Recap of Ash vs. Evil Dead
Season 2, Episode 9:
Home Again
- Ash: Okay, look, if young me never reads from that book, the evil will not plague my life and Pablo will be alive again. That's all you have to understand.
Ash grieves Pablo's death by getting drunk and high on PCP and burning donuts in the Delta with his friend's corpse inside the car, while Kelly and Ruby discuss what could have been done. As Ash gets more intoxicated, he gets a vision of Pablo talking to him and convincing him to go back in time so that he would never meet the Necronomicon. He notices the time-travelling spell on Pablo's body and tells the women to get into the Oldsmobile. Ruby refuses to read the spell, so Ash decides to crash the car at high speed unless she does as he says. She opens the portal, and they arrive in 1982, where Ash explains they need to stop his younger self from ever reading the book. They drive to the cabin and leave Pablo's body in the trunk, leaving him a note if he gets resurrected. A Kandarian demon sweeps through the woods, which shocks Ash, as he hasn't yet read from the book. It starts chasing the time travellers, and Ash finds refuge in the cabin. He doesn't find the book on Prof. Knowby's desk and decides to look in the cellar before stepping on a nail and changing his mind. The rot starts spreading through his leg, much like it did in his hand 30 years ago, and at first he tries to saw it off before stopping and sucking the evil out of it. Some of it gets into his stomach and starts fighting back, and he eats cinnamon and hot sauce and drinks boiling water to destroy it. He then expels a fetus-looking demon out of himself and smashes it with a frying pan.
Kelly and Ruby look for Ash in the woods, where they talk about his luck and feel somebody is following them. Ash hears a voice from the cellar and goes down to check. He finds a chained Henrietta Knowby and becomes wary. She tells that Raymond has chained her down here and asks Ash to free her, but instead he assumes she's already possessed and starts hitting her to get her to tell where the book is. Prof. Knowby returns home with a student of his, Tanya, and convinces her to stay to help him with translations, going down the cellar to sacrifice the girl. A bear trap latches onto her leg, and he drives the teeth even further. Raymond explains he's become obsessed with the Necronomicon's power and summoned the demon. Ash frees Henrietta, but a second later hears she's been possessed, and the professor's plan is to take the demon from her and put it into Tanya. Henrietta attacks her husband, and at the same time Ruby feels the book has been opened, just before wines attack her and Kelly. A demon tree attempts to eat Kelly, but Ruby stabs it in the eye and defeats it.
Ash starts fighting Henrietta, but she disappears, and he tries to take the bear trap from Tanya's leg. Henrietta attacks again, inadvertently helping taking the trap off Tanya's leg, and Raymond escapes with the book. Ash yells at Tanya to follow him while he attacks the Deadite. Knowby locks the cellar and leaves the cabin, abandoning both Ash and Tanya with Henrietta.
Tropes:
- An Arm and a Leg: At first it seems Ash would have to cut his leg off after it's been infected, but in the end he decides to suck the evil out of it.
- Ceiling Cling: Ash somehow manages to get up on the cabin's ceiling beams to escape the demon, but they break under his weight.
- Call-Back: The way Ash deals with the evil in his stomach resembles his attempt to kill a Mini-Ash inside of him in Army of Darkness.
- Dead Person Conversation: While high on PCP, Ash imagines talking to a dead Pablo who convinces him to travel back in time and prevent the Necronomicon from ever appearing in his life.
- Drowning My Sorrows: Ash gets drunk heavily, lamenting that Pablo had to die to stop Baal.
- Fan Disservice: Henrietta, upon transforming further, sheds her clothing
- Faux Affably Evil: Prof. Knowby keeps his fatherly tone with Tanya, even when she's screaming in pain and knows he's going to kill her.
- Kevlard: Henrietta's fat protects her from being impaled by Ash's chainsaw, making the blade stuck inside of her.
- Lock-and-Load Montage: Two of them, when Ash attempts to get into the cabin and when he descends into the cellar.
- "Mister Sandman" Sequence: Once Ash and friends arrive in 1982, they get to drive around Elk Grove, set to the tune of Journey's "Don't Stop Believin'".
- Oh, Crap!: Ash instantly realizes he's messed up by releasing Henrietta when her husband says she's been possessed by the Kandarian demon.
- The Oner: In a homage to Evil Dead 2, the Kandarian Demon's POV plays out almost exactly the same as it chases Ash into the cabin.
- Shout-Out: The entire time travel in a car moving at high speed is a huge one to Back to the Future.
- Stable Time Loop: Time-travelling Ash turns a respectable man from the 80's into a homeless drunk by giving him his beer.
- Swallowed Whole: Ash unwittingly eats a deadite again, this time, it was him trying to suck and spit out the evil that was infecting his leg. He fights it and spits it out, where he kills it with a frying pan.
- Time Travel: Ash gets the idea to stop his younger self from reading the Necronomicon, so he makes Ruby perform a time-travelling spell.
- Won't Get Fooled Again: Subverted. When Ash reencounters Henrietta, he is understandably wary and immediately doesn't trust anything she says, thinking she's already a Deadite and begins threatening her as to where is the Necronomicon. After some back and forth, Ash reluctantly lets her free, but does so one second too late after overhearing Prof. Knowby saying that his wife is possessed. He immediately regrets it and proceeds to try and put her down again.
