The Kings End Evil’s One-of-a-Kind Horror on a High Note
Series creators Robert and Michelle King discuss the devil that was in the details of that bittersweet series finale.
Photo Courtesy of Paramount+
It’s always the way, isn’t it? Something you love finally gets the attention that it deserves, only to be canceled. Such is the fate of Paramount+’s Evil. At the end of April, the first two seasons hit Netflix, and it’s since become a mainstream streaming hit. Creators Robert and Michelle King, along with its cast and crew, hoped that would be the show’s saving grace, but no such luck. Right after the writer’s strike ended in late 2023, Paramount+ declined to pick up a Season 5. They gave the Kings four more episodes to wrap up the investigations of Catholic Church supernatural assessors Dr. Kristen Bouchard (Katja Herbers), Catholic priest David Acosta (Mike Colter) and tech expert Ben Shakir (Aasif Mandvi), and their ongoing battles with Satan’s finest son, Dr. Leland Townsend (Michael Emerson).
In the series finale, titled “Fear of the End,” Robert King directs his last episode from a script by Rockne S. O’Bannon & Nialla Lebeouf, which wraps up a lot (but not all) mythology issues, lets the extended cast have a moment to shine (including Kristen’s gaggle of daughters), and gives us definitive futures for all of the main characters, including Andrea Martin’s sassy Sister Andrea.
In an exclusive conversation with Paste Magazine, the Kings were more than willing to dig into how they approached bringing this special show to an end, and explain how they crafted some of the big revelations that added so much to this satisfying swan song.
Note: This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Paste Magazine: Let’s start with the fact that I’m so sad this is a series finale discussion, but you stuck the landing. Going back to the end of the writer’s strike, Paramount+ said they weren’t interested in going forward with Evil, and gave you four episodes to finish it up. How do you even approach that task when you know that you have so much story that you could tell if you were given the opportunity?
Michelle King: It does sort of focus the mind, because it’s very much, “Okay, how do we land the plane?” You start by saying, “All right, what are the big outstanding questions, and what do we need to answer?”
Robert King: We always had a category on our board called “hanging chads” which were, at the end of each season, what did we think were the audience’s biggest questions?
Michelle: One of the writers, Rockne S. O’Bannon, was particularly good at keeping a meticulous list.
Paste: O’Bannon created Farscape, so he deeply understands meticulous genre fans. What was left hanging that he, or the other writers, knew audiences would excoriate you for not addressing?
Robert: That is a really good question. We’re most obsessed with, “Where is the character?” We’re about the relationships and the arcs for them. Do we feel like we satisfied the arc? I think Rockne was aware of the 60 [demonic houses], obviously, and the design of the mythology. There seemed to be a lot of harbinger talk about “the evil” coming to New York, and things like that. Sometimes, we just like things because they sound good at the moment. And Rockne is so much more obsessed, like, “Okay, well, what is that?” I think the note [in “Fear of the End”]—which is handed to Denis O’Hare’s character saying, “Welcome. Let me introduce you to the evil company in New York.”—when he opens the note, the “You” was a way for us to turn it around on the Vatican’s Entity. The evil in that moment is the killer is coming in. We wanted to answer them, even if the whole point was not to answer evil in general. Because we don’t feel the uncanny and evil really are best served to be answered. They are darkness beyond our understanding, in a way. If they say about Jesus and God, it’s peace that’s beyond our understanding, then is evil beyond our understanding too? And that, I think, is key for the ending, not to have it wrapped up with a bow.
Paste: The 60 families matching the 60 neural areas of the brain is brilliant. Was that something you discovered a while ago or you solved writing the last four?
Michelle: We discovered that along the way to the end. It was not something that we thought about when we introduced the concept of the 60.
Robert: I would say that comes down to Dewayne Darian Jones, one of our writers, and Aurin Squire and maybe Rockne. I think there was a conversation about how neuralinks are coming into fashion—in reality, by the way—and how they would infect regions in the brain. Out of that, someone said there are 50 or 60 regions in the brain. I was like, “Wait a minute! Wait, what did you just say? Say that again. Isn’t there something else that has the word 60 in it?” So that was happenstance, but it comes from brilliant writers who are also brilliant researchers and are interested in the world. If there’s any advice to writers trying to get into a writers’ room, it’s to be interested in the whole world, because it has to be brought into [the room].
Paste: As someone brought up in the Catholic faith (and am not anymore for many reasons), I was moved by the conversation between David and Sister Andrea about the fallibility of the church. That’s not the type of adult conversation regarding religion that many, if any, television shows tackle outside of Evil.
Robert: I mean, for me, TV often looks for easy bad guys. I still find that with a lot of the streaming shows. They do find there’s an advantage in some kind of mustache-whirling thing. Here, you’ve got Michael Emerson’s character, so that’s a given. But what would be the actual discussion among people who believe in the same thing? I think people who dedicate their life to one institution are often the most questioning of that institution because it’s not an easy question. It’s a question that’s probably mixed with love, a bit. My mom would always talk about the nuns who educated her as being the most cynical about the priests, kind of knowing their problems. It’s a little bit like that John Patrick Shanley movie, Doubt. My mom thought all priests were kind of lazy and a little bit entitled and selfish, and nuns always had their number. That was a little bit where Sister Andrea would come from, as someone who loves the institution but also knows all these fallible people within it. There’s also a great conversation [in “Fear of the Other”] with Wallace Shawn’s character, in that way, when he’s got those marshmallows on his lap as bait. It felt fun to have these great actors who could be both comic and dramatic.
Michelle: I think we wanted to treat faith and the institutions that are built around it the same way we would treat parenting, which is, parents can feel great love for their children, and yet they can be frustrated with parenting and kids and their kids. Those things exist pretty easily inside one person, and the same is going to be true of a clergy person.
Paste: In the finale, Leland admits to David that he has a fallen angel history as they discuss their world views on the Catholic church and religion. How long was that big reveal in your back pocket?
Robert: Dewayne, one of our writers, was very much about that Leland’s story should mirror Lucifer’s, which is that he was somebody that was among the heavenly choir, in a sense, and through pride, [decided] it’s better to rule in hell than to serve in heaven, in a way. And that would be the Leland story. I do think why it was provoked by these last four episodes is, once Sheryl (Christine Lahti) was gone, it was very difficult. Leland needs a foil, or a binary argument with someone. What our thought was is that David would be used almost like a double agent, provoked by the Entity to go to Leland to find out the information he needs. That was a way to have that kind of Milton-esque argument between good and evil on that side. And by the way, all this sounds pretentious. If someone’s just reading the article, this stuff is supposed to be funny.
Paste: You’ve had to write several series finales for your shows. In this finale, you brought back some familiar themes and devices, like the VR goggles. What were your thoughts on how to craft this one?
Michelle: In terms of approaching an ending, we approached the ending in much the same way we approached it for other shows, which is wanting to honor the relationships, honor the characters, give a sense of closure. But in this one in particular, not to blow up the world. Not to suggest the world doesn’t exist anymore, and nothing more is going to happen to these people once they stop being on your television screen. You know, they’re real-ish to us, and they will continue.
Robert: We learned a lot from the end of The Good Fight. There was a speech from Audra McDonald at the end to Christine Baranski, which [essentially] said that we didn’t change the world, but we changed the lives of these characters, and it was the characters over the six seasons. We wanted to do the same thing here. And as they’re burning the files of all the cases they’ve done, give some echo to embrace the season, which is harder to do when you’re doing shows where they’re short stories. When you’re doing something serialized, novelistic, or an “eight hour movie,” it’s easier to kind of have a payoff that makes it seem like the show was one piece. It’s harder when you’re doing these little short stories. But that was the key, to have a lot of echoes. We also echoed the silent episode [“S is for Silence”]… anything we could do that would echo what came before.
Paste: Speaking of that bonfire scene, that felt like a love letter to the actors that was also cathartic for the audience. Like we were part of their little goodbye in Kristen’s backyard. How did that take shape in the writers’ room?
Robert: That’s very nice to hear you say. It clearly was something the writers’ room thought was essential right from the beginning. It was probably one of the first moves… Actually, one of the first moves was to say that the assessor program was already over, and they were in other jobs, or moving on to Rome, or whatever. And then, having this last, sad moment where they’re kind of missing it. Clearly Ben’s missing it, as he’s in a workplace that tells him to run. As much as they had problems with it, when it was going away, they’re missing, not even the camaraderie, but maybe the action of it.
Paste: Let’s talk about that nail-biter moment where Kristen is garroting Leland, ready to kill for the second time. After David and Ben stop her, she gives into that cathartic cry. I love that Kristen has been the personification of sin throughout the whole series, yet Katja’s performance has always made her remarkably relatable. She’s tested one more time at that moment.
Michelle: You’re right. She’s tested. I don’t think she necessarily triumphs. She got lucky. You know, that may be with many of us that our triumphs are just luck of intervention.
Robert: We like strong women in shows. Not only do we look for actresses that can embody that, but we also lucked out. Katja Herbers is exactly one of the examples of lucking out. When we don’t go far enough, she wants to go further and pushes it. We wanted that strangling to seem kind of sexual. Not erotic, but kind of an S&M thing between the two of them. We cut to her feet, digging in and then her feet kind of wrap around him. Also, it was supposed to be very cathartic. When Katja did it, she also did a version of it where she laughs really loud, as she’s killing him, and that was too much. But the tears were all her, pushing it, so it was nice.
Paste: Indulge me in some granular questions. Was Ben rolling up his canvas a sign that his tin foil days are over?
Michelle: For the time being.
Robert: I think all those people have been hurting because of the work they do. As most of us do, like if you’re censoring stuff on the internet, you’re probably haunted at night by what you see. Same thing with Ben. He was taking home something that was breaking his mind. He’s very glad he’s out of it, even though he now has this soul crushing job. But it might be his savior! He won’t have those headaches again.
Paste: The coda with Kristen, David, and the kids in Italy is sort of a chaste, happy ending for this unconventional family. Should the idea that Ellie floated, that David leaving the church in six months, still be in our heads?
Michelle: Ellie was a nut job, so I don’t think we should be looking to her for what’s going to happen in these people’s lives.
Robert: I think what we wanted was the scenics. All the world is very attractive and beautiful, and they are beautiful. Everybody’s wardrobe is like something out of a musical. They’re in Rome and kids are all eating gelato. Everything is very happy there. And so, even when David and Kristen walk off together, sure, anything can happen. But also the punchline for that is the baby. She wants to hide that fact from David, so I think it’s a complicated relationship that ends beautifully and hopefully gives the audience something to be happy about. But there’s also, if you believe in the supernatural, that baby should not have big honking teeth like that and eyes that go white. That’s worrisome.
But I think what’s cool about that relationship is he can be 100% committed, and they can have the most beautiful friendship in the world where they’re always struggling every day with the eroticism that they feel towards each other. Every single day because they were meant for each other. If there are two people meant for each other, David and Kristen are really meant for each other. But their problem is that, like all with all romantic comedies, there’s a hurdle. And here, the hurdle is tragic.
Paste: In a better world, where the show wasn’t given just four final episodes, how far was this ending from where you may have imagined it, versus what it had to be?
Robert: We wanted two more seasons, and could have done more. There’s gonna be a lot of plot in the world. Oh my God, even within the last month. Usually you think, “Okay, I’m getting tired of this now. Maybe we should start writing towards the end.” We were nowhere near tired. This was a real dream of a show, not just because of the subject matter. But the actors involved and the crew…designing monsters! It was a dream. We’ll miss it.
Paste: Lastly, with the Paramount/Skydance merger, is that scenario bleak for any kind of return for Evil?
Michelle: I love the question, but it’s a question for someone other than us.
Tara Bennett is a Los Angeles-based writer covering film, television and pop culture for publications such as SFX Magazine, NBC Insider, SYFY Wire and more. She’s also written official books on Sons of Anarchy, Outlander, Fringe, The Story of Marvel Studios, Avatar: The Way of Water and the upcoming The Art of Ryan Meinerding. You can follow her on Twitter @TaraDBennett or Instagram @TaraDBen
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