The Ending Of Evil Dead II Explained

Lee Cronin's "Evil Dead Rise" — the newest addition to the reimagined "Evil Dead" movie franchise — has given fans and critics all the scares and eye-popping gore they could ever ask for. The sequel to the 2013 reboot has surpassed its predecessor, both in audience approval and box office numbers. 

The budget of "Evil Dead Rise" was estimated at just $12 million, which is a drop in the bucket by most standards of modern filmmaking. Yet it's a huge increase from the low-budget cost of the original "Evil Dead" trilogy, helmed by then-unknown writer-director Sam Raimi. The original "The Evil Dead" — released in 1981 — caused a stir with its graphic gore and explicit material, earning it an "X" rating from the MPAA. Yet it was the film's sequel, "Evil Dead II," that has been widely hailed as the best movie in the franchise, thanks to its over-the-top scares and a dash of Stoogian humor.

"Evil Dead II," like "Evil Dead Rise," also overshadowed its predecessor both at the box office and with critics. Even 36 years later, the 1987 splatter-fest continues to amuse and entertain. As for the movie's ending, things take a very strange turn for the groovy, chainsaw-handed hero, Ash Williams (Bruce Campbell). The movie's cabin-in-the-woods trope is upended when Ash is thrown into a swirling vortex of time and space and he arrives in the year 1300 A.D. Seemingly out of left field, the supernatural horror suddenly becomes a supernatural fantasy with a medieval setting, complete with knights on horseback and a castle fortress. For those still scratching their heads over that bizarre conclusion, here's an explanation of the ending of "Evil Dead II."

Occasionally referred to as a "re-quel," "Evil Dead II" is both a reboot of "The Evil Dead" and a sequel. The first seven or so minutes of "Evil Dead II" attempt to loosely recap the events of "The Evil Dead," while changing up a few details along the way. The characters of Shelly (Theresa Tilly), Scott (Richard DiManicor), and Cheryl (Ellen Sandweiss) are omitted completely, but the basics remain the same. Ash and his girlfriend, Linda (Denise Bixler), go to a remote cabin in the woods for a romantic getaway. There they find a recording by Professor Raymond Knowby (John Peakes), who reads an excerpt from the Necronomicon Ex-Mortis (aka the Book of the Dead) and awakens the evil Deadites. Ash has to endure the possession of his beloved Linda, as well as the trauma of hacking her to pieces to destroy the demon inside her.

That's when things get weird. Ash starts to see things, delving deeper into madness as the Deadites ruthlessly torment him. Even his own body turns against him when his hand becomes possessed and he is forced to hack it off with a chainsaw. He is eventually joined by Professor Knowby's daughter, Annie (Sarah Berry), who has recovered some of the missing pages of the Necronomicon. Their team is rounded out by fellow scholar Ed Getley (Richard Domeier), along with hillbillies Jake (Dan Hicks) and Bobby Jo (Kassie Wesley DePaiva), who offer to show them the way to the cabin in exchange for a pay-off. Soon they all become victims of the Deadites, suffering possession and mutilation at the hands of the hellish demons, as Ash does his best to fend them off.

Luckily, Annie is able to translate the recovered pages of the Necronomicon which will allow them to banish the demon once and for all. Of course, they first have to contend with the possessed members of their party, who refuse to make things easy for them. Along with Scott being possessed by Deadites, Annie's mother has also fallen prey to the demonic forces. 

After the initial Deadites are dealt with, Ash and Annie barely have a moment to breathe before things get bad again. The evil force behind the Deadite hoard isn't willing to give up easily, and soon the entire forest is possessed as demonic trees begin to attack the cabin. Frantically, Annie recites the passage from the Necronomicon to summon the demon into physical form, and a giant demonic head tries to force its way into the cabin. As the horrific entity threatens to destroy the heroes and swallow their souls, Annie barely manages to speak the final words of the incantation, summoning a giant portal into time and space. It does the trick, all right — but a little too well.

Along with the demon, the possessed trees, and Ash's Oldsmobile Delta 88, Ash is sucked into the abyss. After lots of spinning, flashing lights, and an explosion, both he and the vehicle fall to the ground in an empty desert. Moments later, an army of medieval knights on horseback appears and surrounds Ash with raised swords. Believing him to be a Deadite, they move to execute him but are interrupted when a flying Deadite attacks. Using his sawed-off shotgun, Ash blows the creature's head off, much to the shock and awe of the knights. They begin to hail him as a savior (with a cameo by Sam Raimi as one of the knights), much to Ash's shock and horror. The camera zooms out to reveal a castle in the background, and Ash crying out in anguish with a melodramatic "No!"

The ending of "Evil Dead II" wasn't the last time that time travel was used in the franchise. Ash also traveled back in time in Season 2 of "Ash vs Evil Dead," along with his companions Ruby (Lucy Lawless) and Kelly (Dana DeLorenzo). This time, they traveled back in time 30 years to 1982, in the hopes of preventing Ash from ever finding the Necronomicon. Of course, things don't go as planned, but for Ash, when do they ever? 

So what the heck happened, and how did Ash end up in the Middle Ages? Well, first we need to backtrack a little bit. While the heroes were fighting for survival in the cabin from the Deadite attack, Annie was hard at work picking up where her father, Professor Knowby, left off in translating the Book of the Dead. She finds a passage from the missing pages that talks about a prophecy from the year 1300 A.D. The page says that a "Hero From the Sky" magically appeared at that time — there's even a picture with a man holding a chainsaw and a shotgun who looks remarkably like Ash. That's a pretty darn big hint.

The passage goes on to explain that the hero was destined to destroy the Deadites, to which Ash astutely remarks that he "didn't do a very good job." Ironically, Ash is actually talking about himself. Little could he have foreseen that he would be hurled back in time to 1300, thus becoming the "Hero From the Sky" mentioned in the Book of the Dead. At the movie's end, he's understandably distressed by this turn of events. Especially since he now has even more demons to fight — and of course, having no running water or electricity either is pretty horrific in its own right. This cliffhanger ending sets up the events for the third movie in Raimi's "Evil Dead" trilogy, "Army of Darkness," where we pick up with Ash fighting against the Deadites in a medieval world while trying to find a way back to the present. 

Ash Williams has been Bruce Campbell's most well-known character throughout his entire acting career. He's played him in three movies and a TV series, all over a span of 30 years. Most "Evil Dead" fans know Ash as the guy with the chainsaw hand and trusty "boomstick." He rambles off sarcastic one-liners and disposes of evil Deadites like it's his business, all with a cool-guy stoic expression and a stellar chin.

Yet Ash wasn't always the bad-ass horror icon that comes immediately to mind when we think of his character. At the beginning of "Evil Dead II," he's just a normal guy who goes on a romantic getaway with his girlfriend. It's the horrors that he witnesses that change him, hardening him into the groovy demon slayer we all know and love. When first faced with the Deadite hoard, Ash tries to make a run for it — and who could blame him? Yet when escape becomes impossible, Ash does what needs to be done to survive.

The transition is certainly not seamless. First, he faces the trauma of his girlfriend being killed, then coming back to life as a possessed demon, after which he has to hack her to pieces. That is followed up with a series of hallucinations, including his own reflection trying to murder him and a roomful of inanimate objects laughing manically at him until he can't help but join in. Then of course there's the fact that his own hand gets possessed, forcing him to hack it off with a chainsaw. By the time Annie, Ed, Jake, and Bobby Jo arrive at the cabin, Ash has seen some seriously messed up stuff. His experience makes him the only one equipped to deal with the Deadite onslaught, and though he's had just a short time to toughen up and take the lead, he does so with all the panache and grit of a true horror movie hero.

Campbell spoke more about the evolution of Ash's character in 2015 with the release of "Ash vs Evil Dead." "Ash has survivor's guilt," the actor told EW. "You could have a heyday with his PTSD. He's a war vet. He doesn't want to talk about it, and he'll lie about that stump on his hand to impress the ladies. This is a guy who's got some issues. He's emotionally stunted. But he's the guy you want in the foxhole next to you. That's the funny thing — he's kind of an idiot, but man, if I had to go to battle, I'd want to be next to that guy, because he'll bring it if he has to."

Sam Raimi has come a long way from his humble indie horror beginnings. From directing films like the "Spider-Man" trilogy to joining the MCU with "Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness," it's almost easy to forget that he was ever a struggling filmmaker. Yet Raimi looks fondly on his time with the "Evil Dead" series, and in a 2015 interview with IGN, he spoke candidly about his memories of making the films.

In the interview, Raimi related how he drew inspiration for "The Evil Dead" by watching low-budget horror movies at drive-in theaters. Though at first, the movie was a hard sell with film distributors, it eventually found a home with New Line Cinema, thanks to the endorsement of horror writer Stephen King. When it came time to make a sequel, it was also thanks to King's recommendation that Raimi and the producers received the financing needed from Dino di Laurentiis's company, Renaissance Pictures.

The tone of "Evil Dead II" was quite a bit different than the first movie, taking on a more comedic, almost satirical, style. According to Raimi, the original plot for "Evil Dead II" was also meant to be very different. He had written a script in which the character of Ash would be sent back in time to the Middle Ages, with the hopes that the movie's title would be cleverly dubbed "Medieval Dead." Unfortunately, it wasn't in the budget to make the movie that Raimi had in mind, so they decided to keep the cabin-in-the-woods setting. Raimi still managed to slip in the time-travel element with the ending of "Evil Dead 2," in the hopes that a third movie would be made. Sure enough, "Evil Dead 2" was a success, enabling the way to be paved for "Army of Darkness" — although we kind of wish they had gone with the title "Medieval Dead." 

The creators of the "Evil Dead" franchise took a considerable risk in making these movies. If it wasn't for "The Evil Dead" being seen by the right people at the right time, the film's distribution might have never seen the light of day. There definitely would not have been a sequel, a trilogy, or a loyal fandom to keep this unique brand of horror alive.

"Evil Dead II" ending the way that it did was also a huge gamble: A cliffhanger with no guarantee of a continuation? Luckily, there were a few factors that allowed the third film, "Army of Darkness," to be made, making way for the story of Ash Williams to move forward. The first was that "Evil Dead II" was a big hit. The second was the financial success of Raimi's "Darkman" in 1990. Finally, "Evil Dead" producer Dino di Laurentiis had a contract with Universal Pictures that required a movie from him, so "Army of Darkness" was the perfect fit. Although the movie strayed from an outright horror and gore-fest into an action fantasy horror comedy, it found its target audience and became a cult classic. "I find that the fans of 'Evil Dead' — however few and weird they may be — they like something different and original, more than anything else," Raimi told IGN.

It was that love for the "Evil Dead" trilogy's originality that kept the franchise going. In 2015, Starz picked up the series "Ash vs Evil Dead," bringing back Bruce Campbell to reprise his role as Ash. The series was chock-full of all the goofiness and over-the-top carnage that fans could ever ask for. Although the reimagined "Evil Dead" and "Evil Dead Rise" take a more straightforward horror route, it all stems from a love of the original films.

The horror genre has its share of famous monsters and villains. From Jason and Freddy of the 1980s to Jigsaw and M3gan of today, these beloved and terrifying mayhem mongers have fueled our imaginations and our nightmares. Yet there are very few heroes of the genre that tend to survive over multiple movies, much less over multiple generations.

Ash Williams stands strong at the top of the list for the most iconic horror hero — not only for his ability to survive throughout the "Evil Dead" movies and TV show but for his mind-boggling antics and befuddled charm. The combination of Raimi's writing and Campbell's performance was a perfect fit from the very beginning, and their shared love for the character is what has kept him alive for so long.

The orgy of viscera, gore, and vivid graphic imagery in "The Evil Dead" gained the attention of die-hard horror fans, yet it was the added humor in "Evil Dead II" that really put the franchise on the map. The concept of horror-comedy was still developing in the 1980s, especially during a time when the horror genre's popularity was soaring. The combination of Harryhausen-style special effects and slapstick humor made "Evil Dead II" stand out from the crowd, creating a memorable viewing experience.

The love for this cult classic has spawned more than just reboots: Video games, live musicals, and homages to the movie have appeared in various mediums, including 2005's "Shaun of the Dead" and an honorable mention in the 2000 rom-com "High Fidelity." The legacy left by "Evil Dead II" is certain to continue, whether by new horror fans discovering it for the first time or with more adventures of Ash fighting the denizens of the Deadite army.