Hawk Ripjaw
The following recap contains spoilers for Evil S4E7 “How to Bandage a Wound” (directed by Sam Hoffman and written by Oneika Barrett)
Evil S4E7, “How to Bandage a Wound,” opens exactly where last week’s episode left off, with Leland (Michael Emerson) entering his demolished apartment to find Sheryl (Christine Lahti) sitting in the dark holding a very large knife. After being reminded of Sheryl’s promise to cut off his d*ck if he ever tried to harm her granddaughters, Leland’s denial is stifled when Sheryl throws a sedating herb bag at his feet. Leland switches his tone, telling Sheryl that all he wanted was to show Andy that he wanted a son. Discreetly picking up a large shard of glass and hiding it behind his back, he tells Sheryl he looks forward to watching her age rapidly without her People Juice.
Sheryl tells Leland to check his supply, and we see that the People Juice room has been emptied of most of the transfusions, with the rest smashed to bits. This finally sets Leland off, and we get a great little fight scene between the two, with Sheryl stabbing Leland in the thigh with her knife, and Leland plunging the glass shard into Sheryl’s chest until it snaps off in his hand. As Sheryl staggers away, Leland declares that Sheryl won’t survive coming after him, and Sheryl retorts, “I wouldn’t bet against me.” What follows is a montage of Sheryl and Leland each bandaging themselves up, set to Jet’s “Are You Gonna Be My Girl,” ending with a very satisfying moment of Leland attempting to silence Timothy/the Antichrist’s cries with Kristen’s Dr. Kurt files, until they start being deleted from Leland’s computer, presumably by Sheryl.
Kristen (Katja Herbers) visits Sheryl in the hospital, but she’s pretty still short on sympathy for her wounded mother. As she’s about to leave, Sheryl’s phone starts buzzing; it’s Leland. Kristen answers, and simply listens. Leland tells who he thinks is Sheryl that he’s coming for her. When he realizes it’s Kristen, he asks if Sheryl is dead yet. “No,” Kristen responds. “But you are.” Leland tells Kristen to ask Sheryl about all the ways she betrayed Kristen, and Kristen tells Leland that she just realized what he’s afraid of: unity. I don’t know if this will ally mother and daughter together against the villain eventually, but at least in this episode, Kristen still hasn’t changed her opinion on Sheryl, doing just enough to get Sheryl home before leaving. Once alone, Sheryl begins another People Juice transfusion.
Kristen finds out that Lynn (Brooklyn Shuck) has been seeing Sister Andrea (Andrea Martin), and angrily confronts the nun, before being presented with a permission slip on which Lynn forged her mother’s signature. Sister Andrea denies knowing it was forged, but either way Kristen is understandably furious. She makes a compromise with Lynn: she can continue to receive counseling from Sister Andrea, but it has to be in their house, with Kristen present. All things considered, especially Kristen’s background, that’s a pretty generous compromise.
In this week’s case, Tyrus (Jefferson White), a train engineer, talks about the stress of his job and how, occasionally, people will commit suicide by laying across the tracks, and despite slamming on the brakes and blowing the horn, the train ends up going over them. One such case is a girl in a white prom dress. Ever since she died, Tyrus has been seeing her on a specific stretch of track, but now, there’s something else, “something scary on her dragging her away.” White puts in an impressive performance: the fidgety Tyrus is clearly a depressed, traumatized individual and White sells it perfectly.
That night, David (Mike Colter) and Ben (Aasiv Mandvi) join Tyrus on the train. Tyrus says that he always sees something on a specific stretch of track. Once we get there, Tyrus sees something on the tracks (and we do too), but Ben and David didn’t see it. Tyrus blows the horn and slams on the brakes. Once the train is stopped, they all get out. Tyrus goes to inspect whether they went over someone a couple of cars back, and David sees a horned demon just next to the signal light next to the tracks. The demon leers at David before climbing over the bridge, and David and Ben realize they’re on the bridge directly above Kristen’s apartment. Once on the ground, they notice claw marks on the pillar leading down to the ground. Kristen reluctantly agrees to an assessment of the duplex.
David and Sister Andrea do a sort of mini-exorcism on the house, a ritual involving placing a candle at each corner of each room, to root out any demonic presence. In the bathroom, Sister Andrea throws holy water in the bathtub in which the Demon of Grief was, which sizzles. To Kristen, it’s just water splattering. Lynn, however, appears to be enamored. Can she see what Sister Andrea sees?
Sister Andrea sees a trail of slime leading into the hole in the basement wall from which the bats came, and climbs in without a moment’s hesitation. It turns out that isn’t simply a hole in the wall, but a whole tunnel. Sister Andrea notes that the passage is very warm, and at the end of it encounters the same horned red demon David saw on the tracks, who introduces himself as Lou. I love that all of the speaking demons in this show have normal names. Sister Andrea asks Lou if this is a path to Hell, and Lou doesn’t give a straight answer. Sister Andrea attempts holy water, a cross, and a prayer, but nothing works. “Sister, believe me: you can’t hurt me here,” says Lou. “But I can you,” before grabbing her wrist, badly burning it.
Sister Andrea insists on sitting in front of the hole the entire night until Ben can get it sealed up. Kristen joins her and airs her concerns about Lynn becoming a nun, talking about Fenna from “S is for Silence” (one of my absolute favorite episodes of Evil), and how the absolute life she radiated was stifled by her servitude to men. Sister Andrea insists that she will not sway Lynn, simply give her knowledge and let her choose her own path. It’s such a great scene between the two characters, and I hope that it softens Kristen’s opinions on the vocation going forward.
Ben’s still very confused about the phone calls with Renee (Gia Crovatin) he has no recollection of, including apparently asking her to move in, causing her to blow up on him. She leaves, but later when packing up her stuff to permanently vacate his apartment she shows him a video of him singing a song and begging her to stay, something he does not remember doing. She wishes for more of the Ben in the video, and less of the Ben that Ben is, and he expresses a desire to be more of the Ben that she wants, and asks her to stay, to which she refuses. Now, is this video a Many Worlds Ben in which he actually recorded the video, or the djinn interfering? There’s no way of knowing, but after a while I’m less sure it’s the djinn. Ben, as a science-inclined man, is in uncharted waters.
With Ben having patched up the hole in the basement, Tyrus no longer has any visions on the tracks. The hair-raising closing to the episode finds Lexis (Maddy Crocco) going outside to confirm that they’re demon-free. The ghost/demon-detecting app doesn’t find anything, and as she turns to go back into the house, the app sounds off, “Entity detected.” And then another one, and another one, and another one, until the app’s alerts are overlapping themselves and Lexis finds that she is surrounded, and her scream is drowned out by the train horn above her. I got chills.
We’re on another hot streak for Evil episodes, and things show no signs of slowing down in the back half of the season. I like when the show really leans into the supernatural, and the demon this week, as well as the hole in the basement possibly being a path to hell, really scratched that itch. I’m excited to see where this leads (if it does anytime soon, since Evil really loves the art of the tease), but either way we’ll find out together next week.
Evil streams on Paramount+ on Thursdays.
