Hawk Ripjaw
The following recap contains spoilers for Evil S4E12 “Fear of the Other” (directed by Sam Hoffman and written by Dewayne Darian Jones and Louisa Hill)
Evil S4E12, “Fear of the Other,” opens with a really cool upside-down shot moving down a hotel hallway, slowly rotating until it’s right side up and landing on Sister Andrea (Andrea Martin) sitting in a chair at the end of the hall holding a tire iron. A figure peeks out from behind a corner towards the end of the hall. Sister Andrea asks what it wants and it recedes. In an exceptional jump scare that nearly sent me through the ceiling, the figure is suddenly on the floor covered in blood while a man standing next to Sister Andrea points and screams.
Kristen (Katja Herbers), David (Mike Colter) and Ben (Aasif) stand in David’s office, looking at the piles and piles of unfinished assessments and wondering how to prioritize in the two weeks they have left before the assessor program is terminated, in a very unsubtle parallel to Evil being cancelled with limited time to wrap up. Sister Andrea enters with an assessment, asserting that the one she has is going to be their next one.
The case involves Paul (Nate Corddry), the screaming man from the opening, who shows the trio a video upload of him trying out different coffees. The problem, and the reason Paul is requesting an exorcism, is that the man in the video is not him, but someone who looks like him—-a doppelganger. Through other videos, Paul has learned that the doppelganger is named Gregory. In another video, Gregory kills himself by pouring gasoline on himself and setting himself on fire, and Paul believes that Gregory is now inhabiting him. We also learn Paul’s father, Paul Sr., was in love with Sister Andrea and eventually took his own life.
In the courtroom, Leland’s lawyer Mr. Stick has called Dr. Kurt (Kurt Fuller) to the stand, to Kristen’s shock and dismay. As Dr. Kurt prepares to speak, he looks up and sees Stick as he truly is, the hulking demon. Flustered, the doctor asserts that Leland is insane, playing ball with Leland’s threat from last week. However, as Kristen begins to storm out of the courtroom, Dr. Kurt adds that Leland’s mental state poses a danger to society and that he should be locked away. Leland turns to Stick. “Oh, he’s dead.” We’ve got a new type of Kurt Alert this week, and I fear for the good doctor’s life.
Sister Andrea states that every night at 2 a.m., Gregory wakes up within Paul and Paul sleepwalks. She’s invited the trio to join her at the hotel where Paul is living. While waiting for something to happen, Kristen happily informs them that the billionaire climber that bought the Bouchard climbing business is going to pay Kristen $800,000, which will keep her and the kids afloat until she can find something else. Ben, meanwhile, is “sick of this Scooby-Doo sh*t” and ready to get back to something more science-related. It’s a fun little conversation between the three, and I’m really going to miss the dynamic.
Sister Andrea begins scattering candy around the hotel hallway, stating that demons have a sweet tooth. The four return to the hotel room to find Paul standing in the corner, facing the wall. He states that he’s not Paul, but nods when Sister Andrea addresses him as Gregory and states that although he is dead, he lives inside Paul. Kristen asks Gregory why he committed suicide, and Gregory responds, “He wanted me to.” When Kristen asks who “he” is, Gregory wordlessly turns around, exits the room, and proceeds down the hall. Halfway down the hall, he gives a weird shrug and Paul falls to the ground while Gregory continues walking.
Kristen, David and Ben all tend to the unconscious Paul while Sister Andrea follows Gregory down the hall. She asks the doppelganger who he is. He slowly turns around, and his blank face suddenly twists into a creepy, inhuman smile with sharp teeth before the title card flashes with a clap of thunder.
Yasmine calls Kristen to tell her that the climber that was supposed to pay Kristen instead paid Andy, at ten cents on the dollar for $80,000. She tries to put on a happy face when she goes to visit David and Ben at Ben’s apartment, where Ben shares that he’s been offered an extremely lucrative job. She spills the news to her friends after they notice that she seems a bit off, but she insists that she’s fine. Kristen tells the girls (Brooklyn Shuck, Skylar Grey, Maddy Crocco and Dalya Knapp) that they need to do a little penny pinching, and the girls immediately get to work on devising a way to earn their mother some money. This comes in the form of them creating a GoFundMe for Laura, featuring a photoshop to make her look extremely sick. It ends up working, with the campaign earning the Bourchards a large amount of donations and so many flower bouquets they can barely fit in the house. Kristen isn’t happy with what her daughters have done, but she suddenly gets an idea to open her own practice, with referrals from Dr. Kurt.
Ben has discovered a website with which users can upload a picture of themselves and search the web for a doppelganger. They’ve found another doppelganger for Paul, one living a happy life, to hopefully eliminate Gregory as a conduit for Paul’s depression. Seeing his happy, fulfilled other lookalike, Paul decides that he wants to call his wife. Mission accomplished? Even Sister Andrea looks hopeful.
Ben uses the website to find his doppelganger, and locates him: a man with a wife and child, happy together. Kristen stops short of uploading her own picture, but instead uploads one of David. His doppelganger is a fitness nut, also passionate about his life and happy. We can guess why Kristen did this, and it’s all but confirmed when she has a sexy dream about David’s doppelganger. It takes until the end of the episode for Kristen to finally upload her own image, and she too finds that her doppelganger is a happy, carefree woman playing guitar in a village street.
Unfortunately, the happy Paul doppelganger doesn’t last long. To his horror, his wife is not pleased to see him on the virtual call, telling him that he had already called her the previous night graphically instructing her to murder their children, and would be including that recording with the restraining order against him. Gregory’s actions send Paul over the edge and he swallows a bottle of sleeping pills. He survives, but barely.
Sister Andrea once again sees the figure at the end of the hall. Following it, she finds in the room at the end of the hall Paul Sr., with a hole in the side of his head from his suicide. He tells her that he wants to show her something, and leads her into the adjoining room where she finds her own doppelganger kneeling in the corner. Doppelganger Sister Andrea gets up, holding a shovel. She calls Sister Andrea a “most unholy demon,” and swings the shovel at her head.
I was really worried that the next scene was going to be Sister Andrea in the ER and possibly another main character death, but no physical harm came to Sister Andrea. However, seeing a manifestation of Paul Sr. and her own doppelganger has left her in bad shape. David is surprised to find that Sister Andrea is visiting him for Confession. Weeping, Sister Andrea confesses that her piety turned Paul Sr. away from God, that she is the reason Paul Sr. took his own life, and now he is in hell. David assures her that God can even forgive suicide. Sister Andrea recites the Act of Contrition and quickly leaves the confessional booth.
Leland takes the stand in his trial. When Stick (John Carroll Lynch) questions him about his prisoners in the People Juice Room, Leland spins it into an intravenous therapy for his patients, and when questioned about the deaths of his “patients,” Leland lays the blame on Sheryl and her “obsession” of diverting the People Juice for her own youth. Sister Andrea enters the courtroom and, smelling something, sees Stick as the demon he is, approaches him, informs him that he has lost the element of surprise, and reaffirms to Kristen that Stick is the evil coming to New York.
Kristen takes the stand in Leland’s court hearing. She details Leland’s defense of faking insanity and demonic possession, and she’s got receipts, handing the Judge Jeter (Richard Kind) a file with instructions on how to do so. When Stick objects to Kristen’s statement on harassment, Kristen has another file with the restraining order. And another, with a photograph of Leland approaching Lexis at school. And then another about the Bumblee Valley incident. Every new file Kristen held up just got more and more satisfying. Kristen ends her testimony with a world-class emotional performance crying about her mother’s legacy, punctuated with a vindictive glance through her fingers at Leland. Finally, the prosecution has one more witness, and Leland immediately realizes that Leslie (Molly Brown) is about to roll over on him.
Leslie arrives at the courtroom, and, glancing at Stick, has a look of horror come over her face as she sees him as the demon. Judge Jeter asks to speak to Leslie in his chambers. There, he asks Leslie if she’s being at all intimidated by Leland. She replies that he’s not, but she knows what he’s capable of. Then, the judge asks if she’s still willing to testify, and Leslie, smiling, confidently replies that she is. “Good,” says Judge Jeter, patting her on the shoulder. He then moves to the wall, removes a sword hanging there, and decapitates Leslie. WHAT?? I had to pick my jaw up off of the floor; this has to have been one of the most shocking turn of events in recent Evil memory. Judge Jeter wraps up poor Leslie and her head in the sheet on the floor and chucks her out of the window into the dumpster below. Again, this scene is punctuated by a fantastic score. Back in the courtroom, Judge Jeter declares Leslie a no-show and dismisses the case, meaning Leland goes free. When Leland asks Stick how he did it, Stick replies, “Everyone has a price on their soul.”
David makes a last-ditch effort to save the assessor program, but receives even worse new from the Archdiocese: not only is the program being terminated, but the church itself is being sold off. Finances are worse than originally known, and David’s parish is one of the five chosen to be deconsecrated, with David and the other priests and nuns being forced to move out and be reassigned.
The trio with Sister Andrea go to Paul’s exorcism, which is already underway. During the exorcism, Paul takes on his father’s voice, accusing Sister Andrea of leaving him and leading him to kill himself. Sister Andrea remains strong, demanding that the demon leave Paul. The demon tries one more thing: taking on the voice of Paul as a child and begging to know why he wasn’t good enough for his dad to stay. In an emotional moment, Sister Andrea takes Paul’s hand and says that she doesn’t know why, but what she does know is that no one wants us to follow him into death. Paul vomits, and the demon is expelled.
I’m thinking the doppelgangers of Paul and Sister Andrea are a demon of guilt. The core three’s “real life” doppelgangers are all good people enjoying their lives, which means that all doppelgangers aren’t evil, while the demonic doppelgangers of Paul and Sister Andrea are manifestations of their individual guilt over their loved ones taking their lives.
A very depressed David comes across Sister Andrea playing the piano in the room where they usually take on assessments, with pictures and other decorative items already taken down and moving boxes ready for loading. David tells Sister Andrea that he thought if he followed the path of righteousness, things would fall into place, but he’s never felt more lost. Sister Andrea invites David to sit next to her on the piano bench, and guides David’s hand to the piano. Together, they play the Heavenly Chord. Suddenly the room is filled with a bright light. “See?” Sister Andrea says. “He’s here with us, in this very room.”
Evil gets a little spooky again this week with the doppelganger stuff, and the court hearing involving Leland was compelling, even if it was completely predictable that the villain would be walking free by the end of the episode. However, Judge Jeter’s murder of Leslie was something I never saw coming. There’s a sense of melancholy setting in with the show coming to an end, mirrored by the the characters coming to terms with the end of the assessor program, yet I appreciated the warm ending. But it’s not over quite yet, and there’s still plenty to wrap up.
Two more episodes…
Evil streams Thursdays on Paramount+.
