Published Jul 25, 2026, 11:45 PM EDT
Sam Raimi’s Evil Dead franchise changed shape each time Ash Williams (Bruce Campbell) survived it. The 1981 original treated the Necronomicon and its Deadites as cabin-bound nightmare fuel. Evil Dead II pushed the same possession horror into physical comedy, geysers of blood, demonic slapstick, and Campbell fighting his own hand. Then, Army of Darkness dropped Ash into a medieval fantasy complete with an army of skeletons. And while Raimi did not helm the complete television continuation from 2015 — the helm rotated between horror and action veterans like M.J. Bassett, Rick Jacobson, David Frazee, and **Michael Hurst **— he directed the pilot episode and co-created the rest of the show.
That show is currently trending on the Apple TV Store and Lionsgate+. The 2015-2018 television continuation restores the claustrophobic possession horror, Raimi’s elastic camera movement, chainsaw dismemberment, absurd one-liners, and the uncomfortable truth that Ash is brave enough to save humanity while remaining barely qualified to manage his own life. The story catches him three decades later, drifting between dead-end Value Stop jobs and pretending the cabin years never damaged him. On the Apple TV Store in both the UK and the U.S., the series stayed between #10 and #19 spots from July 16 to July 22. On Lionsgate+ (Amazon Channels) in Italy, the 2015-2018 Evil Dead TV run popped up twice in the most streamed Top 10 media on the platform — once at #8 and then at #10 on July 22.
The series is Ash vs Evil Dead; it was co-created by Sam Raimi, Ivan Raimi, and Tom Spezialy, with Raimi directing the pilot and Campbell returning alongside **Ray Santiago, Dana DeLorenzo, **and Lucy Lawless. Its three seasons contain only 30 episodes, generally running around half an hour each, making the complete story roughly a 15-hour binge.
Your instincts, your strengths, and your particular way of thinking under pressure point to one villain you actually have a fighting chance against. Everyone else — good luck.
Jason is relentless, but he is also predictable — and that is the gap you would exploit.
Michael watches before he moves. He is patient, methodical, and almost impossible to detect — until it’s too late for anyone who isn’t paying close enough attention.
Freddy wins by getting inside your head — using your own fears, your own memories, your own subconscious as weapons against you. That strategy requires a target who can be destabilised.
Pennywise is ancient, shapeshifting, and feeds on terror — but it has one critical vulnerability: it cannot function against someone who genuinely stops being afraid of it.
Chucky’s greatest advantage is that nobody takes him seriously until it’s already too late. He exploits the gap between how something looks and what it actually is.
Fede Alvarez’s Evil Dead in 2013 dropped all comedy to focus on extreme, graphic, and visceral survival horror, but its critics’ and audience score (64% each) on movie aggregate site Rotten Tomatoes says that it didn’t exactly click well with audiences. When Bruce Campbell returned as Ash in 2015 for the series, it was an instant hit; 11 years later, Ash vs Evil Dead still sits at a 99% overall score, with Season 1 at 98% and** Seasons 2 and 3 at a perfect 100% each.**
The show ended with Season 3, but Ash’s story didn’t stop there. After he finally accepts his responsibility and saves the world, he awakens in a devastated future where the Deadite war is still waiting for him. Starz canceled the series before a fourth season, leaving Ash in the post-apocalyptic future without a filmed resolution. Evil Dead Rise and Evil Dead Burn continue the wider franchise as standalone sequels with new characters and settings, not continuing Ash’s storyline nor bringing back Jane Levy’s Mia from 2013.
Ash vs Evil Dead is currently available to stream on Lionsgate+ and can be purchased or rented on the Apple TV Store in the U.S. Stay tuned to Collider for more updates.
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