Army of Darkness Finally Answers the Most Annoying Question of the Evil Dead Franchise (Making the Entire Story Even Cooler in the Process)

Warning: Spoilers for Army of Darkness #12!The ever-expanding Army of Darkness comic book franchise adds new context to the overall Evil Dead franchise’s most confounding question. Fans often wonder why the opening of Evil Dead II: Dead by Dawn begins with what appears to be a recap of the original Evil Dead movie without the rest of the cast. Either that or Ash decided to go back to the same cabin that caused him grief beforehand.

Thankfully, Army of Darkness Forever #12 by Tony Fleecs, Pop Mhan, Brad Simpson, and Troy Peteri finds a way to canonize the most confusing parable within the Evil Dead franchise. By the series’ end, Forever implies that history does repeat itself at the start of Evil Dead 2 (and to an extent, Army of Darkness), as both Ash and the Necronomicon have been trapped in a never-ending time loop of sorts.

The reasoning behind the sequel’s openers is complicated and worth delving into just as much as the newly canonized reasoning behind the franchise’s biggest question.

Every Army of Darkness Fan’s Biggest Question, Explained

Anyone who starts Evil Dead II: Dead by Dawn moments after finishing The Evil Dead is likely to have a bad case of déjà vu. The first movie, of course, features a group of friends – among them, Ash Williams and his girlfriend, Linda – whose getaway cabin vacation is interrupted by the sudden discovery of a book of the dead called the Necronomicon. The book spoils their evening by possessing the undead (and a tree) to unleash pain and chaos on these unsuspecting teens. Evil Dead 2, inexplicably, begins in the exact same fashion.

This time, rather than a group of teens, it’s just Ash and Linda, only she’s played by a different actress. At first glance, it looks as if the one surviving member of the group walked out of the first movie just to return to the same cabin with a new girlfriend in the sequel. However, upon realizing that the girl in question is a returning Linda, it’s evident that Evil Dead 2 retcons the original 1981 movie. The sequel is dedicated to spending the first few minutes remaking the original movie, with minor tweaks, and it’s not clear why.

Army of Darkness
repeats the same opening credits choice, dedicated entirely to being a recap and once again with a new actress in the role of Linda.

The Evil Dead sequels are practically “requels” in that regard, but there is a real-life reason. Bruce Campbell explains in the special features of the Evil Dead 2 DVD that because director Sam Raimi did not own the rights to his own movie, the sequel needed to shoot a recap of the first movie to compensate for not being allowed to replay the old footage behind it. Since the entire cast couldn’t return for the sequel, that meant its recap needed to become something new entirely.

How Army of Darkness Forever Canonizes This Iconic Creative Choice

By Giving Ash a Tragic Ending

What caused confusion for fans is that neither Evil Dead II: Dead by Dawn nor Army of Darkness addresses Raimi’s creative choice directly in the narrative, making the timeline behind Evil Dead’s lore unclear. All fan questions about these opening scenes (and then some) are answered in the most unexpected of ways in the Army of Darkness Forever comics. The 12-part series (not including an issue #13 epilogue that takes place in the middle of the series) attempts to canonize both the theatrical and the alternate ending of the third movie.

The comic-book series tells the story of three concurrent timelines. First is the dystopian future where Ash lands in the alternate ending; second is the present day end of the theatrical cut where, as it turns out, it was the Evil Bad Ash that made his way to the 90s, making the theatrical ending even darker. Finally, readers find themselves in the past where the good Ash left Sheila, which, as it turns out, had dark consequences for the happy ending, revealing that an evil cult rebuilds that timeline’s Evil Ash from scratch with help from the Wiseman wizard, now corrupted by the Necronomicon.

“As it was before… so shall it be again.”

By the series’ end, after a wild goose chase to find multiple Necronomicons that inexplicably fuse to create a Deadite baby, Ash finally defeats Bad Ash’s army. As he leaps through the portal one last time to end the series, the reader gets a close-up of the original Necronomicon with the narration “As it was before … so shall it be again.” The panels slowly zoom out to reveal the beginning of the original Evil Dead, with Ash and friends arriving to the cabin for the first time. These panels seem to suggest that the series ends where it originally began.

Ash Ending in a Time Loop Explains Why All the Movie Openings Are Different, But Still Canon

This Explanation Places the Sequels in a New Context

The ending to the series not only adds a new context to the sequels’ opening sequences but manages to feel like a swan song for the franchise as a whole, including the comics. As Ash narrates his misadventures in different timelines, the comic shows brief flashbacks not to the movies, but seemingly to other Army of Darkness comics under the Dynamite Comics banner. In these final moments, the series isn’t trying just to make a point out of making sense of the movie sequels, but of the comics, too, specifically to validate them as canon alongside the movies.

An ending like this connects all the sequels and spin-off media into one cohesive narrative but also presents a final chapter for its protagonist. Ash, as a central character with 43 years of history to his name, gets a tragic ending that makes tying this story into all the movies and all the comics into a rational creative choice. Throughout all his stories (comics, shows, and movies included), the running theme has been that Ash is forever cursed by the Necronomicon, constantly plagued by its incantations, prophecies, and impending doom everywhere he goes.

This series takes that curse literally, as Ash will literally forever be plagued by the Necronomicon. He is always destined to end back at the beginning of the franchise, constantly reliving his trauma (perhaps with slight timeline variations, explaining the slight tweaks the sequel openings have) with no way to break that cycle. Ash is history’s unluckiest hero, and he’s forever doomed by that destiny. Army of Darkness Forever finally answers the Evil Dead franchise’s most annoying question regarding the franchise’s beginnings, but at the cost of a happy ending for Ash.

Army of Darkness Forever #12 is available now from Dynamite Comics.