How Evil returned for a third season that's stranger and spookier than ever
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Horror and comedy have always gone hand in hand. After all, the physical act of laughing isn't all that different from screaming. Plenty of television shows have walked that tightrope between the horrifying and the hilarious, but no show has ever done it quite as skillfully as Evil, the spooky Paramount+ series that returns for its third season June 12.
Since premiering on CBS and moving to Paramount+, the dark, twisty drama has proven to be one of the strangest and most delightful shows on TV, following priest David (Mike Colter), psychiatrist Kristen (Katja Herbers), and tech expert Ben (Aasif Mandvi) as they investigate the supernatural. In some ways, the show has a lot in common with your standard procedural: Every episode, the trio delves into a creepy, unexplained mystery, trying to uncover whether it's the work of humans or something more demonic.
But what sets Evil apart is its unsettling tone. Eyeballs pop up in toilet bowls. Nightmares break the fourth wall. A demon visits his therapist, who turns out to be a giant goat. Even David, Kristen, and Ben don't always know whether what they're witnessing is real, and our heroes are often left wondering whether to laugh or scream.
ELIZABETH FISHER/CBS Mike Colter, Katja Herbers, Aasif Mandvi, and Michael Emerson on 'Evil'
"In season 2, there was that line where the succubus that was haunting Ben had a retainer, and she took out the retainer," Mandvi tells EW with a laugh. "In that moment I realized, 'Oh, we're a comedy.' The whole thing is absurd. You suddenly realize, 'Oh, there's this real absurdity underlying this entire show.'"
In fact, the cast tells EW, they delight in toying with the audience's expectations.
"The humor is always clear to me, no matter how dark the scene is," says Michael Emerson, who plays Kristen's nemesis Leland. "And I'm happy about that. I'm happy to mix it up and keep the audience off balance because I want it to be ambiguous, and I want it to be a mystery."
Season 3 picks up where season 2 left off, with Kristen confessing to David — now an officially ordained priest — that she murdered serial killer Orson LeRoux to protect her family. That emotional confession led to the pair sharing a forbidden kiss, and Herbers and Colter tease that Kristen and David's romantic moment will have major repercussions throughout the season.
"It's so complicated because I think if David and Kristen were going to kiss, this is probably the most complicated, tender, wonderful, weird way for it to have happened," Herbers says. "She has completely broken down and laid herself entirely bare with all the things that she feels are awful about her — and he's able to love her despite all that."
As for David, he's graduated from priest-in-training to official man of God. One early season 3 scene underscores how mundane David's priest life can be, whether it's getting up early for 6 a.m. mass or silently sipping soup with his fellow clerics. "It was the saddest soup I've ever seen," Colter says of filming that scene. "I literally was like, 'Guys, this is not even bone broth.' I was embarrassed to eat it. I thought it was way overboard. Soup? It wasn't even soup."
Still, Colter teases, it's not all boring confessions and sad liquid meals. The new season will present plenty of challenges for poor David — both personal and professional.
"The biggest fear was once he becomes a man of the cloth, and he's officially got his priest garb on, where does he go from here?" Colter explains. "How do we keep it interesting? And what does that mean for him as a character?"
Meanwhile, the usually unflappable Ben finds himself reckoning with all the strange things he's seen on the job. Mandvi says that in this season, Ben's "brain breaks," and he has to reconcile the unexplained with his hunger for facts and logic.
"I always love it when Ben gets thrown from his surefootedness," Mandvi adds. "Ben is a little bit like a tree. I feel like he's solid. He really knows what he knows, and he stands firm in that. So whenever Ben is out of that element, it's fun to play him."
ELIZABETH FISHER/CBS Mike Colter and Aasif Mandvi on 'Evil'
But even as Evil ventures into unexplored territory, the cast teases that it will still maintain the show's signature tone, thanks to creators Robert and Michelle King. Plus, they add, season 3 will have plenty of unsettling surprises along the way.
"There's one moment where Ben ends up covered in goat blood, walking through a field at night," Mandvi says. "There's always a little bit of humor in our show, but it was also kind of terrifying to be alone, out in the middle of a field, covered in goat blood."
"It's a heck of a job," Emerson adds with a smile. A terrifying one, too.
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