I don’t claim to be certain about this by any means, but I feel like this week’s episode of the final season of Robert and Michelle King’s Evil is pretty on the nose about making its take on faith clear. I think we have our assessment. There’s something evil in Evil. And I don’t mean the kind that’s entirely psychological.
Spoiler Alert
What happened to Vicki Finch?
So the church’s gone ahead and gotten themselves in a pretty tight spot. I thought the assessors were supposed to be called in before the need for an exorcism was determined. But, oh well. Proper order of things hardly seems to be Father Jeffries’ thing. Kristen’s only back from a heartbreaking visit with her husband at the psych ward. And even though the grief demon hasn’t been able to claw his way in yet, it’s got to be agonizing for Kristen to put up a brave face for her daughters. Considering how badly she needed a distraction, flight attendant Vicki Finch’s case came in at just the right time. Instead of casting out the supposed demon, the exorcism made Vicki slit her wrists, and the church is now liable. What’s strange are the sores all over Vicki’s back—a bad case of antibiotic-resistant MRSA, if we’re to go with Ben’s immediate conjecture.
You can imagine why Vicki’s husband wasn’t aware of how bad it got for his wife. He’s a pilot, and they both work red-eye shifts, so having their routines in sync is nearly impossible. But given Marcus is not of much help, the assessor trio heads off to the hotel which Vicki and her colleagues use as their crash pad between flights. Things are obviously not as simple as Ben thought. And Vicki’s uniforms don’t really have any trace of anything nasty that might’ve caused the infection. But her friends Tori and Lucy have a lot to say about what went down before Vicki went off the rails. Apparently, on her last flight, Vicki saw the ghost of a pilot, Captain Lemire, who’s an aviation legend of sorts. That’d explain why Vicki would be throbbing and foaming at the mouth. But it’s Lucy’s big mouth that actually gets the assessors closer to figuring out what might’ve actually gone wrong. Apparently, Vicki had a booming side hustle as a relic smuggler. And she secured a relic that was supposed to be her ticket to retirement. By the time the relic was done with Vicki, it was something that Vicki wanted to destroy. Well, what do you know? It seems our Vicki got her hands on a sliver of the True Cross. Yes, the one that Christ died on. And considering Father Dominic Kabiru’s shown his face to the entire group, risking the entity’s secrecy, this relic’s got to be of utmost importance to the Vatican—important enough for the Vatican to summon Kristen, David, and Ben for a particularly non-negotiable meet-and-greet in Rome.
What’s Sheryl’s plan for Timothy?
Kristen’s girls have certainly inherited their mom’s sass. But more than that, their emotional intelligence is quite shocking for kids their age. Mom’s off to the Vatican? Lynn has volunteered to babysit her sisters. You can’t blame Kristen for not taking the offer, though. She just wants them to be safe and for them to maybe not eat candy salad for dinner. But the peculiar evil surrounding the Bouchard family had other plans. So when the storm gets the real babysitter’s mom in danger, and she has to rush to her rescue, the kids are left alone. And how could this group of troublemakers keep themselves from overloading the fuse box and crashing it? Lynn and Laura’s talk while fixing the fuse box in the basement makes one thing pretty clear. No matter how well Kristen thinks she’s guarding them against everything that’s going wrong with her and Andy, the kids know that mom’s losing it. It’s rather tragic how Laura’s trying to come to terms with the idea of being an almost orphan. I just hope Kristen gets a whiff of her kids’ insecurities before things fall apart. But let’s shelve that topic for now because there’s a weird hole in the basement that needs addressing.
What’s even more bizarre is the entire colony of bats that come out of the hole and run the kids out of the house. Nearly everything had to go wrong on the one day Kristen’s in a whole other country. The storm’s getting bad, the kids are locked out of the house, and the nice neighbor doesn’t seem to be home. I think the situation justifies a rule-breaking call to Grandma. And Sheryl obviously makes the most of the opportunity to introduce the kids’ supposedly satanic half-sibling to them. She tests the waters first by claiming Timothy’s just a baby she’s babysitting. But when the kids predictably go bonkers over the adorable toddler, Sheryl’s a teary-eyed, emotional grandma who can’t hold in the truth any longer. So the kids now know that Timothy is their brother. And even though they’ve promised not to divulge the secret to their mom, I doubt that they won’t pounce on Kristen the second she gets home. That’s exactly what Sheryl probably wants, right? For the kids to pressure their mom into bringing their baby brother home. I hope the swampy IV fluids are worth destroying your daughter’s life for, Sheryl.
Was Vicki’s relic demonic?
Poor Ben isn’t even allowed to get a bite to eat by the mean priests escorting them to the location in Rome. And sadly for Kristen’s kids, who were really excited to see Rome through her mom’s phone, she isn’t even allowed to stop and take pictures on their way. So you can’t really blame Kristen for singing that obscene song just to get on their nerves. But the priests are just following orders. I bet you were just as shocked as the trio when, instead of the Vatican, they’re guided into a creepy tunnel. Kristen might be a little overdressed. It helps to see a familiar face in the middle of the tunnel, though. Father Dominic was scared that the relic might make the plane crash. But he comes bearing some pretty neat information. So, this is no ordinary tunnel. And it was built during the Second World War to safely stash the Vatican’s valuables, and that includes the Holy Cross. But it turns out that they made the journey for no reason. Vicki’s relic is counterfeit. But then, how do you explain what’s been happening to her? It’s a bit too much to be psychosomatic, isn’t it?
In the ending sequence of this week’s episode of Evil, there’s an answer to a burning question in the kind of circumstances that’d scare the bejeesus out of anyone, especially those with aerophobia. The Vatican’s washed their hands off Vicki. They just handed David a bottle of holy water to sprinkle on her sores and send them off. Not much of a shocker, considering all they cared about was the relic, and they didn’t even bother learning the name of the woman who’d been afflicted because of it. On the flight back home, there’s an unexpected surprise in the form of Vicki’s friend Tori. She’s not too embarrassed to admit that flight attendants can be superstitious and communicate her fear about the “fake” relic being on the flight. But things only take on a truly scary form when David gets an emergency air-to-ground call from Father Dominic and the flight enters intensely turbulent weather.
Apparently, the piece of wood might’ve been fake, but the box holding it is of a demonic origin. This Bulgarian box, which has something to do with the Kukeri, is part of a whole display of demonic relics that are being brought to New York. Does anyone smell DF? Who else would be buying a demonic relic meant for the great corruption of society? David needs to destroy the box before the plane crashes. And the trouble is, he’s seeing the ghost pilot, Captain Lemire, around the cabin. It can’t be a coincidence that the flight is over the Atlantic when Captain Lemire shows up. Because if we’re to believe the legend we heard from Tori, ever since his flight crashed, Captain Lemire’s spirit appears on transatlantic flights that go through bad weather, presumably with the goal of crashing it. If it wasn’t obvious already, the demonic shrieks on the speaker certainly suggest that the box is actually evil. Luckily, David didn’t leave Rome empty-handed. And to the frustration of Captain Lemire’s ghost, the box is destroyed by the holy water David sprinkles on it. The flight’s saved, but I can’t say the same about Kristen and Ben’s atheist statuses. How would they science their way out of this one?
