The Entire Evil Dead Story Finally Explained

Hail to the king, baby! And we all know that said king is none other than the hapless S-mart department store employee and chainsaw wielding smiter of demons, Ash Williams, played by the charismatic Bruce Campbell. Ash embarked on a horrific, blood-soaked journey that began in 1981 with Sam Raimi's "The Evil Dead." Eventually the horror of the first film gave way in the sequels to a niche comedy-horror subgenre of "splatstick," and Ash became something of a bumbling fool with a hint of badassery. Whether he is squaring off against his own demonically-possessed hand or has his head stuck up the dark side of a possessed cadaver, there's plenty of misfortune for audiences to laugh at amid the streaking trails of blood and gore.

Ironically, Ash is often his own worst enemy. He simply can't get out of his own way, but either he manages to buck up and survive, or the burden falls on adventurers who've joined his side for whatever reason. Despite his eventually-adopted grit that is only instilled upon him unwillingly through experience battling demons, he's kind of a loser. But that's what makes him endearing to the fans — as long as Ash is around, the demons will never let him rest. He's simply too fun to torment. 

With a popular trilogy of films and a TV series focused on Ash, the "Evil Dead" franchise also branched out with a horror-based soft reboot in 2013 that introduced Mia, a heroin addict attempting to sober up. Another film followed in 2023 with "Evil Dead Rise," introducing a new cast of characters. It's an expansive history with plenty of lore, so let's journey through the complete story of the franchise as it currently stands.

The story of "Evil Dead" begins where all great horror stories begin –- on a booze-fueled getaway with five unsuspecting college kids. Ash, his sister Cheryl, Ash's girlfriend Linda, and their friends Scott and Shelly all take a trip to a remote cabin in rural Tennessee where ghostly happenings immediately begin. In all truthfulness, "The Evil Dead" is one horror film that wastes no time getting into the thick of it. Cheryl is haunted by faint calls from a demonic force –- a cue for most of us in our right minds to jump in the car and high-tail it out of there.

Soon, however, the cellar trapdoor randomly flies open and it's apparently up to the boys to investigate. Ash and Scott head down into the dank space below the cabin, only to find a strange Sumerian book known as the Naturom Demonto, a Book of the Dead. The name of the ancient tome bound in human flesh will later be retconned to the Necronomicon Ex-Mortis.

Of course, the book showing up in the cabin's cellar is no coincidence. It happens to have once been the remote research location of an archaeologist by the name of Raymond Knowby. How these five unfortunate souls found this place and why this archaeologist chose rural Tennessee to research a book from a world away is anybody's guess. However, as wise proverbs have taught us, curiosity kills the cat ... and everyone else. In the name of curiosity, Scott plays a recording left by the researcher that recites an ancient incantation. Unbeknownst to the crew, that little tape recorder summons an unholy onslaught of demonic forces on their tidy little vacay.

Cheryl is the first victim to fall prey to the demonic entities. She continues to feel uneasy. (Come on, if your hand forced you to draw a demonic picture, wouldn't you feel that way too?) She wanders away from the cabin into the middle of the woods, where she is assaulted by demonically-possessed trees that ... traumatize her, to put it mildly. After she returns to her brother's side, she begs Ash to leave. He attempts to take her into town, but they find that the bridge leading to the cabin has been destroyed. Horrified, Cheryl realizes there's no escape. After returning to the cabin, she completely succumbs to demonic possession and violently assaults her peers. She stabs Linda with a pencil and tosses Ash like a rag doll before being kicked into the cellar by Scott.

Shelly becomes a deadite possessed by the evil forces circling the cabin. She lunges at Scott, who is able to knock her into the fire before she resumes her attack on him. Nearly the whole time, Ash is in a pure state of shock, but Scott manages to stab Shelly with a Sumerian dagger, which seems to do the job ... until it doesn't. She comes back for more and Scott is forced to dismember her with an axe in perhaps one of the goriest sequences of the film.

Scott then makes the logical decision to leave. Linda's trying to sleep off her apparent pencil-stabbing wound, and Ash stays behind with her. Her wound quickly turns into a blackened devilish infection, and Linda awakens as a deadite ready to torment. As Ash prepares to make his exit, Scott stumbles back into the cabin completely bloodied and claims the trees did a number on him. He warns Ash that the evil won't let them leave. Linda's demonic host pretends she has returned to normal to get Ash to let his guard down. But it ultimately results in a struggle in which he's forced to remove her head from her shoulders with a shovel.

The poor loner is then assaulted by Cheryl, who's been freed from the cellar by a possessed Scott. The pair attack Ash in a bloody exchange that results in Ash tossing the Naturom Demonto in the fire which causes the deadites to crumble. Ash leaves the cabin, but screams as he is once again attacked by unseen forces.

For years, fans have debated whether "Evil Dead II" is a remake or a sequel. Bruce Campbell himself has clarified the whole debacle stating that the film is a "requel" (per Bloody Disgusting). Confused? In his own words, Campbell described how the introduction of "Evil Dead II" is a quick retelling of the events of the first film that doesn't quite line up with what we saw before, simply because the production team didn't own the rights to the first film.

In this alternate retelling of the first film's events, Ash simply goes to the cabin with his girlfriend Linda as a bit of a getaway. The rest of the college kids from the first film are omitted, including Ash's sister Cheryl. Ash discovers the Necronomicon Ex-Mortis and a recording from archaeologist Raymond Knowby. After the recording recites the writings from the book, evil is unleashed. Linda is killed and possessed which forces Ash to remove her head with a shovel and bury her outside of the cabin.

Just like the ending of the first film, dawn arrives and an evil force then moves through the forest and approaches Ash. This is the moment in "Evil Dead II" that becomes the "sequel" following Ash's final screams from the previous film. However, we now see Ash launched through the forest, only for his torment to continue.

As Ash emerges from the mud puddle he was tossed into, it's clear to see that he's possessed by one of the horrific Kandarian demons. As the sun emerges, the evil forces subside and Ash is returned to a normal state before passing out for a time. Once he awakens, he does what any sane person would do and jumps in his car to escape. However, the bridge heading off the mountainside is destroyed, and an unseen force chases Ash back to the cabin, where he hides in the cellar.

Terrorizing Ash becomes an amusing spectacle for both the demons and the audience. Linda's decaying body emerges from the shallow grave he left her in, and her severed head clamps down on Ash's hand with her pointy teeth. After destroying her head with a chainsaw, the poor sap's hand turns against him — Apparently, Linda's bite came with a bit more than a simple gaping flesh wound. 

The humorous tumble with his own hand results in Ash removing it entirely via chainsaw. Of course, this only sets the little bugger free to scamper off. After taunting Ash by flipping him the bird, the possessed hand escapes into the walls. Getting a bit cocky, Ash angrily shoots the wall with a shotgun, which then explodes, gushing blood all over him. Then, the entire house begins laughing at the hapless hero, clearly enjoying his struggle.

"Evil Dead 2" adds a secondary storyline that converges with Ash's own. Throughout Ash's fight for survival, the film also follows Annie Knowby, the daughter of the archaeologist who discovered the Necronomicon and unwittingly unleashed its evil. She has located the missing pages of the Necronomicon alongside Ed Getley, a research partner of Raymond Knowby's, and is traveling to the cabin to find her father. Realizing the bridge is out, they pay a strange couple, Jake and Bobby, to lead them on another path to the cabin.

Ash's luck gets worse when the four arrive. After sharing a hearty desperate laugh with the demonic forces in the house, a noise startles the now-deranged fool and he fires a shot through the front door. After attempting to see what caused the noise, he is tackled to the ground by Jake, the rest of the group assuming he killed the Knowbys after seeing a bloodied chainsaw. They then toss him in the cellar.

After the group listens to Raymond Knowby's recordings, they learn that his wife, Henrietta, was possessed. He killed her and buried her in the cellar. Right on cue, Henrietta emerges in the cellar, causing Ash to shriek in terror. The crew lets him out, but not before Ed becomes possessed. Ash then hacks the demonic Ed to death with an axe.

Moments later, Ash's possessed hand returns to wreak havoc by scaring Bobby, causing her to flee the cabin. Out in the woods, she's assaulted by tree branches and vines, dragged by the evil vegetation to her demise.

In every horror film, someone has to make a dumb choice. Jake is that person, as he forces Ash and Annie at gunpoint to go with him into the forest to find Bobby. Before doing so, he tosses the missing Necronomicon pages needed to dispel the evil into the cellar. Instead of finding his girlfriend during the search, he receives a splitting headache when a possessed Ash tosses him into a tree head-first. He then gets a swift Kandarian dagger to the gut when he startles Annie. Annie attempts to drag Jake inside to safety, but Henrietta has different plans. She grabs the unfortunate hillbilly and drags him down into the cellar to his death amid another blood geyser that sprays Annie from the cracked cellar door.

Ash is seemingly exorcised when he sees his girlfriend's necklace. After convincing Annie that he's alright, they decide that he must go into the cellar to retrieve the missing Necronomicon pages. They modify the chainsaw so it can fit over ash's arm. He finds the pages, and kills Henrietta. As Annie reads the pages, Ash's possessed hand stabs her with the dagger. A portal then opens, pulling Ash through.

"Evil Dead II" ends with Ash falling from the sky in a Medieval time. He's accosted by knights, but when he shoots a flying demon down from the sky, they praise him as a hero who will save them from the deadites. "Army of Darkness" continues this idea, but rewrites what happens after he lands in the past. He's taken as a prisoner by Lord Arthur, who suspects him to be an acolyte of his nemesis, Duke Henry. Henry is also in Arthur's custody, set to be put to death in a pit of deadites. One of Arthur's wise men believes Ash to be a prophesied savior, and tosses his chainsaw into the pit while Ash is down there.

Ash slays the deadites and emerges from the pit, challenging anyone in the crowd to "come get some." He then demands that Henry and his men be freed, and once again establishes dominance by obliterating Arthur's sword with his legendary boomstick, an endearing term for his shotgun from all the primitive screwheads congregating at the scene.

Ash receives a hero's welcome as maidens hand-feed him grapes and massage his ego. The wise man then tells Ash that he can only return home through the power of the Necronomicon, which he'll have to find. He expressly tells Ash that in order to claim the book safely, he must state the words "klaatu, barada, nikto" perfectly, or bad things will happen.

The wise man insists that Ash repeat the words to properly memorize them, but Ash stubbornly claims he knows them and heads out on his quest to an ancient cemetery to find the book. Of course, the journey won't be a cake walk. The infamous first-person view of the careening evil forces in the woods kicks in, chasing Ash to an abandoned mill in which he attempts to hide. Clumsily, Ash stumbles into a mirror, shattering it to pieces. Miniature reflections of Ash emerge from the shards and begin causing mischief. After knocking the big man unconscious, the mini Ash demons tie him down as one dives down his gullet. But Ash, not willing to lose a battle no matter the cost, drinks boiling hot water to burn out the little fella inside.

Consuming raw or uncooked meat can be hazardous to one's health. Unfortunately for Ash, he sees that he sprouted an eye on his shoulder. When the hero runs out into the night, he has two heads — a second Ash is splintering off of his body. The Ash copy claims to be evil and states that Ash is the goody-two-shoes version. It's then that Ash fires a round in the evil copy's face and cheekily proclaims, "Good. Bad. I'm the guy with the gun." He cuts the evil copy to bits and then buries him while the disfigured head taunts him.

At the cemetery, Ash finds three Necronomicons. Taking a stab in the dark, he opens one book to find a wormhole pulling him in. Resisting its pull, he realizes he'd better be more careful ... sort of. The second book bites and attacks him. The third time's the charm, as he attempts to recite the special words before picking up the remaining book. He forgets the final word, attempting to trick the powers that be by muttering his way through it.

Because Ash has thrown caution to the wind in the face of evil, his devious body double rises from the grave and forms a deadite army hellbent on obliterating all who stand in their way. Ash has doomed everyone. Still, he demands that the wise man send him back to his own time anyway. The villagers successfully guilt him into staying to fight — being called a fraud and a coward stings more than any pain inflicted by the undead.

After deadites nab Ash's newfound love interest, Sheila, Ash becomes the leader the people need. Using a chemistry textbook found in the trunk of his Oldsmobile (yes, the vehicle made the time-traveling journey), Ash and the rest of Arthur's men successfully forge some explosives and weaponry. They make a stand against the deadite forces alongside Henry and his men, and are victorious. The wise man sends Ash back to his own time, where he recounts the whole adventure to a co-worker at S-mart.

30 years later, a seasoned Ash Williams appears to be up to the same bullish and ego-stroking shenanigans of his formative years. The Starz series "Ash vs. Evil Dead" strangely considers both the first film and the second film with its retconned intro as a sort of conjoined canon. Ash's friends did accompany him to the cabin, but the events of "Evil Dead II" also occurred. Now, Ash spends his days getting lit, picking up women at bars with phony stories about how he lost his hand, and ... oh right, reading from the Necronomicon to impress said women amid the dimly-lit THC-laden haze of his trailer. That last one is a big mistake that ultimately brings evil forth once again and sets the embattled hero on a new adventure for the TV series.

Ash quickly garners the admiration of Pablo, his co-worker at the department store Value Stop, after Pablo witnesses Ash tangling with the forces of evil. He believes Ash to be a hero spoken of by his uncle, El Jefe. Another colleague, Kelly, initially sees Ash as a pitiful middle-aged disaster, but is drawn into his crusade against evil after her mother is resurrected as a deadite who kills her father. The trio head out to find a translation of the book capable of halting the deadite incursion.

Ash and his new comrades combat an evil demon named Eligos. Ash has summoned him on purpose to ask how evil can be locked away for good. That idea is about as bright as it sounds. Meanwhile, a mysterious woman who can seemingly destroy deadites with her bare hands and claims to Raymond Knowby's daughter Ruby, is in pursuit of Ash. She teams up with state trooper Amanda Fisher, who is also hunting Ash because of his involvement in unleashing the deadites.

Ash convinces Amanda of his noble cause and she joins him in his fight. When Ash and Amanda return to the cabin where he fatefully stayed 30 years prior, a twisted clone of Ash formed from his hand tricks Amanda and kills her. Pablo and Kelly manage to sniff out the imposter Ash and end him. Once Ruby arrives, she convinces Ash that she wants to destroy the Necronomicon. After he hands it over, it's revealed that Ruby is the original scribe of the Necronomicon, and she plans to unleash its evil across the entire globe. The Necronomicon then attaches itself to Pablo.

After facing an onslaught of demons, Ash retrieves the Necronomicon. But Ruby offers him a deal to live peacefully in his dream city of Jacksonville, Florida, promising that his friends will be unharmed. Ash apparently accepts the deal and is seen driving to Jacksonville with Kelly and Pablo in tow as a large hole opens up on the road behind them.

The second season of the show opens with Ash living his dream life in Jacksonville. But Ash, Pablo, and Kelly fatefully return to Michigan after deadites destroy their little paradise. It's here that we first meet Ash's father, Brock Williams. He's bitter that Ash left everything behind nearly 30 years ago. Upon learning of Ash's past, however, a newfound sense of pride in his son is instilled in him. It also becomes quite clear where Ash's penchant for debauchery and his carefree attitude come from.

Ash locates Ruby, who suggests that her demonic children have turned against her. She forms an uneasy alliance with Ash in order to retrieve the Necronomicon and set everything right. He locates the Necronomicon inside of the town morgue, but it's later stolen by teenagers who hijack Ash's car. Of course, everything goes to hell in a handbasket as one of the teens reads from the book. Ash's father, Brock, is killed in the ensuing undead fiasco. Meanwhile, Pablo begins having visions thanks to the power infused in him by the Necronomicon. He realizes that Baal, Ruby's husband, is the one who's turned the deadites against her.

Of course, the chaos leads to the arrival of Baal, who quickly begins killing folks and using their skins as disguises –- pretty gross stuff. Our heroes learn of his capability, and everyone becomes quick to distrust each other. Pablo is the first to be suspected after he develops a rash. But Ruby reveals that the rash is actually a spell manifesting itself on Pablo's skin — a spell which will aid the crew in sending Baal back to the hell he emerged from. But Baal isn't going down without a fight, and he manipulates the townsfolk to hunt down Ash.

Thankfully, Ash proves to the locals gathering around his home that he is merely a slayer of deadites, and proves as much by killing one in front of them. However, it's too little too late as Baal gets the jump on Ash and puts him in a twisted reality where he's been locked in an asylum for murdering his friends at the cabin three decades prior. Baal attempts to position himself as a physician fooling Ash into believing he's living through paranoid delusions. Once Kelly, Ruby, and Pablo find Ash, Pablo is able to recite the spell to send Baal back home. However, tragedy strikes as Baal kills Pablo just before the demon is pulled away.

Grieving the loss of their comrade, Ash, Kelly, and Ruby use the book's power to travel to 1982, just before the young Ash heads to the cabin. Here, Ash confronts Henrietta once again in the cellar and discovers that Raymond Knowby attempted to transfer the demon in Henrietta to one of his students, Tanya. After trapping Tanya and Ash with the deadite-infused Henrietta, the professor absconds with the Necronomicon. He doesn't get far, though, before the 1982 version of Ruby kills him and takes the book. Henrietta kills Tanya, but Ash manages to defeat her.

The evil Ruby of the past then kills present-day Ruby. Baal emerges in the form of Pablo, demonstrating that he wasn't banished as once thought. Baal and 1982-Ruby are reunited, and they plan to use Ash and Kelly to spawn more demons. However, Ash demonstrates his mettle when he challenges Baal to a fight without weaponry or magic, and Ash manages to get the better of Baal despite the demon attempting to cheat. He kills Baal using his wits to strike a final blow with the demon's own claw. Baal, Ruby, and their spawn are pulled to hell in light of Ash's victory. Pablo is also restored as part of the promise made before the big brawl, ending the second season on a rather cheery note.

Ash and clan return to a world where Ash is hailed as a hero in his hometown of Elk Grove. Ash takes over his father's business and has a grand opening of his own hardware/adult store. (You read that right. It's a strange amalgamation of tools and, uh, tools.) The end credits of the Season 2 finale depict a girl finding the Necronomicon in the dirt near the site of the burned cabin. In Ash's blissful present, Kelly witnesses a woman attempting to sell the Necronomicon on TV. You know what happens next — Hell is unleashed in the small town of Elk Grove.

The local school mascot, Cougie, becomes possessed by a demon and begins systematically murdering high school students. After being sought out by an old flame, Ash is told he has a daughter named Brandy, and he attempts to find her amid the bloody chaos at the school. The "I'm your father" introduction doesn't go so well when Ash is forced to immediately kill her possessed best friend right after the revelation. Needless to say, Brandy isn't too keen on dear ol' dad. Kelly then shows up in the nick of time with a Knight of Sumeria by the name of Dalton to help Ash finish off Cougie. 

Meanwhile, the again-evil Ruby becomes impregnated after performing a ritual with the Necronomicon. She manages to give birth to demon babies on the side of the road and begins feeding them with human corpses.

Driven by his visions, Pablo heads to the cabin ruins with Kelly and Dalton. They find the Kandarian Dagger, but Dalton is killed by the evil forces and turns into a deadite. Ruby sends Ash's dead father after him, but Ash kills the undead patriarch. The spirit of his actual father reveals to Ash that he killed a Sumerian Knight by locking him in the hardware store cellar. The man had missing Necronomicon pages that open a portal to the Deadlands, a place between the physical world and Hell.

Ruby's demon spawn emerges as another Ash. Fooled by the demon's physical image, Brandy is horrified by what she believes her father to be. When confronted with the real Ash, she can't bring herself to kill him. Thankfully, the ruse is revealed after the evil Ash is defeated. Ruby kills Kelly and attempts to kill Ash, but Brandy takes the fatal blow for him. 

Kelly and Brandy find themselves trapped in the Deadlands, as Ash and Pablo set out to retrieve them using the ancient text. After a struggle, they return to the physical world. The Dark Ones have emerged and the deadites have begun invading the world. A massive beast known as Kandar the Destroyer is unleashed, and war erupts between the military and the demons. The team finally secures a victory after Ash fires a tank round at Kandar with the dagger strapped to it. He then heads off into a post-apocalyptic world, uncertain of what lies ahead.

In 2013, a new "Evil Dead" film emerged from director Fede Álvarez. This outing features entirely new cast, with Ash Williams removed from the picture. The film centers on Mia, whose friends take her to a rural cabin where they hope to help her overcome her heroin addiction by ditching the substance cold-turkey. At first, it seemed this film would be a reboot. However, fan speculation led Álvarez to clarify on Twitter that it's a continuation set in the world of the original film, pointing to the fact that Ash's Oldsmobile can be seen. However, since the car went back in time with Ash, this movie seems to ignore everything after "The Evil Dead."

Of course, as Mia struggles to overcome her drug addiction, her friends discover dark secrets in the cellar of the cabin, including the Naturom Demonto and a double barrel shotgun laying close by. Given the director's statement, this is also clearly no homage, but a direct tie-in to the original.

After Mia's friend Eric gets curious and reads from the book, demonic forces begin descending upon the cabin. Mia is tormented in the woods with hellish visions, eventually getting attacked by trees and possessed by an entity. Mia's brother David eventually discovers her in the shower getting burned by scalding hot water. He resolves to take her into town to get help, but is prevented from doing so when a storm floods the road.

Given her newfound penchant for violence, Eric locks Mia in the cellar. Soon after, Olivia is possessed by the evil permeating the cabin and attacks Eric, and he kills her in self-defense. David's girlfriend Natalie is lured into the cellar when the possessed Mia pretends to be helpless and scared. Natalie instantly regrets her decision when Mia bites her hand. David pulls Natalie to safety, but her hand becomes infected and she severs the limb entirely. It's too late — a possessed Natalie attacks her friends, who kill her in the moment.

Eric reveals that if the evil forces claim five souls, a new terrifying threat will be unleashed –- the Abomination. The coming of this malevolent force is heralded by bloody rain. David attempts to sedate and bury his sister, but Eric is killed in the process. Mia manages to force the demon from her body and awakens. When David runs to the cabin to retrieve the car keys, a possessed Eric stabs him. David then locks Mia out of the cabin and purposefully shoots a gas can to kill himself and Eric in the resulting explosion.

David's death marks the coming of the Abomination as blood rains from the sky and the terror emerges from the ground. It wouldn't be "Evil Dead" without a chainsaw somewhere in the mix — Mia manages to locate one and battles the demon, ultimately killing it. The evil incursion ends, and Mia is left all alone.

"Evil Dead Rise" brought the franchise back to the big screen for the first time in a decade. "Rise" doesn't bring back Ash Williams for a brand new adventure, but unlike 2013's "Evil Dead," it doesn't try to reboot the timeline entirely, either. Instead, "Rise" tells a new story that includes all the elements that have kept fans engaged with the franchise for more than 40 years. 

The story of "Evil Dead Rise" centers on two sisters, Beth and Ellie. When Beth discovers that she's pregnant, she shows up at her sister's front door looking for advice on how to handle the situation. Unfortunately, Ellie is dealing with her own problems. Two months ago the father of her three children — Danny, Bridget, and Kassie — took off, and now the apartment building that the four of them live in is scheduled for demolition. 

As the sisters are reuniting, a massive earthquake rocks Ellie's apartment building and opens a sinkhole in the basement parking garage. Ellie's son Danny gets the bright idea to climb into the hole and take a look around. He finds an abandoned bank vault that contains creepy old vinyl recordings and a cracked sarcophagus housing a copy of the Natorum Demonto. Danny takes everything up to his bedroom and plays the vinyl on his turntable. It turns out that a priest recorded himself reading passages from the Book of the Dead, and soon enough the Deadites kill Ellie in the building's elevator.

Ellie gets possessed by the Deadites, and her corpse marches its way back into her apartment. Beth and the kids don't know how to respond to a possessed Ellie, and she manages to slash her daughter Bridget across the face. Beth manages to trap Ellie out in the hall — where she begins making quick work of the apartment's other inhabitants — but before too long Bridget begins to transform as well.

Beth finds herself fighting Deadites on all fronts while desperately trying to keep the kids alive. Danny ends up getting killed and joining the ranks of the Deadites as well. At that point, Beth decides the entire situation is a lost cause. She grabs Kassie and the two of them make a break for Ellie's car down in the garage. Now that Kassie's family members are all Deadites, they have no intention of letting her get away. Ellie, Danny, and Bridget violently fuse their bodies together into a 12-limbed creature that might be the scariest thing "Evil Dead" has ever shown.

Down in the parking garage, Beth finds a chainsaw and uses it to fight against the giant Deadite monster. She ends up destroying the creature, and the two of them escape. The next day a woman named Jessica is trying to leave for vacation, but when she steps into the garage she's attacked by Deadites and her body gets possessed. She heads out with her friends, and the Deadites find new victims out in the world.