Ash Vs. Evil Dead recap: Books from Beyond

Say you’ve accidentally called forth a powerful, ancient evil. There are a couple of strategies you might employ to set the situation right, but… conjuring a demon to ask for advice? Not a good idea. So, naturally, that’s exactly what Ash decides to do.

When our favorite “alone wolf” arrives at Books from Beyond (“Guy with a very special book, looking to save the world with it…”), proprietor Lionel Hawkins is in back with Amanda, who is still on leave but still following up on the lead she uncovered at Mossy Haven Trailer Park. As she departs, she takes note of Ash, and after glancing again at the police artist’s sketch of the trailer park murder suspect, she heads back inside, weapon drawn to arrest him. Ash tells her she’s got the wrong guy, just as Pablo, who had been waiting outside in the Olds with Kelly, knocks Amanda to the floor, realizing too late that he’s assaulting a cop. They handcuff an unconscious Amanda to a chair, and Kelly agrees to watch over her, saying it will give her some time to “rethink her recent life choices.”

In the store room, a very excited Lionel asks if Ash truly understands what he has in his possession — a gateway to hell, a way to summon evil into our Earthly realm (cue a more detailed sequence about the Necronomicon itself). He does point out that the book is harmless unless it is wielded by someone very evil, or very stupid (see, there’s your trouble). After Lionel finds a passage that cryptically suggests “the annulment lies inside the origin of the man,” Pablo is disappointed, lamenting the fact that they can’t simply summon an easy answer. That’s when Ash gets the bright idea to conjure the weakest demon available and just ask it what to do. The being they settle on? One that has knowledge of “hidden things” who preys on the spiritually and emotionally weak. “He can do that on his own time,” says Ash. “Get him out. Let’s chat.”

Just as Lionel sets to work on a summoning spell, Amanda wakes up, demands Kelly free her, and tries to warn her that Ash is responsible for a lot of bad things (like, say, what’s transpiring in the next room?). Amanda tells Kelly that everywhere Ash goes people end up dead, but Kelly says that without him, she, too, would be a member of that unfortunate club, that he saved her life from “someone close to her.” Amanda confesses that she inexplicably had to shoot her partner of 10 years not so long ago, and she tells Kelly that if she and her friends are fighting against the things that she’s seen, then they are on the same side.

Speaking of things to fight against, an eyeless, ice blue demon with a massive toothy maw arrives in a gust of wind, but the creature, which bears a strong resemblance to one of Clive Barker’s sadistic Cenobites, only offers to answer Ash’s queries if he is freed from the conjuring circle Lionel drew on the ground to contain him. Ash tells Lionel to send the creature back, as Amanda bursts in the room, insisting that Ash drop his shotgun. He refuses, but he accidentally steps inside the protective circle (who could have seen that coming??), allowing the snarling demon to attack him. Amanda shoots the thing, which only distracts it long enough to knock her senseless and launch shards of glass toward Lionel. Poor Lionel.

Pablo fires a shot that again momentarily interrupts the demon’s work, but it then takes both Pablo and Ash in its clutches, with an ominous pronouncement: “Humanity’s time is at an end.” Maybe, maybe not. Kelly smacks it with the Necronomicon, and it vanishes. Ash helps Amanda to her feet, and she handcuffs him—but he easily gives her the slip (“lost my pal Woody in the process”), leaving her locked up inside the shop with Deadite Lionel. Oh oh. Not realizing that they’ve left the detective in peril, Pablo suggests that he, Ash and Kelly together (newly dubbed “the Ghostbeaters” by Pablo) go to visit his estranged uncle, the shaman, who perhaps can help them resolve their supernatural conundrum. Ash is willing to give it a go. He kinda likes the idea of running with a pack for a while.

And where’s Lucy Lawless’ Ruby? At the opening of the episode, she’s seen speeding toward the Maxwell’s house, where Kelly’s Deadite Dad rises from the grave to attack her. Bad plan. He ends up impaled on one of those makeshift wooden crosses, with Ruby demanding to know if Ash has the Necronomicon. She takes out a very wicked-looking knife (if I didn’t know better, I’d swear that’s a Kandarian Dagger…) to torture him for details. She’s last glimpsed speeding away into the night, presumably on Ash’s trail? Maybe we’ll know more next week.