[Warning: The below contains MAJOR spoilers for Evil Season 4 Episode 4 “How to Build a Coffin.”]
Leland’s (Michael Emerson) manipulation of Andy (Patrick Brammall) takes a potentially deadly turn in the latest episode of Evil. Has he gone too far?
Since Andy “came home from a climbing expedition and avalanche,” as he so thinks, something’s been off. That’s because he never left New York; rather, Leland and Sheryl (Christine Lahti) were holding him captive, which he has had flashes of, and are now brainwashing him and manipulating him into doing their bidding. Sheryl really wants back in with her daughter Kristen (Katja Herbers), while Leland whispers in Andy’s ear that his wife and David (Mike Colter) are having an affair. Kristen denies it (and also says they’ve never kissed, a lie).
Now, in “How to Build a Coffin,” Leland, during their latest session, tells Andy to, in the middle of the night, inject Laura with a needle between her toes. The drugs will bring on the cardiac arrest she was supposed to have two years ago. He instructs Andy through it all, including how to dispose of the needle. But when it comes time for Andy to do it, he injects himself instead and collapses in the girls’ room! A father’s love beats Leland’s programming!
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Once found, Andy’s rushed to the hospital; his heart stopped, but he’s going to live. Kristen thinks they need to look into an addiction treatment program (him using drugs has been raised since injection marks were found between his toes), but he tells her it’s something worse. He doesn’t know what, but he needs to stay away from her and their daughters because he’s scared he could hurt them. He’s going to a psychiatric hospital in upstate New York.
“Some families deal with someone who has a mental illness and sometimes they’re so aware of the way they can endanger their own family,” co-creator Robert King tells TV Insider of this arc for Andy. “There’s something almost sacrificial of saying, ‘I have to go away. I have to be put away so I don’t hurt you again.’ And I think the difficulty for this family is they’re not the richest people. How do you do that? And how can Kristen stay and maintain a household? She’s got to do this crazy job. So I think for Andy, it’s sacrificial; that’s the reason he injected himself. He says, ‘I need to not be with you.’ Because he’s not even sure why he’s doing this, but there was something in him that drove him to hurt his daughter. And then on Kristen’s part, how do you go back to single parenthood again? It’s a nightmare.”
But where exactly is Andy going, and should we be thinking Leland or Sheryl could be involved at all? Co-creator Michelle King says she can’t say anything without spoiling but promises, “we are not abandoning Andy or his story.” Evil will be following Andy to wherever he goes.
“Patty Brammall is just too good to abandon,” adds Robert King. “He’s so much fun. I mean, I know he’s playing a part that is a little bit distasteful, but he can play these things and he plays them so well. He’s so dramatic.”
Elizabeth Fisher / Paramount+
Elsewhere in the episode, the djinn that Ben (Aasif Mandvi) has been seeing since his experience at the particle accelerator in the Season 4 premiere is now getting in his head about Kristen. So does any part of him have feelings for her?
“Yes, definitely,” says Robert King. “I think there is a mutual love among those three that is friendship, but beyond friendship. So it’s probably the first time the thought entered in an ugly way in his head. But I think there’s always been, and you see it in Aasif and Katja’s performance, there’s a real strong affection there. And that affection [between the characters] isn’t all friendship.”
Evil, Thursdays, Paramount+
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