Hawk Ripjaw
The following contains spoilers for Evil S3E8 “The Demon of Parenthood” (directed by Aisha Tyler and written by Sarah Acosta).
Friends, we are positively hurtling towards an eventful season finale. After Evil S3E8 “The Demon of Parenthood,” we’ve got just two episodes left, and this week goes hard with so much packed into this episode, you can’t even fault it for some of the other plot threads it has to set aside for a minute. RSM Fertility, demon babies, more espionage…possessed toys? Boy, this was an eventful one.
So far, LeConte has been very accurate in predicting events that David will experience as a precursor to his next task for the Vatican. The most recent task is so far the craziest: that the Monsignor will issue some emergency assessment, and at said assessment someone will say “Honky-Tonk” and David must then note the 12th word spoken after that, and relay it to LeConte.
Ostensibly, this must be some sort of covert means of passing information, but why must it be so covert? The first time David hears the trigger word, the 12th word is “matters.” LeConte somehow uses the 7-letter word to verify that Grace Ling is alive, but won’t give any other information. Not long after, David hears the trigger word again, with the 12th word being “ignore”—only 6 letters. LeConte rebuffs David’s confidence in a misfired transmission, but David’s own digging culminates in a bizarre web of political intrigue.
As for this week’s case: possessed toys! The emergency assessment hinted at by LeConte ends up being for a toy store that has seen mass amounts of returns of toys that have been…behaving weirdly, for lack of a better phrase. The stuffed animals are literally frowning, a chaotic Jack-in-the-Box is featured in the episode’s best jump-scare, and a knockoff Magic-8 Ball only displays the message “Help me, I’m in Hell.” Ben finds a severed finger inside the ball too, so that’s just great.
It turns out that the “cursed” toys are being manufactured as messages from a work camp, and an underground effort to get individuals out of China—including Grace Ling, who is tied to LeConte’s recent tasks for David. I honestly don’t have anything else to speculate on that right now, and the fact that Grace just shows up in David’s building at the end of the episode is abrupt enough to be suspicious, but only makes things harder to predict.
As frequently surprising and weird as Evil can get, it still manages to juke expectations and deliver something completely unexpected. He’s been gone for a while, but George finally revisits Kristen in her nightmares, and he’s brought Lexis in tow. What starts as a uneasy scene suddenly shifts to camp, as George and Lexis start…flossing. As in, the dance. They continue to floss at the foot of Kristen’s bed as she frantically wills herself to close her eyes and escape the night terror. I definitely didn’t have “George and Lexis floss” on my Evil bingo card.
The RSM Fertility thread dropped way back in Season 1 is really starting to pick up some traction this week, as Kristen learns that her missing egg from the fertility clinic was in fact shipped off to a needy couple. The mother, Valerie, is grateful that she is finally expecting a child, and invites Kristen to be involved as a second mother to the child. Less heartwarming is Valerie’s husband, Logan, discreetly inquiring about any concerns about RSM Fertility and admitting that when he listens to the baby’s heartbeat, he hears animalistic growling.
In true Evil fashion, we don’t get the expected resolution to this troubling development, as Logan’s mental state steadily deteriorates until he literally digs the baby out of Valerie with a gardening tool. “It was killing her,” a blood-soaked Logan mutters. We only see the aftermath, but it is absolutely horrifying—Kristen’s response is all we need to know how awful it is. It also begs the question: was there a demonic presence growing in Valerie, or did Logan just have a breakdown from the stress of expecting a child after years of fruitless attempts to conceive?
The friendship between Kristen and David faces a huge shake-up this week as Kristen confronts him with his secrecy and lies in the past few weeks, specifically David’s tasks for LeConte. Kristen rightfully feels slighted, and they don’t really patch things up right away. David pledges to be more open with Kristen, but this scene is a further reminder of how the Vatican’s hold on David is driving a wedge between him and everyone and everything else in his life, including the Archdiocese. The Vatican allures him with the promise that he is working for the good of the Lord and the Holy; but how genuine is this promise, and what will it cost David? They eventually sort of make up, in an emotional scene where David tells her that he cares deeply for her, but sometimes he is called to do things for God. Kristen responds that she wished she understood, but professes her platonic love for him.
Kristen and Ben are faring a bit better, with their strong friendship unfettered by religious disagreements allowing Ben to offer good advice for Kristen in regards to her concerns with Lexis. Ben reminds her that in the case of nature vs. nurture, he’ll always bet on nurture—a reminder to her and us that Lexis is not destined for a demonic throne as long as her mother continues to steer her in the right direction. Or maybe she will be a demon; at this rate I’m pretty sure I’ve made at least one incorrect prediction every couple of episodes.
We are reaching maximum Kurt Alert this week, folks. Desperate to reclaim his muse, Dr. Kurt is back to listening to “Allouete” on the spooky turntable. Maybe it’s just me, but I feel like playing “Allouete” on repeat on a turntable featuring an image of a demon chasing me with an axe would probably cramp my book writing efforts. Thankfully, Dr. Kurt didn’t end up cutting off Sister Andrea’s hair, but instead collected it from a shower drain (unsurprisingly, still super weird!). That’s not enough according to Leland. Also, why is Dr. Kurt not super leery of the fact that Leland just keeps showing up inside his office when it’s apparently in the middle of the night?
Anyway, Leland proposes that Dr. Kurt try something different to stroke his muse: a willful possession, so he can experience the full brunt of the demonic to really fire that baby up and get that book going! Kurt is invited by Leland to such an event that kind of feels like the upgraded version of last week’s cult, and while the man spitting up blood and yelling about feeling the power of Satan inside him might just be theatre, the vase flying across the room is less easily explained away. After partaking in the activity, we later see No Shirt Kurt wearing only a tie and hungering for more of the muse—which now is his demon’s face in the turntable…”Boop.”
It is a little bit odd that we didn’t get an update on Andy this week, although I do understand that “The Demon of Parenthood” had plenty going on without bloating its runtime. There is a sense that Sheryl is starting to realize that she might be in over her head. Her visible terror when taking Lexis to meet the Manager, and that Lexis greets him with all of the decorum of a kid meeting an authority figure, makes for a tense sequence as she tries to decipher whether Lexis is seeing the Manager in his demonic form. If so, it would track with the path Lexis is on. It turns out that Lexis saw him as human, which was a huge relief—even for Sheryl.
What a week! I didn’t even get a chance to talk about the bit where Kristen has a nightmare about breastfeeding a demon baby! Evil really seems to be building to something huge, but even if the finale doesn’t feature too many revelations, that’s just more fuel for the confirmed Season 4. “The Demon of Parenthood” is a classic Evil episode; the character work is great, there are plenty of spooky moments, and the overall plot is rapidly advancing. We’ve got two more weeks of this, and by God, we’re going to cherish them.
Evil streams Sundays on Paramount+
