Ash vs Evil Dead S03E09: Judgement Day Discussion [SPOILERS]

MaidOfKandar

I May Be Bad But I Feel...Good....
Staff member
Joined
Mar 31, 2013
Even in light of certain bad news, we've still got two more episodes to watch!

SO:

Welcome to this week's Ash vs Evil Dead episode discussion thread! Some additional ground rules to the basic ones on the forum for those who want to participate:

1: This and all future threads will be a choose to warn experience; IE you will not need to use spoiler bars to talk about things that happened in this and previous episodes.

2: It is, however, advisable to use spoiler bars if you want to talk about spoilers for an unaired episode.

3: Please be respectful of the opinions of your fellow Deadites; some people may not love the episode as much as you do; some may love it more. Discussion and debate are good things.



LAST WEEK'S THREAD:

Here!



SUMMARY:

Pablo’s role as Brujo Especiale has him straddling the worlds of good and evil to keep the rift open for Ash to save Brandy and Kelly, but they run into a snag. Ruby and Kaya face off with The Dark Ones.


TRAILER:




Clips:

1, 2, 3 and 4


Gallery:

@FarFarAway Site


Episode was written and directed by our old friend Rick Jacobson, who also wrote and directed the series finale.

All news, spoilers, clips and reactions pertaining to the episode are welcome!
 

Kevin

Loud Mouth Braggart
Joined
Dec 12, 2016
One of the best episodes of the entire damn series. Also listed next episode as the series finale. So upset right now... this show deserved better. :/
 

Joem1k

Hero from the Sky
Staff member
Joined
Aug 1, 2015
Here we fucking go guys, we wanted the end times. Here come the end times and god damn did they nail it.

I have so many thought's running through my mind but fucking hell that episode was horrific and intense on all levels.

The OG dark ones do not play the scheme game at all, they are blunt and to the point.
NOT THE CHAINSAW, ANYTHING BUT THE DAMN SAW. ROT IN HELL YOU WITCH!

Why did it have to be the god damn saw man....
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Kevin

Loud Mouth Braggart
Joined
Dec 12, 2016
Not going to lie. I started crying after watching this episode. This show has been everything I wanted personally (despite some issues) and the franchise has meant a lot to me since I was a child so it's been a hard pill to swallow that the show is dead. We knew it was coming but it's never real until the axe falls. I've seen a lot of my favorite shows get canceled over the years but this one is affecting me the most.
 

MaidOfKandar

I May Be Bad But I Feel...Good....
Staff member
Joined
Mar 31, 2013
Hmm, I'm of mixed opinion over here. On one hand the direction was amazing and the types of horror the episode encompassed were wide-ranging from all three aspects of the franchise (what happened to Zoe was TED/Remake-level brutal, there were a lot of AOD touches to Ash's fight with Ruby, and the shed bit with Brandy was pure ED2 - and I heard that "you must taste blood" ref!). Katrina Hobbes was so good I swear at times I thought she was Ellen Sandweiss. Also yay, I got a Linda mention!

While Ruby's death was satisfying - yeah, it was also a huge letdown that someone from the team didn't get to vanquish her, as predicted. She's obviously going to be no match for a team of highly powered Dark Ones but shouldn't 80s Ruby have some vestiges of the demonic magic to her? In her original form she literally rose from a funeral pyre alive. I don't know, I didn't think it was great.
 

Kevin

Loud Mouth Braggart
Joined
Dec 12, 2016
Hmm, I'm of mixed opinion over here. On one hand the direction was amazing and the types of horror the episode encompassed were wide-ranging from all three aspects of the franchise (what happened to Zoe was TED/Remake-level brutal, there were a lot of AOD touches to Ash's fight with Ruby, and the shed bit with Brandy was pure ED2 - and I heard that "you must taste blood" ref!). Katrina Hobbes was so good I swear at times I thought she was Ellen Sandweiss. Also yay, I got a Linda mention!

While Ruby's death was satisfying - yeah, it was also a huge letdown that someone from the team didn't get to vanquish her, as predicted. She's obviously going to be no match for a team of highly powered Dark Ones but shouldn't 80s Ruby have some vestiges of the demonic magic to her? In her original form she literally rose from a funeral pyre alive. I don't know, I didn't think it was great.

I got the distinct impression that the Dark Ones extracted her soul right out of her body. One could surmise that the soul was then trapped somewhere in Hell or completely destroyed or consumed by the Dark Ones themselves.
 

Joem1k

Hero from the Sky
Staff member
Joined
Aug 1, 2015
After what she did to ash's chainsaw,zoe,brandy and the list of others she's maimed and tortured, i don't think getting killed by ash or anyone else i felt was going to be a satisfying enough death for her.

Her dying by the hands of her own kind i felt was the more suitable route they could've went with her death in my opinion. It's long since been established since s1 she betrayed her own kind and left them to rot in some other realm, i felt it was a more fitting end for this version of ruby in general.

And i'm gonna say they literally sucked the power/essence out of her that made her a dark one as kevin said above.

God man, i don't know how to feel about waiting for next week.

On one hand i'm excited yet at the same time, this is it, THE ending for ash williams and possibly this whole franchise.

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Guy

Loud Mouth Braggart
Joined
Jan 2, 2016
Fucking yes! YES!

I've been wanting to see Ash's hometown overun with Evil since the first trailer for A Fistful of Boomstick. No cabin, no medieval castle, just a modern little town overrun with demons. When this show was announced I assumed I'd get that, but got a road trip instead. Season 2 brought it a lot closer to what I imagined by introducing the town, but this, this was utterly perfect.

Finally we see someone write a book page in the violent, medieval and gruesome way I always imagined it was written, just peeling that skin off. Finally we see the original cult-like demonic Dark Ones and Ruby now seems less like a powered human and more connected to the Lovecraftian style I imagined. Finally we see Ash facing a legit demonic apocalypse.

Add to that Brandy's movie-like trial by fire (some of the call back one liners were on the nose, but that Mom-Phone was fucking excellent and I want one), Pablo joing with the book finally becoming useful, the sinkholes from the end of Season 1 that never got explained finally have a link here.

I'm jazzed, people.
 
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Joem1k

Hero from the Sky
Staff member
Joined
Aug 1, 2015
@Guy

I saw in the promo pablo jumping into that new rift. Now this can only mean 2 things.

1. Since he has his foot in the realm of evil, i'm gonna assume his going to the dark ones realm to get the book back solid snake style since he blends in with the crowd and can't be touched by the evil force or he makes a deal with them.

2. We could be about to get a taste of the hellish world the dark ones reside in.

i'm pumped for this series finale, makes me wonder what the run-time will be for it and if they saved the longer episode for last.
 
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Guy

Loud Mouth Braggart
Joined
Jan 2, 2016
I just had to correct so many typos from my initial, super rushed, post-episode rambling that were all down to jittery excitement. I was honestly even excited when the evil force passed by Pablo and headed into the cemetery because I thought it was going to possess someone dead from Elk Grove I'd forgotten about (like Chet maybe), the episode just had that 'anything could happen' kind of energy to it.

Someone has to buy this show, they can't cancel it now, they've just gotten it all so right!
 

Nick el Ass

Hero from the Sky
Joined
Aug 20, 2007
Location
Indianapolis
That ladies and gents is without a doubt the best episode of the whole series, but now I'm even sadder thinking the show is ending right when they are hitting the right footing. It looks like a new showrunner has made all the difference in the world while Pablo and Brandy continue to wow, and poor Zoe may have had the most brutal death of all at the hands of Kelly/Kaya... but I was kind of disappointed with Kaya because we didn't get to see much if any of Danielle Cormack who went uncredited.

/The Dark Ones looked fantastic while seeing Ruby seductively destroy the chainsaw was something to behold.
 

DyD

Spinach Chin
Joined
Oct 31, 2015
Location
Votuporanga, Brazil
Fuckin' hell. If the show was always this good it wouldn't have been canceled.

This is Evil Dead. Unrelenting. Unforgiving. Unpredictable. Chaotic. Totally bonkers.

This is the atmosphere I always wanted the show to have. Unnerving, horror taken seriously, the funny bits were actually funny and came naturally.

THIS IS ASH. Smart. Sensitive. Master improviser. Relatable. Bullheaded. A common man put against insurmountable odds. His mistakes are accidental. I wish we had this Ash as the protagonist since the beginning.

I absolutely loved the Dark Ones. The special effects and LoDuca's score were AMAZING.

My only complaint is that the scenes with Brandy carbon copied ED2 a bit too much, but it isn't even that big a complaint.

@MaidOfKandar
I had no problem whatsoever with Ruby dying by the hands of the Dark Ones. In fact, I loved it. I think it was actually a better and more fitting conclusion to her convoluted mess of a storyline than getting dispatched by any of the main characters. At least Ash got to witness it and get a "fuck you" in before she was gone. I always had the feeling the main characters saw her more as a rock in their shoes they needed to get rid of than a personal antagonist. In the end it was her own past mistakes and bad decisions that killed her and she actually went out saying that Ash would be the one to defeat the Dark Ones and save the world, basically being forced to accept and believe in the things she was fighting against and trying to prevent. That was actually kinda poetic and very satisfying to watch.

@Crow550
It won't be the medieval times and there won't be any reference to characters from AoD or to a future movie, but if some spoilery images are to be believed, the ending to the show will be VERY similar to that. Which in my opinion, is the perfect way to end the series. I'm a firm believer that every chapter in Ash's story should end with him being thrown into an unknown situation far worse than the one he was in before. I wish every single season had ended like that.

So upset right now... this show deserved better. :/

Yeah, the show deserved better. For starters, it deserved better writers than the bunch of nincompoops who wrote for it during the first two seasons. Better writers, like the people who wrote these last three episodes. It also deserved showrunners, producers, network executives and a marketing team who knew what the fuck they were doing. I wish Mark Verheiden had been the showrunner from the start. Now we can truly fathom the extent of the damage DiGregorio caused.

I'm upset right there with you. The Ash vs. Evil Dead we got for these past three episodes is a completely different show than the one I've been watching for the past two and a half years. This AvED deserves to continue. Season 1 and 2 AvED deserved to get canceled and forgotten. If they could guarantee that a 4th season would follow this new path in writing, characterization and atmosphere, I'd be almost willing to campaign for it. They actually managed to fix about 75% of the issues I had with the show in just three episodes. It only took them two and a half seasons to get it right.
 
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Guy

Loud Mouth Braggart
Joined
Jan 2, 2016
Why are we using spoilers for this episode in the thread about this episode?

It's super confusing. I don't click them because I assume they're about the next episode.
 
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DyD

Spinach Chin
Joined
Oct 31, 2015
Location
Votuporanga, Brazil
Why are we using spoilers for this episode in the thread about this episode?

I only used spoiler tags because MaidOfKandar used them as well on the bit about Ruby I was replying to and Joem1k has gotten a bit sensitive about it in the last few episode threads. I only did it out of respect to them, but I agree with you.
 
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Surtur

Loud Mouth Braggart
Joined
Mar 11, 2018
@DyD this season actually has weight. Everything that happened this season has led to this, including the sperm bank. Where the morgue scene from last season was an American Pie joke at best, the sperm bank was a plot point, and played much more tastefully than they could have.

Yeah, this episode was so fantastic I think I need to jump on the campaign trail. Hell, that’s basically what got this show in the first place right? Except we’re low on time now, we can’t even much as wait another 10 years let alone 25.

At the same time, as much as I want more seasons, these last 4 episodes have made for such a fitting and gratifying end that Ash deserves.
 
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