Ash Vs. Evil Dead recap: 'Ashes to Ashes'

Ash faced his own troubled past tonight, going back to the cabin where it all began. And while he found himself there — or, at least, a version of himself
— that didn’t exactly turn out to be such a good thing. At least he made it out alive, which is more than we can say for…

Amanda. The brave detective and recently converted Ash ally is officially a goner, after Evil Ash bashed her in the neck with a cleaver and she tumbled backward onto the antlers of the famous deer trophy, impaled just as her partner was in the first episode. It’s an especially sad turn of events considering that she shouldn’t have even been there in the first place.

At the outset of tonight’s episode, Ash was prepared to go it alone, stopping along his solitary path to pick up the body of a tiny bird. “Sorry, Tweety, nothing survives around here,” he says, just as the creature suddenly reanimates. As a matter of reflex, he throws it, smashing its body against a tree. Strapping on the chainsaw, grabbing his shotgun, he announces, “Honey, I’m home.” But before he can go inside, he hears a sound from behind him and spins, shotgun drawn, to find Amanda.

bae's did you watch?“A little on edge are we?” she asks. You bet. She tells him that she split up with Pablo and Kelly to search for him and wants to know why he chose to vanish without a proper goodbye.
Well, he’s not good at them, for starters, plus everyone dies at the cabin. “It’s just a rule — death, taxes, more death, and I don’t pay taxes, so all I know is death.” “F— the rules,” Amanda replies. “I’m going to help you end this.” (Really, Amanda? Could you possibly reconsider?)

Once inside, Ash reminisces: “Wow, the last time I was here with a girl, I was hoping to get laid. I did cut my own hand off with a chainsaw, though. Fun weekend.” Just then, the deer trophy falls from the wall, and Amanda flashes back to her partner’s possession and death (foreshadowing!). Ash tells her that during his psychotropic trip at the Brujo’s property, he discovered that he needed to bury the book in the fruit cellar, which is still padlocked from 30 years prior, when a certain “witch” down there was antagonizing Ash and his friends.

To pry loose the cellar door to bury the Necronomicon, Amanda says they need a crowbar, so Ash heads over to the WORK SHED to get one. He, again, goes it alone, pointing out that there’s something out there Amanda likely wouldn’t want to see. What’s that exactly? The severed skull of his ex-girlfriend, obviously. “She got possessed, I cut her head off with a shovel, then she did this crazy dance in the moonlight,” Ash recalls. “I put her head in a vise, and I cut it with a chainsaw. She did have a rockin’ bod though.”

Amanda decides to stay in the cabin and keep an eye on the book — which appears to have a mind of its own. The tomb inexplicably falls to the ground from its perch on a desk, and the camera pulls back to behind a wall where Ash’s severed limb has made itself at home (and also sprouted an eye!). Meanwhile, Pablo and Kelly are wandering lost through the woods, walking in circles. They run into three other wanderers, who are a bit taken aback by the fact that the duo is carrying some pretty high-powered weaponry. They try to explain away their guns — evil bears in the woods, you see — with Kelly insisting that they are “so friendly.” The group mentions that they saw a cabin a couple of miles back, and Kelly asks them to lead her and Pablo back there.ew