[Warning: The below contains MAJOR spoilers for the Evil series finale “Fear of the End.”]
Evil certainly got meta in its final episodes, shutting down the assessor program that initially brought Kristen (Katja Herbers) into David (Mike Colter) and Ben’s (Aasif Mandvi) lives and setting them on new journeys.
In the finale, for Kristen and David, that was continuing their work in a new setting (Rome), while Ben declined to do so, after taking a new job. But as Mandvi points out to TV Insider, the door is wide open for a continuation of sorts, and it’s not like it would be hard to bring the trio back together. Below, he discusses the end of the show, his hopes for more, and why Ben doesn’t regret not going to Rome.
Talk about reading the finale script and your reaction to Ben’s ending.
Aasif Mandvi: We were sort of told that the finale script was going to be not like a finale where everyone dies, you know what I mean? It wasn’t going to be one of those because I think we all are still holding out some hope that there will be another life for Evil, that there will be a resurrection of kinds. And I think the Kings also wanted to give our audience a closure, but not a complete closure in the sense that the door’s not totally shut. So I knew the tone of the ending. I didn’t know specifically what it was until I read it, obviously, but I knew that it was going to be a kind of, not the door fully opened, but the door slightly ajar for a future version of Evil or something else.
Does any part of Ben regret not going to Rome?
He’s making $650K a year! First of all, I was like, how are these people living on $65K a year in New York City? That’s a bit of TV creative licensing there. And then I was like, what job has he got where they’re paying him 650K? So I completely understand why Ben is not going to Rome. I mean, he’s not in love with David. So it makes sense.
Alyssa Longchamp / Paramount+
One of the things I enjoyed most about the finale was how much we got the trio together because they’re one of the best parts of the show, and we got them burning their files and then drinking together in Kristen’s backyard—even the callback to the Christmas song. Talk about filming that.
It was incredibly cold, and it’s amazing how it looks like it’s a kind of nice, normal sort of night when it was actually freezing out there and that fire was the only thing that was keeping us warm. So we were all sort of actually holding onto each other and huddled together. But it was kind of fun to reminisce about the different cases that we had done throughout the four years. And it was kind of nice because we kind of didn’t remember that song, but in a way that almost felt real because we were sort of trying to remember it, but then half remembering it. But it’s so funny when I watched that scene, being in it, I’m just reminded of the fact that, just as a word of caution, everybody out there, when you throw a pile of paper onto a fire, the fire goes hot, it goes up. And so half the time we were afraid of getting our faces burned off. But it was great because we actually got to sort of bond in that scene and be together in this kind of moment where we actually got to reminisce about our show.
And the thing I love about the ending is the satiricalness of the fact that when the Kings are writing about the assessor program being canceled, what they’re really writing about is Evil being canceled by Paramount+. So the criticism of the church and the fact that they don’t know what they’re doing because they’re canceling us, is actually their subversive, not so subversive-subservice kind of criticism of actually what happened to our show. So I love that in terms of just the satire of it, which I think our fans will get, you know?
They will. We got that great moment at the end of the finale with Ben stumbling over saying “I love you” back to Kristen because something the show has done so well is highlight the relationships within that trio.
Yeah. That’s an example of when you get to play a role for a long time and you get to play the relationships for a long time, the DNA of those relationships actually live inside of you. As real as they are to our real relationship of me and Katja and Mike, Kristen and Ben and David have a real relationship and that line—I don’t remember if it was written as a stumble, I think it might’ve just been written as an “I love you” or something, I don’t know. But I feel like it kind of lived in my understanding of that relationship, which I wasn’t even aware of until we shot it, that he would actually have a hard time saying that. I would have to look back at the script. But I think that it felt like something very organic about the way that line came out because it was sort of done in that way that it just felt like Ben having a hard time expressing those things, which he doesn’t express very easily.
How are you feeling about the chances of some sort of revival?
I mean, look, I hope we do because I think it’s a great show and I think the writing is so good and there are so few shows, I think, in the world of television and streaming these days that—I’m on it, so I’m obviously biased, but I actually do think it’s a tremendous show and I think the Kings have created such an interesting world, and it was premature, the ending. I think we do have a lot more stories and a lot more journeys to go on with this show, so I don’t think the Kings were ever done with it. So I do hope that there’s a version of this where it gets picked up somewhere else or some other streamer comes in, or even—it seems like it’s dark days for Paramount Global right now. So I don’t know what’s going to happen there, but it feels like this show deserves more, it deserves another season for the fans and for us. I think that we have so many more stories that you want that we want to tell.
What would you like to explore in any sort of continuation? Because also Ben would have to give up that $650K salary…
Yeah, I mean, look, that’s the beauty of it. The beauty of television is you put your characters into a situation that they would find difficult to have to get out of and then they have to figure out how to get out of it. So if there was another version of this, and it did go beyond where we are now, there would be some way that Kristen and David would have to come back to America and Ben would be dragged back in because of his friends or something. I mean, it’s television. There would be a justifiable plot to bring the three of them back together. I mean, Patrick Duffy came back from the dead. Come on. Anything is possible.
What are some of your favorite scenes and episodes from the entire series?
My favorite scenes are always when the three of us get to do stuff together and the scenes in the cars when we’re singing. Those sort of goofy things that we get to do when it’s the three of us playing off of each other were always really cool and fun scenes to do. Also for Ben dealing with his own crisis of faith in terms of his belief in science and that journey that he got to go on and things like—I think about the elevator episode back in Season 2 with Abbey, the Succubus, that stuff, the stuff with Renee and with the other girl that he was involved with who had an evil twin, and then the stuff with Sohina [Sidhu]. I love the scenes with my sister because we just automatically had a brother-sister sort of dynamic and relationship and those scenes were always really fun to shoot and just felt really easy to shoot with her.
The show has been so good because everything about it is so unique—like those skip messages in the intro!
I know. Well, this is the thing, the Kings write really unique television and there are a few people who do that and do it well. That’s another reason why I think that it deserves a longer life because it is such a unique show and it is so interesting and asks so many questions as well as entertains.
Evil, Complete Series, Streaming Now, Paramount+