks it’s because women are more susceptible to demonic influence. David and Kristen are about to really get into it, before Ben steps in. This is at least the second time this season that David and Kristen have started to bicker before Ben defuses things. I’m not sure what it means, but it’s definitely an observation I made.
As David attempts to project to the new coordinates, he’s interrupted in the confessional booth by Isabella, who reveals that she too saw the figure in sheets, a spirit, whispering in David’s ear. David states that it whispered to “Shed my God and know greatness.” He asks what the figure was, and Isabella leans very close to the partition and whispers: “A muse…pray to it, Father. You need it.” She then leaves, and David once again attempts to project to the coordinates.
What follows is a very intense scene as David successfully visits the captives again, but this time in the body of General Girma (Oberon K.A. Adjepong). The scene switches between the general threatening the captives, and David in the confessional channeling his movements. After slicing off Father Adiso’s fingers, Girma holds the machete to the man’s neck. David falls to his knees, begging God for help. The priest takes the general’s face in his hand, bringing him close to tears as he sets down the machete. He then pushes Adiso’s hand away, slowly picks the machete back up…and plunges it into his own gut.
Father Dominc is delighted, as David’s vision has led to the rescue of the captives. David, however, is troubled. He attempts to confess, seeing the general’s death as his fault, but Dominic isn’t having it. Even murder, he says, can be God’s work if it prevents a greater sin. David remains troubled by the anger he feels when he projects into someone who is angry, and I wonder how this will affect him if he continues doing these tasks for Father Dominic.
They’re interrupted by Ben, telling them that Megan showed up claiming that the dance troupe branded her with the mark of the sigil on her abdomen. She also tells them that the troupe is dancing in the woods tonight, and that the last time they did that was the night before Catherine murdered her children.
Kristen, having received a text from Isabella, shows up in the clearing, starts getting some very seductive dance instructions from the dancer, and suddenly she sees the muse as well. David and Ben also show up, having attempted to call Kristen. Isabella sees the picture of Megan’s brand on Ben’s phone, and states that the reason they kicked Megan out of the troupe is because she was trying to sabotage them.
Ben suddenly notices something on the picture. The brand on Megan’s abdomen and the tattoo on Catherine’s ankle don’t perfectly match: the brand is upside down. What’s more, Megan’s hand, visible in the picture, has soot on it. Megan branded herself. Father Dominic confronts Megan and declares her to be the true necromancer of this sigil. This might seem presumptuous, until Megan throws herself at the priest, shouting demonic chants before being dragged away. Father Dominic draws a fresh X over the sigil house on the map.
For anyone starting to get into Kurt Alert withdrawal, we’ve got a nice, beefy Kurt Alert this week to quell those shakes. Dr. Kurt (Kurt Fuller) is soliciting advice on his book from Tober (Andy Mientus), but the feedback is not kind. A distraught Dr. Kurt tears his manuscript—and most of his office—apart, before finding a brochure about the Catholic Church, giving him a ravenous appetite for reading the Bible.
Tober later calls Kurt and informs him of the Cannibal Mom visual storybook that the girls (Brooklyn Shuck, Skylar Gray, Maddy Crocco & Dalya Knapp) uploaded, of course with his name attached to it, leading Tober to assume Dr. Kurt did it himself. With over half a million views already, and Dr. Kurt trending higher than Stephen King and Elon Musk (this show really loves throwing shade at Musk), he cancels his remaining appointments for the day, opens his laptop, cracks his knuckles, and prepares to get started on a manuscript as a joyous chorus sounds in the background, and…nothing is coming to him. But then the muse visits him—the same muse that David saw—and he immediately begins typing like a madman. WE’RE NEARING MAXIMUM KURT ALERT EVERYBODY!
Sheryl (Christine Lahti) is very much an antagonist, but when it comes to her graddaughters, she is fiercely protective. She recognizes an herb packet on Laura’s bag—the very same herb packet a hypnotized Andy put above her bed the night he nearly killed her with a hypodermic needle, and the same type of packet Leland uses to keep his victims incapacitated in the People Juice Room. Once she pieces everything together, she is a force of nature.
Sheryl straight up spartan kicks Leland (Michael Emerson)’s door open, uses a knife and her own bare hands to lay waste to Leland’s apartment, and when she accidentally cuts her palm, uses the blood to write a vulgar message to her nemesis on the floor. Leland, arriving home and seeing the destruction and the message, almost immediately knows who is responsible. He calmly calls out her name, and turns to see her sitting in a chair in the dark, holding a knife. “Leland.”
I was really happy this week to see some more sigil action, as there are a lot of houses left on that map and we’re running out of time to see most of them. The dance sequences and David’s projections were directed with an electrifying energy, and I was more than pleased to see some movement in the Sheryl/Leland dynamic as well as some very good Dr. Kurt development. Next week should be even more eventful, and I can’t wait to see it.
Evil streams Thursdays on Paramount+
