Hail, Satan! What Made ‘Evil’ So Wickedly Good: TV Review

SPOILER ALERT: This review contains spoilers from “Fear of the End,” the series finale of “Evil,” now streaming on Paramount+.

Only on a show like “Evil” would a relatively happy ending include unleashing the Antichrist on the Vatican. In the paranormal procedural’s final minutes, psychologist Kristen Bouchard (Katja Herbers) and Father David Acosta (Mike Colter) have transferred to Rome, where they’ll continue to assess potential demonic possessions despite the deconsecration of their previous home base in New York. There’s just a couple of catches. First, the assessment trio is now a duo, with scientist Ben (Aasif Mandvi) opting to remain stateside. Second, the baptism of Kristen’s infant son Timothy — potentially the devil’s prophet — doesn’t seem to have fully taken, putting a demonic harbinger of the apocalypse within spitting distance of the Holy See.

Over four seasons — really, four seasons and an abbreviated four-episode run in lieu of a fifth — “Evil” developed a seeming allergy to the unambiguous. Creators Robert and Michelle King had previously honed a paradoxical tone on legal dramas “The Good Wife” and “The Good Fight,” at once morally nuanced and brazenly absurd. With “Evil,” the married showrunners heightened both extremes, turning their focus from secular politics to existential matters like eternal souls. But while its title may imply the show deals in absolutes, “Evil” never had much use for a definitive stance. The final quartet of episodes may not have had time to tie off every thread as neatly as they could, but a little mess feels entirely in keeping with a universe populated by nuns, djinn, doppelgängers and telepathic priests, among many more curiosities. So does an ending that’s optimistic and ominous in equal measure, with little indication which side will ultimately win out.

“Evil” reminds me a bit of Damon Lindelof’s “The Leftovers,” in that describing any plot point out of context makes you sound like one of Dr. Bouchard’s patients. (To wit: In the final pseudo-season premiere, Anna Chlumsky of “Veep” plays a woman who plausibly claims to be one of Kristen’s daughters who has time-traveled through a wormhole to warn her family about coming catastrophes, but turns out to be schtupping Kristen’s husband while wearing an animal mask in the mental hospital where both of them are inpatients. Capisce?) But unlike “The Leftovers,” this show’s embrace of gray areas does not extend to whether or not the supernatural is actually afoot. Only some assessor cases turn out to be Satanic in nature, but there’s definitely a conglomerate called DF Global run by a naked goat humanoid known as The Manager.

The question Kristen, David and Ben investigate is not whether cosmic evil is real, but how to live a decent life in a world where it stubbornly persists. Through dozens of cases, the files for which the crew casually burn in a bonfire as they prepare to wind things down, “Evil” is equally critical toward and sympathetic to its protagonists’ chosen approaches. Ben is a dyed-in-the-wool skeptic who ends up wearing a literal tinfoil hat because it helps prevent his recurring migraines, whether or not it’s scientifically sound. David is a deeply committed Catholic who tortures himself by choosing the priesthood over his obvious connection with Kristen, who serves as a kind of intermediary. She’s an agnostic, not an atheist, and flirts with both David and Ben’s belief systems over the course of the series. Going forward, Ben’s absence might be more foreboding than Timothy’s apparent fangs. David’s primary colleague and close friend thousands of miles from home is also his greatest temptation. How sustainable is that?

Besides their own worst instincts — Kristen once killed a guy with an ax! — “Evil” pits its central trio against Leland Townsend (Michael Emerson), a smirking, bespectacled figure who’s far more menacing than some of the show’s traditional terrors. (Though Kristen’s literal sleep paralysis demon wearing her late mother’s wig certainly got the job done.) One of the many theater legends who populate the Kings’ New York-area sets, Emerson could easily toggle between the banality of the eponymous concept and its giggling, hysterical extremes. It was Leland who stole one of Kristen’s eggs to become Timothy’s biological father, and Leland who Kristen nearly strangled to death in the finale when he breaks into her home. Only the intervention of Ben and David, her better angels, keeps Kristen from crossing the line again.

The “Evil” aversion to absolutes made itself most felt in terms of tone. The Kings are masters at using the episodic structure of network television — “Evil” began on CBS before shifting to streaming — to their advantage, using the stable baseline of a case-of-the-week format as a Trojan horse. Like the “Good” shows before it, “Evil” could take on any subject, from social media to oligopoly to workplace misogyny. Such flexibility extended to genre: “Evil” could be comedic, horrific and heartfelt, often in the space of a single scene. To cite one example of hundreds, Andrea Martin’s scene-stealing Sister Andrea could be luring demons with a bowl of marshmallows (apparently, they have a sweet tooth) in one moment, then confronting her guilt over a lost love in the next. You could never guess where “Evil” was going, nor would you want to. Why lose the surprise of beloved character actor Richard Kind suddenly beheading a young woman with a sword?

With its spooky bent and believer-cynic spectrum, “Evil” clearly walked in the footsteps of “The X-Files.” But the religious emphasis also made it unique. “Evil” was consistently critical of the Catholic Church as an institution, with Kristen especially balking at its patriarchal nature. The show nonetheless took faith seriously — and made the case for it as the ideal framework to understand an increasingly chaotic world. We may not understand, or know how to defeat, the shadowy forces working to make life worse for many to benefit just a few. We can only place our trust in loved ones and, just maybe, a higher power that things can work out for the better.

All four seasons of “Evil” are now streaming on Paramount+.