[Warning: The below contains MAJOR spoilers for Evil Season 4 Episode 3 “How to Slaughter a Pig.”]
Well, the Antichrist is here. And try as Kristen (Katja Herbers) might be to keep herself separate from all of that on Evil, she ends up right by the surrogate Leslie’s (Molly Brown) side for the actual birth.
Leslie goes into labor while she and other women are gathered in Sheryl’s (Christine Lahti) office to discuss their terrible work conditions and the credit men take in the company. At the private facility, where Nurse Bloch (Tara Summers) works, Leslie begins getting freaked out—first by the movement she can see that far exceeds a normal baby pre-birth then by when she’s so certain she hears Leland (Michael Emerson) talking about killing her and feeding her body to the baby. He later claims to Leslie that he was talking about the biological mother (Kristen).
Leslie then leaves the facility and calls Kristen, who tries to hang up on her but eventually ends up meeting her at a hospital—and staying by her side for the birth when the other woman asks her not to leave. (But could this be part of Leland’s plan?) Then to Kristen’s shock, a nurse tell her the baby’s name—Timothy, her father’s—and that she’s written down as the other mother and the only one approved to feed the baby. The episode ends with Kristen doing just that.
“She tries to just block it and think, ‘Look, it’s my egg. People donate eggs. This child is not my business.’ And then when she is there for the birth, she’s reluctant to hold the baby because she’s worried what that might do to her,” Herbers tells TV Insider. “Then when she does hold the baby, she tries not to look at the baby for a second, then she does. And it’s quite moving. I think she thinks of Leslie as a victim of this situation and not as an evil person.”
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The star loved Kristen being there for the birth because “what a great way to make me present for that and to kind of go through her with that. The way that I wanted to play it was that I was doing the same amount of screaming and trying to get this baby out as Leslie so that it kind of is like we’re both birthing this baby. And then naming after my father obviously creates another connection to this child. But I think it’s all from Leland’s mastermind.”
For co-creator Robert King, Kristen is “conflicted” holding the baby at the end of the episode. “Some of this is coming out of Katja. [As] we finished shooting the last episode, the baby that we were using was just crying up a storm and Katja just kind of rubs his head or cheek a little bit and was whispering things in Dutch and the baby just was soothed beyond belief. So there’s something in Katja that is mirroring what’s going on with Kristen. What’s the Shakespeare’s line about a serpent’s egg? Do you break the egg? But it’s difficult when it’s a human being like a baby. How do you stop [them], even if you did think there was going to be a pathway to being an Antichrist?”
Do you trust Leslie? Let us know in the comments section, below.
Evil, Thursdays, Paramount+
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