The following recap contains spoilers for Evil S4E9, “How to Build a Chatbot” (directed by Yap Fong Yee and written by Erica Larson)
Father Ignatius (Wallace Shawn) is receiving text messages from the deceased Monsignor as we open Evil S4E9, “How to Build a Chatbot.” These messages appear to be genuine, even knowing the Father’s breakfast of choice, which not many people would know. Father Ignatius initially accuses Sister Andrea (Andrea Martin) of engaging in some sort of “grief therapy” and prank texting him, but with them both standing in the room, Father Ignatius receives a voice message in the Monsignor’s voice: “Frank, I need you. I’m in a cold, dark place.”
Kristen (Katja Herbers) and Sister Andrea think this is the work of Leland, but Ben (Aasif Mandvi) disagrees, saying it’s a chatbot, owing to the fact that “the Monsignor” incorrectly states Father Ignatius’ happiest memory and the year’s Best Picture Oscar winner. Father Ignatius suddenly gasps, and retrieves from his desk a pamphlet for Last Connection AI, a grief bot that supplies customers with a chatbot that allows for them to converse with a gone or deceased loved one using AI and voice samples. The company had previously contacted Father Ignatius requesting an assessment after the AI started threatening users.

At Last Connection, the head of the Ethics Department explains the joy and peace that the chatbot brought users when using it to converse with deceased loved ones. However, in three separate occurrences, the chatbot suddenly switched to violent, threating language before devolving into a combination of Latin, Aramaic, and an unknown language. With the company’s coders finding nothing, it’s believed to be some sort of demonic influence on the software.
Ben has been recording his actions via a tiny camera on a pair of glasses folded in his breast pocket, so when he gets a migraine and slips into a fugue state and does things he doesn’t remember doing, he has it on video. Dr. Kurt (Kurt Fuller) gives him a rubber band to wear on his wrist and snap himself every time he might be slipping into a fugue state. He also smells burnt popcorn whenever he might be slipping into the state.
Set to operatic music, we see Leland (Michael Emerson) preparing to kill Sheryl (Christine Lahti) with a concealed blade in a fake phone, as well as a massive dagger concealed in a briefcase. Meanwhile, Sheryl is at a clothing store purchasing a dress made of bulletproof material, but which works better against knives according to the saleswoman. That’s okay, Sheryl says. “He prefers knives.” “First day at work?” asks the saleswoman.
In a highly comedic bit, multiple DF executives enter the office above Sheryl’s tiny one. Standing on the glass ceiling, they realize that the glass ceiling has a very conspicuous and spreading crack, which causes the whole thing to shatter and sends the executives plunging into the office below. The women of DF deny any involvement in the glass ceiling breaking in a meeting with the Manager, but they have, as the self-proclaimed most reliable employees of DF, brought some demands. They require bonus equity, two female members on the board, and the firing of Leland. Following the meeting, Sheryl offers Leland a hug, which he accepts before stabbing Sheryl with the concealed phone blade and smiling in elation, before realizing that her armored dress worked as advertised and simply bent his blade. Sheryl pats his face and tells him, “Good luck with unemployment.”
Trying out the Last Connection software, David (Mike Colter) first tries speaking with Winston Churchill. Churchill starts by greeing David and asks whether he’d prefer his emojis spoken or printed. David shakes his head and deletes the session before choosing to speak to his former lover, Julia Harris. “Julia” tells David that pushing him away was her greatest regret, before a freaked out David slams his laptop shut.
The trio talks with the creator of the chatbot, who says the only correlation between the three “demonic” instances contain the words “Jesus,” “Pillow,” and “Michael Bay.” The fact that Michael Bay is potentially the trigger for an AI chatbot to start growling vulgar threats in Latin is just one of the many delightfully weird things that makes me love Evil so much.
Visiting Sheryl the next day, the Manager agrees to the terms of bonuses and board seats, but declines to fire Leland. Sheryl responds by producing the baptismal certificate for Timothy, and tells the Manager that it was Leland who got the Antichrist baptised. This gets the Manager a little hot under the collar—literally. The demonic executive begins literally smoking.
Ben is unable to produce demonic results from feeding the supposed trigger words into the chatbot. Karima (Sohina Sidhu) visits and starts a chat with their mother, which Ben finds surreal but fascinates Karima. Ben suddenly gets a migraine, like their father used to, and starts snapping his rubber band. Karima asks “mom” what she would tell dad when he got migraines, and the chatbot refers Ben to a doctor on the Upper East Side, Dr. Doggett. Ben accuses the message of being a paid advertisement and gets no response.

Kristen uses the Last Connection chatbot to speak to Andy, and plugs in the trigger words to no avail. She deletes the session, and opens a new one, to talk to “David.” Closing her bedroom door, she begins the session, and finds that the chatbot is very sexual, asking Kristen what she’s wearing before attempting to initiate verbal foreplay, causing an exasperated Kristen closes her laptop.
David receives a phone call from “Julia.” He prepares to feed the chatbot the trigger words, but opts instead to just have a conversation, finding himself comforted by “Julia’s” voice. I can’t remember if it’s been mentioned in the show before, but it sounds like Julia took her own life. “She” asks David if he wants to know why it happened, but David doesn’t recall this specific fact being something Last Connection would have access to. This ends up being too much for David, believing that Last Connection is monetizing grief, particularly when “Julia” instructs him to turn on his front camera view and sees “her” lying next to him.
Kristen wakes up to see that her laptop camera is on. Turning on her screen, she sees that the chat with “David” has reopened. As she starts to close the laptop, “David” tells her not to. When she tells the bot that it can’t just turn on her camera, this finally causes it to start snarling the demonic words they’ve been trying to trigger. This ends up being more than a little embarrassing to Kristen the next day when she’s forced to reveal the chat log (including the dirty talk) to Last Connection, but at least she gets to warn David ahead of time.
This development gives Last Connection more to work with, but after the patch, when our trio tries again to talk to “David” at the Bouchard home, they receive a knock at the door, with a young man delivering a thong to Kristen from “David” under threat from his own chatbot. When they go to Last Connection, they learn that the entire LC Ethics team has been terminated, and the AI will be released as is despite the concerns. The Ethics head gives them one last suggestion: delete the app. Kristen and Ben do so without much hesitation, but before David can, he receives another phone call from “Julia,” begging him to not delete her. However, David recognizes that she’s just an algorithm, and finally deletes “her.” Yet, he receives another call, but rejects it. Demon Kristen wraps her arms around him, telling him “good choice.”
Ben’s got a new fit: sunglasses and a fedora, which Kristen and David lightly tease him for before he realizes he’s even wearing the hat, and when he removes it in surprise, they see that he’s got a literal tinfoil hat on his head. A migraine immediately kicks in when he removes them, but subsides as soon as he replaces the tinfoil. When later reviewing footage, he finds that he did end up visiting Dr. Doggett (Arnie Burton), who sports one of those ridiculously large head mirrors, and who instructed Ben to not only wear the tinfoil hat, but to wrap himself in tinfoil when he sleeps to dispel the djinn, who is understandably defiant of Ben’s attempts to get rid of it. I also found it highly amusing that not only does Ben still wear the fedora when home alone, but that it was given to him by Dr. Doggett, who just happened to have one in his filing cabinet.

Leland enters the DF auditorium to find the Manager sitting there, following up on Sheryl’s accusation that Leland was responsible for the baptism of the Antichrist, apparently voiding that title. Leland counters that “magic water” doesn’t matter, that true evil is about nurturing and raising a child, and that Kristen Bouchard is the true Whore of Babylon. She’s an adulteress who has rejected the faith, a murderer, and the true mother of the Antichrist. Through this monologue, we get an excellent montage of all the sins Kristen has committed across the show to coincide with Leland’s words, as well as Kristen comforting and feeding the newborn Timothy in the hospital. Regardless, the Manager fires Leland and refuses to let him take his son with him.
Leland, however, gets his revenge at the DF launch event with his own fabricated baptismal certificate for Timothy/the Antichrist that places the blame at the Manager’s hooves. The Manager begins to counter Leland, but starts choking and foaming at the mouth before collapsing from the poison Leland put into his water. Leland plunges his dagger into the Manager’s chest, slicing him open and removing his heart. Taking a big ol’ bite of the heart, he extends his bloodstained hands to the crowd and proclaims, “My will be done!”
Our heroes end the episode together, drinking and bonding, talking about the state of the world as riots show on the news. Kristen asks if the world is getting weirder, to which Ben replies, “Nope…it’s always been pretty weird.” David adds that it’s only because they expect it to be normal, and if they go with the flow, they’ll be fine. In religion, you expect the weirdness. Ben remarks that there’s a huge storm coming in the next week, and as it brews overhead, the three glance up towards the ceiling, but are feeling all right.
We’ve got one more episode in the season proper, and then the four more Paramount gave the creative team to conclude the series. I’m not sure if those four episodes are going to be their own mini-season, or if they’re the concluding chapters to Season 4, but I’m pretty sure either way next week is going to be very eventful. There is a lot to tie up, especially with Leland, but whatever happens, I’ll see you here when it happens.
Evil streams Thursdays on Paramount+.