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This is about the Ash vs Evil Dead episode. You might be looking for the demonic entities known as The Dark Ones.

"The Dark One" is the tenth and final episode of the first season of Ash vs Evil Dead, and the tenth overall episode in the series. It was written by Craig DiGregorio and directed by Rick Jacobson.

Plot Synopsis[]

The winds outside the Knowby cabin begin to blow more intensively as the storm draws closer, with lightning flickering in the night skies above. Inside the wooden abode, Kelly Maxwell has pinned Pablo to the wall, attempting to pull the carved leathery visage of the Necronomicon off his face to no avail. As Ash Williams gets to his feet, Ruby reveals her true intentions of unleashing the monstrosities detailed within the Ex-Mortis upon the world of the living. Frightened by the bizarre plot which she has unwittingly stepped into, Heather attempts to flee the cabin through the back door, only to find the Deadite Amanda Fisher floating in front of the threshold. Amanda snarls and flies into the room, grabbing the attention of Ash and Kelly. Noticing his chainsaw sitting on the table nearby, Amanda picks up the weapon and charges towards Ash.

Whilst Williams is occupied with Fisher, Pablo succumbs to the possession of the Ex-Mortis, and flees with Ruby into the fruit cellar. Heather watches as Ash's battle continues, with Williams eventually managing to get his hand back onto his chainsaw, which he uses to slice her in half and take her down for good. The room falls silent as Amanda's lifeless body flops to the floor, and Ash asks Kelly and Heather where Pablo went. The two say nothing as all eyes fall on the open cellar door in the corner...

Ash gears up and takes the first step into the cellar, only to hesitate as the echos of an unearthly horrific shriek from below reaches them. As Williams continues to hesitate, the Kandarian Demon races through the woods and slams against the front of the cabin with all it's might, knocking Ash off his feet and sending him tumbling into the cellar. During the fall, Ash smacks his head against each wooden step before suddenly finding himself back inside his trailer on the night he read the Necronomicon to Lucy the tattooed girl. Initially believing the events of the past few days to have been a dream, Ash throws aside the Ex-Mortis and tells Lucy there's no way he's reading anything from that book to her. Suddenly, Ruby appears, and tells Williams that she knows Ash is the only man capable of stopping her from assuming control over the demonic forces remaining on the Earth, and demands to know what he would want to cease his attack. Though tempted by her offer of getting his dream life in Jacksonville, Ash denies her offer and tries to kill Ruby with his shotgun, bringing an abrupt end to this illusion.

Ash finds himself back at the cabin, lying on the floor of the fruit cellar. Quickly getting to his feet, Ash bangs on the cellar door, demanding Kelly open it up. Both Kelly and Heather try to open the trap door, but it simply will not budge. Realizing he's stuck down there, Ash begrudgingly heads deeper into the depths of the cellar.

Upstairs, Kelly tries her hardest to get the cellar door to open, doing everything from shooting it with her machine gun, and then taking several swings at it with an axe. Meanwhile, Heather begins to succumb to the cabin's illusions, seeing blood bubble up from Kelly's bullet holes in the floor, followed by roaches crawling all over her body. Kelly slaps Heather and tells her that she needs to get ahold of herself, and help her help Ash and Pablo. Having grown tired of her attacks, the cabin itself forces Kelly into the thunderstorm outside, leaving Heather all alone inside.

Back beneath the cabin, Ash finds Ruby in the furthest chamber of the cellar, where Pablo is being forced to act as a birthing passage for her children: the Demon Spawn. Ash watches as the Demon Spawn grows from a fetus into a small child in a matter of seconds, taking orders from Ruby before disappearing into the "ceiling" of the cellar.

Outside, Kelly's attempts at smashing the windows of the cabin with a large rock are unsuccessful, and watches as Heather is suddenly pulled away from the window. Heather crawls across the floor, trying to escape the seemingly sentient couch following her, only for the sofa to flip into the air and land on her leg. Standing back up, she's then attacked by nails coming out of the walls and floorboards. Losing her strength, Heather is then dragged into a glowing red void at the end of the cabin's hallway as Kelly hears her screams from outside. She looks down, noticing blood emerging from underneath the front door before the door suddenly swings open, sending a rush of blood and body parts directly at Kelly. Heather's severed head taunts Kelly, telling her Ash has failed and the world belongs to evil now, only for Kelly to retaliate by kicking the head like a ball, and sets all her attention on breaking back into the cabin...

Inside the cellar, Ash is hyping himself up to barge into the room and attack Ruby, only for the Demon Spawn child to appear behind him. Ash hesitates to shoot the child, only for the "creepy kid" to jump up onto him. After throwing off the demonic child, the Spawn runs around the room and jumps onto Ash's back, before disappearing and returning to bite his leg. Ash quickly sticks the barrel of his Boomstick down the Demon Spawn's throat and pulls the trigger.

Back outside, Kelly runs around to the back of the cabin and finds a gas can near the power generator, along with an emergency flair inside a nearby box. She douses the cabin wall with gas and lights the flair, letting out a victorious holler as the flames begin to creep along the wooden walls.

Ash barges into the room, blasting Ruby with round after round of Boomstick blasts into the Dark One. She falls to the floor, and Ash revs up his chainsaw to deliver the killing blow...

Outside, the cabin groans and bleeds as the fire spreads, eventually opening up its shutters and doors to allow Kelly back inside. After being briefly startled by another Demon Spawn, Kelly grabs her axe and charges into the cellar.

Before Ash can cut into Ruby, Pablo (still possessed by the Necronomicon) begins to fight Williams. Meanwhile, Kelly has another brief encounter with a Demon Spawn, though she presses on deeper as the echos of Ash and Pablo's fight catches her ear. Back in the room, Pablo pulls the chainsaw's spinning blade closer to his face, begging Ash to kill him and put him out of his misery. As Williams struggles to resist Pablo's pull on the saw, Ruby's wounds begin to heal. Suddenly, the chainsaw stops, and Ash laughs as he tells Pablo he forgot to remind him to fill the saw with gas. Pablo falls under the Necronomicon's possession once more, quickly grabbing the Boomstick and taking aim at Ash just as Kelly barges into the room and tackles him. With Kelly wrestling the possessed Pablo, Ash turns his attention to Ruby, who comes at him brandishing the Kandarian Dagger. Williams manages to distract the Dark One by asking her if she's lost weight, and quickly snatches the dagger from her hands. The blade's touch burns Ruby's skin with every swipe from Ash, prompting Ruby to make one last effort at offering Ash a deal for his new life in Jacksonville. Williams weighs his options as the possessed Pablo chokes Kelly, and ultimately decides to accept Ruby's offer. Pablo releases Kelly from his grip, and the Necronomicon releases Pablo of his possession.

Back in the Oldsmobile, Ash smiles as he drives to his new life in Jacksonville, all while Pablo and Kelly leer at him in the back seat, upset that he accepted the demon's deal. Suddenly, an emergency alert broadcast interrupts the music, where a panicked announcer states that sinkholes are suddenly opening up across Antrim County. Ash quickly turns off the radio upon realizing what exactly the sudden sinkholes mean, and puts on a cassette of AC/DC's Back In Black, unaware of the sinkhole swallowing up the road behind them...

Cast[]

Starring

Guest starring

Gallery[]

Soundtrack[]

Trivia[]

  • References to The Evil Dead:
    • When the Deadite Amanda sticks Ash's chainsaw into the wall of the cabin, the close-up shot uses a Homelite XL-12 chainsaw (first seen in The Evil Dead) instead of the Homelite XL model later used in Evil Dead II and Army of Darkness.
    • Professor Knowby's dialog on the reel-to-reel tape recorder are the same lines heard in The Evil Dead.
    • After Heather is attacked by the couch inside the cabin, audio of Linda singing her "We're gonna get you" song from The Evil Dead is heard.
  • References to Evil Dead II:
    • When gearing up to go into the cellar, Ash puts black shoe polish in his hair over the same spot on the left side of his head where the white "scared" streak appeared in the climax of Evil Dead II.
    • Before going into the cellar, Ash asks Kelly to watch the door, as he's "been stuck down there before", referencing the scene in Evil Dead II in which he's trapped in the cellar when the Deadite Henrietta Knowby awakens.
    • Ash's initial hesitation to go down the stairs into the cellar might be a reference to the climax of Evil Dead II, when the Deadite Henrietta Knowby reached through the spaces between the steps and grabbed Ash's ankles from behind.
    • When Ruby tells Ash that he appeared in her book long ago, an image of the "Hero From The Sky" page of the Necronomicon (first seen in Evil Dead II) is shown.
    • The faux "Freddy Krueger" glove prop (first seen in the workshed in Evil Dead II) appears in the cabin's fruit cellar after Ash awakens from his "flashback" with Ruby in his trailer.
    • When Kelly shoots the cellar door in a fit of rage after failing to pull it open, blood begins to appear from the bullet holes. This is an homage to the scene in Evil Dead II in which Ash shoots the cabin's wall while hunting his severed hand and blood begins to pour out from the hole.
    • Ash stumbles across Jake's corpse while exploring the cellar, just as he did in Evil Dead II.
  • References to Army of Darkness:
    • During his flashback with Lucy in his trailer, Ash mentions having to break-out "the Boomstick", the nickname which he gave his shotgun in Army of Darkness.
    • Ruby's remark to Ash that he's "always been good with words" might be a reference to Army of Darkness, in which he forgot the final word in the "Klaatu Barada Nikto" incantation to prevent evil from awakening.
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