Yahoo News Evil Recap: You Win Some, You Muse Some
As much as I don’t want to acknowledge it, Evil‘s final season is nearly halfway over. But just in case any Bigwig Powers That Be out there are reading this, a pitch: A series in which Katja Herbers’ Kristen goes from town to town, befriending (and more?) oddly entrancing young women.
Because, after seeing her interact with Fenna the nun in Season 2’s silent episode and Isabella the possibly witchy dancer in this week’s, I’d watch the hell out of that show. THE HELL OUTTA IT.
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Read on for the highlights of “How to Dance in Three Easy Steps.”
DANCE LIKE THE DEVIL IS WATCHING | The hour opens on a woman dancing. When the camera pulls back, we see she’s moving melodically in some kind of cell; no music is playing.
A priest tells David, Kristen and Ben, who are watching from a window in the door, that she’s been dancing like that for two months. “She dances until she collapses, then she’s up again.” The woman killed her children; “When the police arrived,” the priest says, “she was dancing in their blood.” The woman said something mad her do it, and her parents have requested an exorcism.
The woman’s name is Katherine and, when she meets with the trio, she says she can’t stop moving or “bad things will happen to you and everyone you love.” Kristen asks who’ll hurt them, and Katherine stops moving and starts speaking in a deep, demonic voice, saying, “I will.” Then, in the demon’s voice, she speaks callously about why the kids had to die.
Kristen diagnoses bipolar schizoaffective disorder, which doesn’t quite explain how Katherine had the strength to toss three guards across the room the day before. Anyway, she’s healthy enough to be exorcised, so it’s on.
A NEW ASTRAL CRISIS | But first, David has to deal with a summons from Father Dominic, who shows him a Bible, a rosary and a bullet that belonged to some Ethiopian clerics who’ve been taken hostage. The Church doesn’t know where the captives are being held, but they’re hoping that, with the aid of some coordinates, David can astral project himself into the situation and help figure it out. But David’s visuals don’t make any sense, and a frustrated Father Dominic orders him to take a break and pray in order to rid himself of some of his “AOLs,” or analytical overalys, that make him interpret what he sees instead of just seeing it. Then, Father Dominic pulls back a wall, and we see that David’s interrogation room is just a very brightly lit section of the rectory. Weird!
When Katherine snaps one of her restraints during her exorcism, David jumps in to help the priests praying over her. He’s just a few lines into The Lord’s Prayer when the room around him fuzzes out and is replaced by a much different scene: He’s having a vision of the captured Ethiopian priests and nun. In fact, he is one of the captured priests. He’s there for a moment, singing a song to help calm his fellow prisoners, before a soldier comes in and hits him. That jolts David back to the prison exorcism, where Kristen instantly notices that her pal is a little off. He takes her hand and starts singing the song the Ethiopian priest was singing; everyone stops talking and stares. And that’s the exact moment when Katherine flatlines and dies.
The prison doctor says she went into cardiac arrest, likely affected by an electrolyte imbalance. Oh, and Katherine’s feet are now gangrenous, though they were fine before she died. And what’s that tattoo on her ankle?
STAMP OF DEMONIC APPROVAL | “Annnnnnnd we’re back with sigils again,” Ben says when they place the tattoo image among the other demonic signs on that big poster. But David’s confused: The house has already been “vanquished” by The Entity. So he takes the matter to Father Dominic, who fears the house may have been “restored.” David also shares what he saw during the exorcism, and his details about a monument he recalls seeing outside the prisoners’ room makes Father Dominic so happy, he hugs him. “This will save lives!” he says before running out.
DECONSTRUCTIVE CRITICISM | Dr. Boggs has hired someone to give feedback on his manuscript, which apparently features a group of cannibalistic girls who want to eat their mother but has no other plot. And when the guy says the book is a piece of trash, Boggs throw him out of his office and has a hissy fit that ends up with papers all over the floor. One, a pamphlet for some kind of organization about “seeking meaning in a world of sorrow,” catches his eye. We’ll catch up with the good doc again in a few minutes.
DANCING AROUND THE SUBJECT | Kristen, David and Ben go to Katherine’s old dance company, where the choreographer is such an abusive jerk that it causes David to utter “f—king piece of s—t!” once they’re outside. Kristen tries talking to one of the other dancers, Isabella; they hit it off, and Isabella invites her to the performance that night to get a “better sense of what The Movement really does.” Odd way to put it, but OK? She gives her a ticket and advises her to “wear white tonight” before taking off.
Meanwhile, Ben’s found a former member of the troupe who made a video accusing the group of recruiting her for satanism. At the rectory, she tells our trio that the women, not the choreographer, are the problem — especially Isabella — and that they put a hex on Katherine because they were threatened by her. David and Ben are convinced that the dancers are the demonic house represented by the tattoo on Katherine’s body, but Kristen says she’ll ask more questions when she goes to the performance that evening.
So she goes… and brings Ben and David with her, which irks Isabella. Kristen gets her to talk a little bit more about Katherine by agreeing to Isabella’s request to check out her bare feet (side note: The look David and Ben exchange at this is so good), and she likes what she sees: She asks Kristen to stick around after the show.
During the performance, a woman with a white veil over her face seems to levitate in the middle of the rest of the dancers. “Do you see that?” David asks Ben; Ben does not. The figure floats right up to David in the audience, whispers something in his ear, then screams.
WITCH IS A STATE OF MIND | The next day, Father Dominic tells David & Co. that the sigil in question was wiped from the Earth 200 years ago, but “now it appears to be revitalized.” And… it’s run by witches, though Father Dominic hesitates to use that word. “Why?” Kristen asks, cheekiness on high. “You have no concern about keeping women from abortion or birth control. Why stop now?”
She later points out to David and Ben that the three of them have assessed FAR more women than men, and after David makes some boneheaded comments about women being more “sensitive” and easier for demons to manipulate, Kristen puts forth a different theory: “When women go against their accepted roles, the Church labels them as ‘possessed’ or ‘witches.’”
On that note: David is hearing confessions the next day when Isabella slides into the compartment next to him and says she wants to talk. She saw “the spirit of the show” talking to him, and she’s wondering what it said. “It told me to shed my god and know greatness,” he reports, calling the apparition “demonic.” She corrects him: It was a muse. She instructs him to pray to it, then leaves.
David goes right into another vision of the captive Ethiopian priests, only this time he’s the general coming for them with a machete. He is able to break the vision long enough to pray for help, and it seems like it comes: David is able to stop the man from killing the priest, having him turn the blade on himself instead. David comes to on the floor of the confessional, highly out of sorts.
When Father Dominic tells him that the general did, indeed, kill himself, David is shocked and says he wants to confess. “No, you don’t,” the other priest corrects him. “It’s a good thing, no matter how it happened. It’s God’s work.” He tries to tell Dominic that the work is harming him, but the fact that he’s saving lives trumps all, Father Dominic maintains.
BUILDING ONE’S BRAND | They’re interrupted by Megan, the former dancer who made the video about The Movement. She was walking along, minding her business, when she heard cackling all around and felt a pain in her side — she’d been branded with the sigil. She reports that the women are dancing in the woods that night to visit vengeance upon anyone who opposes them, just like they did the night before Katherine killed her children. And did I mention that Isabella’s invited Kristen to that evening’s performance?
Kristen shows up, dressed again in white, and joins Isabella and the ladies. The muse flits around them, Kristen and Isabella canoodle, it’s a whole scene. David and Ben show up and accuse Isabella of black magic and burning Megan, but then Ben realizes that the sigil on Megan is upside down and she’s got soot on her hands — both seem to indicate she burned herself on purpose. A quick call later, and Father Dominic is having Megan hauled away for being instrumental in the killing of Katherine’s children. Her screams, in some demonic-sounding language, seem to back up his point.
RAD G, STIRRING UP STUFF | Sheryl calls her granddaughters who are home alone, and asks them to bring a stuffed animal of Timothy’s that she “left” — so why was it in an upstairs closet? — when she was there the night of the bats. Lynn knows her mom won’t be happy that they’re talking to Rad G again, but they go.
After acting out Boggs’ manuscript for Timothy, the Bouchard girls decide to use AI to make a picture book based on the story. They use their own photos and put everything online. Boggs knows nothing about this until later, when the guy he paid to give him notes on the work calls to grovel and ask for a co-writing role — because the video the girls posted already has half a million views. Boggs quickly types “cannibal mom” into a search engine and finds the Bouchard sisters’ creation, which has his name trending somewhere between “Taylor Swift” and “Kim Kardashian.”
The girls show Timothy the story during another trip to Sheryl’s, where Rad G is very upset when she sees that Laura has the bag of herbs from That Night with Andy hanging off her bookbag. Sheryl quickly pulls Lynn into another room to get the real story about Andy’s predicament from the eldest sister: “He was having addiction issues, and he fell down on the floor with a needle.” In a rage, Sheryl speeds over to Leland’s and, when she realizes he’s not there, she trashes the place.
When Dr. Townsend returns home, he finds “You’re dead, motherf—ker” written in blood on the floor, and Sheryl — still holding a butcher’s knife — waiting for him.
Now it’s your turn. What did you think of the episode? Sound off in the comments!
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