Evil Dead Star Bruce Campbell Has “Nothing Else to Give” as Ash

If there’s one thing that Evil Dead fans can’t get enough of, it’s Bruce Campbell playing Ash Williams, but the actor himself recently detailed his decision to retire from the role after three seasons of Ash vs. Evil Dead and how he feels he has “nothing else to give” as the character. Not only did Campbell star in the original trilogy of films, but he also starred in 30 episodes of the Starz series, delivering fans 15 more hours of Ash’s battles with Deadites. Campbell hasn’t abandoned the series entirely, however, as he serves as a producer on the upcoming film Evil Dead Rise.

“Whatever the cliched phrase is, I left it all on table. I’ve got nothing else to give,” Campbell confirmed with Collider. “The three seasons were the longest seasons of my life. If you saw the emails pleading with various directors that were like, ‘Hey, my knee’s not working right. Be careful about tomorrow. Let’s have the stunt guy nearby. Hey, I can’t run anymore.’ It just was an endless physical struggle. I’m really glad we did it because we saw Ash’s home, we went into his bedroom, we met his girlfriends, we met his daughter that we never knew he had and that he never knew he had, and we met his father, played by the great Lee Majors.” 

He added, “I feel we really pushed all the buttons and he fulfilled his destiny written in that ancient book. He was the guy destined to defeat evil in the past, present and future, and he took off with a hot robot chick at the end to go kick in the future. What else do you need? We knew the ratings were bad. We knew, going into the last season, that we had to have an end because we didn’t think Starz was gonna re-up us and we were right. So, thank God we did that.”

Campbell’s last feature-film outing as Ash came in 1992’s Army of Darkness, though the character’s adventures continued in various comic books and video games. In this regard, we surely can’t rule out more of Ash’s adventures, and we can still expect Campbell to be a figure in the franchise, yet these comments sound pretty definitive that we won’t be seeing Campbell in a live-action Ash adventure ever again.

Evil Dead Rise is expected to debut on HBO Max next year.

Are you disappointed we won’t see Campbell as Ash again? Let us know in the comments below or contact Patrick Cavanaugh directly on Twitter to talk all things horror and Star Wars!