Ash vs Evil Dead is a web series that is set many years into the future, after the events of the Evil Dead trilogy. And that’s the premise of the show. The Evil Dead trilogy include The Evil Dead, The Evil Dead II and Army of Darkness. There was a prequel film titled Evil Dead which didn’t do as well, and is ignored in this web series continuation.
To understand the web series, we first need to talk about the trilogy movie franchise. In 1981, Sam Raimi wrote and directed a supernatural comedy horror thriller titled the Evil Dead which had a budget of less than USD 400,000 and made over USD 20 million in the box office worldwide. This movie has been called one of the most successful independent movies of all time as well as one of the greatest horror movies of all time. Naturally this movie (and the eventual film) got a cult following and both of its sequels – The Evil Dead II and Army of Darkness went on to become hugely successful. The protagonist – Ash Williams has gone on to become a cultural icon world wide.
The Evil Dead follows a group of college students who go to an isolated cabin in the woods for a holiday. They play a tape, which seems to be spouting incantation and it ends up resurrecting a demonic entity. This entity releases even more of its underlings and they possess the young students one by one, until only one of them is standing.
In the new, now Netflix-streaming web series, the series is set 30 years after the events of Army of Darkness. Ash Williams, after coming back from 1300 A.D., has done nothing in the past 30 years, and is living his life out in a trailer and drinking alone. But he is forced to take up arms again and leave behind his mundane existence, after the titular Evil Dead rises again. Two new characters join him in his quest to save humanity this time around – Pablo Simon Bolivar and Kelly Maxwell.
All three seasons of Ash Vs Evil Dead are currently streaming on Netflix.