Evil Dead and the criteria to become a paladin

[Das Troll]

Being the long time Evil Dead fan I am, I was quite excited when the 2013 Evil Dead movie came out. Then 10 years later, we get ANOTHER Evil Dead movie, Evil Dead Rise. This got me half a chub as I watched the tried and true formula for a ED movie play out. But I started thinking, there is a holy paladin archetype with these movies and I shall explain. BTW THIS POST WILL CONTAIN SPOILERS!

Evil Dead 2: I'm not going to talk about Evil Dead because 2 is basically a remake with a higher budget. But lets get into the meat and potatoes of the conversation. What makes a ED paladin? According to Google,

Noun

• a knight renowned for heroism and chivalry.

Lets be honest here, Ash doesn't fit that second world, chivalry. But he does fit the first one and he does it in spades. What makes a paladin? To me, a paladin requires 3 things, a holy avenger (weapon), using will power to fight off evil, and the stigmata. So lets start with Evil Dead 2. Ash gets possessed by a demon and fights it off more than once. First time the dawn saves him and the second time he uses the memory of his girlfriend to drive out the demon. He even has a 3rd time and the 3rd time leads him into the stigmata, the hand wound. This one is important because all ED paladins have some sort of stigmata. Ash gets his hand bit by the beheaded version of his girlfriend and the evil gets into this hand, so he lops it off at the wrist. Lastly is the holy avenger/s. For almost all of the ED paladins, this is 2 different things, the chainsaw and the shotgun. Ash carries both throughout his time fighting the deadites.

Army of Darkness: this is just a carry on of an imperfect hero doing imperfect shit. But the graveyard scene is very important to the rest of the series. This sets everything else up. If you remember correctly, when he went to say "klaatu barada nikto" (a phrase that originated in the 1951 science fiction film The Day the Earth Stood Still.) showed that there were 3 books. Confused by this, Ash fucks the words up and chooses one book.

Evil Dead 2013: This one takes place in the same setting as the OG ED movie, a cabin in the woods. This story follows Mia as our imperfect hero (heroin addict) as her friends try and keep her in the cabin to shake her of her addiction. Mia follows the same process as Ash did, except in a more round about way. She also gets possessed and shakes it with the help of her brother, she also gets the stigmata as the Abomination drops a Jeep on her hand. Lastly she dispatches the demon in a spectacular fashion by jamming a fucking chainsaw (the holy avenger) into it's mouth. A paladin was born.

Evil Dead Rise 2023:

This one bucks the trend a bit by making the paladin not be possessed by the evil. She still goes through the same process though of others by finding the holy avengers (both chainsaw and shotgun) and getting stabbed through the hand by her sister, which as you can see from above, is a common theme. The paladin goes on to defeat the evil demon by awesome chainsaw stab and woodchipper to save the day.


What does all this have to do with the Army of Darkness? Remember that in the graveyard of AOD, Ash finds 3 Necronomicons. And as I've laid out, you can probably guess where the other two went. Mia from 2013 gets one and Beth from ED Rise gets the other one. My HOPE is that we get a proper Evil Dead 3 where Ash, being old and grizzled, brings the other two paladins together to finally put an end (yeah right) to the evil. 3 books, 3 paladins, 3 chainsaws, 3 shot guns. Shop smart shop Smart, YA GOT THAT!?