Evil Season 4 Episode 14 Recap and Review: Fear of The Series Finale

Critic’s Rating: 4.75 / 5.0

4.75

This is it — the end. And yes, Evil Season 4 Episode 14 was aptly titled “Fear of the End.”

For this last hurrah (although we’re still keeping our fingers crossed for a Hail Mary because it’s never been more appropriate), we’ll combine the recap and review for a real sense of closure. Who am I kidding? There is no closure here.

But let’s carry on!

Evil Season 4 Episode 14 Review: Fear of the End

By now, we’re all familiar with the joke: A priest, a scientist, and a psychologist walk into a bar… Imagine if every story could be built on such a simple yet rich premise.

The Evil Series finale (shut my mouth!) was bigger on deep meaning than wrapping up outstanding storylines, and if we want to keep hope alive for rescue, that’s a very good thing.

All of the remaining players had a bit, no matter how small, helping to bring the story to a close. Putting a lid on four seasons seems like a heavy lift, but somehow, despite all the crazy tales and demons, the story was about friendship and faith in it, and it served those designations very well.

And when you look at the episode count, it’s amazing how much was accomplished in a mere 50 episodes. In the old days, you weren’t even halfway to a syndication contact for the series to be rerun elsewhere, but here, you have fully fleshed-out characters and myriad plot points.

That’s a testament to Michelle and Robert King, who put their hearts and souls into every part of the shows they produce. Their work leaves viewers satisfied and craving more, which is becoming increasingly infrequent in this industry.

Another thing the Kings do well is pointing a finger back at the industry. Evil’s final four episodes have used that kickback to grand effect, and they pulled no punches, equating the end of the assessor program with Evil being kicked to the curb.

Why did they shut down the assessor’s program? Because they don’t know what they’re doing. If that’s not a statement on TV as a whole, I don’t know what is. In a word, it’s perfection.

One thing that becomes apparent almost immediately with the finale is that participating in the assessor program changed the lives of Kristen, David, and Ben forever.

Even if they fool themselves into thinking they can return to the way things were, the reality will be much different.

They discovered the magic of working with people unlike themselves on projects that tested the very foundations of their humanity. As long as they provided answers, they had little oversight in how they achieved their goals.

Evil also closed out the series by retaining its apparent mission of pointing out that evil forces need not go to great lengths anymore because they can pump despair right into your brain without raising a finger to do it.

The sad reality is that we are our own worst enemies. DF decided to take the fight further with its games, but in our lives, playing into each other’s misery via social media does the trick.

David, Kristen, and Ben learned that by stepping into worlds they wouldn’t usually visit, they could escape that misery or, at worst, suffer through it together. They didn’t have to come from the same background or believe in the same things to find that common ground.

Mother Midnight was akin to any social media algorithm. It took your fears and created a future for you.

Many people these days are so wrapped up in their devices that they don’t have close siblings or friends to bear witness to the madness, let alone help them through it.

We watch horror movies looking for monsters but forget that big tech has created demons that leech into our very souls, exposing our greatest fears for the world to see.

Evil, the show, has found a way to address those demons through supernatural investigations but never lets go of our modern-day equivalent, either.

This is the kind of brilliance that we need on TV, and instead of creating a more welcoming home for one of TV’s smartest shows, it’s been vanquished. It’s so painful that it bears a mid-review reminder.

The journeys of other series regulars have already concluded, so the finale paid special mind to Kristen, David, and Ben.

In doing so, they revealed how it was after the assessor program shut down, what fears remained, and how easily they got lured back in when the door of opportunity offered another path.

Kristen’s outlook on therapy changed. Her approach to helping her clients was more mindful, and she admitted she used the word reverence more during treatment than she imagined she would.

But it wasn’t until she played Mother Midnight that her greatest fear was revealed. She’s unsure of how she’s raising her daughters. She questions whether it’s right to treat them as peers when they are her children, and with Andy and Sheryl gone, she’s on her own.

David closed the door on his old life, leaving his Demon behind, but by doing that, he also found a way to keep the real Kristen closer to him, at least for a little while. When he played Mother Midnight, he realized that heeling for The Entity was eating away at him and pulling him farther away from God.

And Ben discovered that money won’t buy happiness, even if he’s not ready to admit it. His imagination is so great and his desire to learn so significant that he won’t work well stifled in a glass cage without a shred of privacy.

His scientific brain has taken a beating. For every answer he finds, another question awaits him. The most puzzling comes through dying Karima: What if he’s wrong, and it isn’t just the big empty awaiting us all after death?

These are existential dilemmas that prey on all of us. Through Evil, we question our humanity, faith, friendships, and our very existence.

They’ve managed to make Evil such unabashed, irreverent fun while still gazing deeply into our mind, body, and spirit. I can’t think of another show on TV of late that offers something similar.

Of course, they were going to let Leland live to see another day. If the show returns, he will escape. If he doesn’t escape, he will find a way to terrorize everyone from the darkness of his demon box.

Despite the four years of increasing tension, Kristen demonstrates her strength and resourcefulness, subduing Leland with a stun gun before later attempting to strangle him. However, her friends stop her, saving her from crossing another moral line.

David, who has been entangled with The Entity and its sinister plans, makes a significant decision to leave the shadowy organization.

Despite his doubts about The Entity’s methods, he secures a role in running the assessor program out of Rome, which suggests a shift in his focus from combatting evil through The Entity’s extreme measures to a more measured approach.

David was born to run the assessor program. The Archdiocese that closed the program and shuttered St. Joseph’s was too small for him. De Vita said David’s choice was the bottom rung of Church hierarchy, but he was also jealous.

Those in power look down on those with gifts they do not share.

How annoying that Sister Andrea gets to see what they fear or that David gets results where they don’t. And how dare a lapsed Catholic and an atheist see so much in the cases before them when the higher-ups would miss the correlations completely?

The Church is embroiled in bureaucracy like any other corporation. Those on the lowest rung get to carry out the real work on behalf of God.

The Kings wrote in a six-month reprieve for the show. Kristen goes to Rome with David while they navigate the new program. It gives Ben time to grow weary of his glass cage. It also gives Timothy time to grow into his demonic side, forcing Kristen to work doubly hard to raise him.

She’s worried about how she raised the girls, but she’ll only get away with jamming a binky in Timothy’s mouth a couple of times before he learns to bite it in two. She’s got her work cut out for her, but she’ll relish it.

The finale touches upon the cornerstones of the series, including the love shared between Kristen, David, and Ben and the pervasive evil encroaching on our existence, which most are too blind to recognize.

It’s a thought-provoking conclusion to a button-pushing show. There is so much more evil to explore, both on-screen and in our everyday lives. Here’s hoping someone rescues Evil to help us navigate the murky waters they’ve created for us.

Evil Season 4 Episode 14 Recap

Kristen’s practice is going well. She has a female clientele that she can relate to. She seems to have it all together, but she says, “Looks can be deceiving.”

Ben started his first day at his new job. Ironically, he’s got a glass ceiling just like Sheryl’s, but he doesn’t have to bend down. The reality of any corporate job is that we all have glass ceilings above us, and breaking them can only come from above.

He’ll be working on the H-link, a small but important part of the operation. His office is more of a cell without any privacy, and it’s degrading. But for $650k, maybe he can get used to it. Then again, maybe not.

David’s room is packed up. He’s got one bag remaining. Demon Kristen is very sad. She can’t believe he’s not taking her. Katja Herbers played this scene brilliantly, and it actually hurt to watch Demon Kristen grovel.

Father De Vita welcomes David to his future. They downloaded the information from the cloned phone and located a meeting place for the next day. David is skeptical of their plans, which seem to include killing The Sixty.

The meeting involves a black mass and the killing of a young woman. Also, Leland will try to kill one of the assessors before tomorrow. David has had enough. He will protect his assessors.

Kristen’s girls are looking for their virtual reality headsets. They have a plan.

Kristen’s next patient, Mr. Ernest Truman, is actually Leland Townsend. She walks right to the file cabinet, grabs her protection order, and calls 9-1-1. He drops The Sixty at her feet, but she doesn’t bite.

She begins recording the infraction. Help him out tomorrow night, and he’ll never bother her or her girls again. She pulls out a stun gun, and down he goes.

David and Ben arrive, scared of what they’ll find. Kristen has it under control. She keeps shocking Leland every time he begins to get up. OMG. We’re back, Ben says. You can tell it’s far more exciting than his new job.

David puts Leland on his back. He’s going to talk to The Entity about Leland, and he’ll be right back. He dumps a crying Leland on the floor in front of the armageddon painting and snaps some photos. I really need a screenshot of this thing to see what all it represents.

David calls De Vita. He wants insurance that he’ll be ending The Sixty once and for all. When De Vita asks for the assessor files, David hangs up. The next scene is our trio reminiscing and burning their files. Good for them!

Leland and Henry Stick audition women for the “screaming girl” role. Is this a ruse? Leland says the screaming woman is a backup.

Henry Stick wants to end Kristen and move on to the next, but Leland has no desire to do that. Sister Andrea is the next woman. She followed Stick’s scent. He’s displeased.

Stick tries scaring Sister Andrea with a free hook. She plays with him instead. Leland says she’s all talk. We know she’s not.

Kristen, Ben, and David talk about how they influence each other. She says it’s with her canned beverages, but she says she’s more humbled by other people’s knowledge now. David has never had a lot of friends, especially not those who he can talk with about deeper things like death.

Kristen says nobody talks about real things anymore. It’s all about influencers and TV. In therapy now, she speaks a lot about reverence. They realize how much they’ll miss each other.

The girls decide to play Mother Midnight, a game that shows you your fate after a brief stay in a closet.

When they go into the closet and follow Mother Midnight, they are soon wandering around the house. They see David, Kristen, and Ben chatting. They’re enjoying each other’s company when Leland emerges from behind them and using a pickaxe like the one Kristen used to kill Leroux, kills Kristen.

Their screams bring Kristen, David, and Ben running. Ben, of course, is interested in investigating. There is a clock running down on the game.

Apparently, what they saw will come true in 24 hours. When they begin talking about what they saw, it does give the assessors pause. It’s a little too on the nose for a game.

“For old time’s sake, don’t skip this intro” is the intro message. That’s all they’ve got for the finale. This is far too sad!

Kristen, Ben, and David put on the goggles and head into the closet.

Ben: What are you doing?

David: Something stupid.

One by one, the three of them get pulled into their own potential futures.

Ben is the first to experience something. But once they’re inside, they stop seeing each other, so they’re probably doing it simultaneously.

Ben sees the girls in his imaginary future, and they’re looking into a room with a hospital bed. It’s Karima. She doesn’t have much time. She needs to know — where is Allah?

She understands the science they both share, but now she’s afraid. She’s cold. There’s nothing, is there? There’s just empty. Just before she dies, she says he’s right. There’s nothing.

Kristen sees Dr. Boggs in her imaginary future. He asks her to take a seat in her office. He has 567 true-or-false statements so they can better understand her behavior and how she ended up an unfit parent. It’s an intervention.

The girls have no father, no grandmother, and they are practically raising themselves. She treats her girls like adults, and Boggs says that’s the problem.

He has heard that her girls are mean because she’s so freely sarcastic with them. This is not the way a good mother leads, and so they are being taken from her.

David’s visit with his imaginary future includes Sister Andrea listening to banging on a wall. The wall explodes, and a demon comes out from behind the wall. He bends over David and takes a substantial bite out of his neck.

Leland asks him if he sees the blinding white light leading him to the pearly gates. No? Bummer.

David was a fool. He believed in a book written by broken men who offered the world nothing but false hope.

When they escape their imaginary futures, Kristen is not amused. That was not a game.

The game is in beta, and it’s still counting down. Despair is Satan‘s masterpiece, David says. Ben looks out the window, and there is a horde of goggle-wearing people milling around and looking into the window.

They have been playing the game, and they were directed to Kristen’s house via the game.

They have all been in the house looking for a way to turn off the clock. One man has been told his girl will die on her bike. They need to remove one of the bricks to stop the clock. There is a tunnel to hell in the basement.

There is a scientific reason for this game. The demon tracker game the girls have been using has mapped their whole house. Ben will figure out the rest.

A real estate agent is showing Leland and Stick the deconsecrated church. That is the space they will use for their black mass. They even ask for witches’ cauldrons, but the agent thinks it’s fun.

Sister Andrea finds De Vita in a car outside of the church. She says they have this wrong. But nobody in power ever listens to her, so it seems unlikely they’ll do it now.

Ben has found a device that links the cloud to a person’s brain without an implant. That’s what is embedded in the goggles. It’s similar to what Taupin had but isn’t as powerful.

He has also discovered who created the demon tracker app — DF. David looks away and sees a connection between the regions of the brain connected to the thalamus and The Sixty. The sixty sigils connect with the mapping.

David: Sixty evil families, sixty regions of the brain. Why go to the trouble of tempting when you can upload despair right into the brain?

Sister Andrea calls David about the issue at the church. There are no longer demons at the church. She wants him to convince De Vita by being tall. Tall people are convincing, even if they’re dumb.

What’s the use of all these satan worshippers running around if you can just meet online, Ben wonders. David realizes that the only reason they would pretend to meet in person is for a setup. Moments later, the screaming girl screams, and the team rushes in.

De Vita gets a card that says, “Meet the evil coming to New York — you.” The cauldrons begin spewing poison, and those inside die.

When David reaches him, De Vita is still alive. “We’re dead,” he tells David.

The Sixty have their zoom meeting touting 18 of The Entity dead, the tables turned, and they’re just getting started. Norm, in demon form, is muted. They try to walk him through turning on his mic. So true!

They’re no longer families in real life, but they are families in their minds. The next time they meet, they’ll welcome the apocalypse and a new antichrist figurehead to rally around.

An avatar named Gray wonders where the black mass is. Where is the death they were promised? Stick eyes Leland, who caves and says it will happen tonight.

He has protected Kristen for four years, and it ends tonight.

David tells De Vita he doesn’t want to be in The Entity. He doesn’t believe in it or its weapons. Every time he helps them, he feels less Godly. It’s eating away at him.

What he wants is to run the assessor program. De Vita says it’s the lowest rung of the hierarchy, and David is better than that. David likes the lowest rung. They settle on David running the program out of Rome.

David wants Kristen and Ben to join him. Kristen wonders why they shut them down in the first place. He scoffs — because they don’t know what they’re doing. It’s only for six months to see how it works. Kristen is both intrigued and scared.

She doesn’t want to play into the patriarchy. David promises that won’t happen. She will have a position in the hierarchy. Kristen says that priests won’t even look her in the eye.

We also learned they only make $65k a year, and they might make double that with the new positions. Since Ben is making ten times that, it’s not intriguing to him.

Kristen has many reasons why she doesn’t want to consider it, but she seems to be talking herself out of it. Ben could totally see Kristen eating gelato, looking at art, and wearing cool sunglasses. She begs out. But the girls overheard. They will pluck away at her!

The girls look at the goggles. Less than 15 minutes left. Kristen watches her doppel, who says, “Yeah, well, a risk not taken is a life not lived. Never give up a chance to fuck or travel.”

Kristen looks around her room. She decides to go for it. When she does, the door handle jiggles. Leland has arrived. When he can’t get in, he comes in through the basement by knocking out the bricks between the houses.

He puts in his earbuds and plays “Dang Me” by Robert Miller. He engages Kristen’s security system — an empty can in front of the basement door.

She’s waiting for him in her closet with a rope. She jumps on his back and starts strangling him. She’s doing a great job, but Ben and David arrive, stopping her from doing more damage to her soul.

She starts to cry. The clock runs out. She’s alive.

There is an ad for the Revolution.5. The future is in their hands. The clock was counting down a trial period before they needed to pay for a subscription.

Kristen is bummed that Leland is still alive. That just means he’ll come back.

The next scene shows Leland wrapped in burlap, screaming about his plight. Sister Andrea opens the demon box from the silent monastery, and they put Leland inside.

Kristen and the girls are in Rome eating gelato and video chatting with Ben. She says he loves him, which throws him before returning the sentiment.

Kristen sends the girls to school and looks down at Timothy. His eyes go a bit demon. David comes up from behind, sporting sunglasses. Timothy shows demon teeth, and Kristen puts a binkey in his mouth. Nothing is wrong — nothing at all.