Ash vs Evil Dead Recap with Spoilers: Books From Beyond

The episode starts away from the action, with a red sports car speeding down a stretch of rural highway. A woman gets out of the car – turns out she's closer to the action than we thought, and she's at the former home of Kelly and her family – it's Ruby (Lucy Lawless). The graves Kelly's parents were buried in are disturbed – daddy's a deadite now. Ruby spikes him down on one of the crosses at the grave. She starts flicking the fork in his eye, asking him if Ash and the book were there.

Ruby pulls out a knife – it's clearly a mystical one. She starts to cut deadite dad's face and it burns like it's being hit with acid.

Ash, Pablo, and Kelly pull up to Books from Beyond. When Ash pulled the book out for a moment, the sky started to get darker. Pablo suggested their team be the "ghost Beaters" and got made fun of a lot by the other two, naturally.

Ash went into the store, and it's full of scary-looking occult-y things. The guy he hopes can translate the book comes out of the back, followed by Amanda. She thanks him for his assistance, and leaves. Ash takes the book out, and Mr. Hawkins, the proprietor of the store, takes a close look.

Outside, Amanda asks for the sketch of the "trailer park murderer" – yeah, it's Ash.

Back inside, Hawkins is amazed that the book really exists. Ash tells him to find the undo spell. As soon as Hawkins opens it, everything starts to shake – jump cut shows Ruby speeding up as if she sensed it somehow. Something is coming through the forest.

Back in the car, Kelly and Pablo have a chat. She says he's the silver lining in the whole bad situation, the little brother she never had. He's not thrilled with that assessment. They see Amanda grab her gun out of the car.

She goes in, and holds the gun to Ash's head. "Detective Fisher, State Police." Aaaand Pablo knocks her out with a large bone. Oops. Ash uses her own cuffs on her to lock her to a staircase. Kelly stays to watch her while Ash, Pablo, and Hawkins go to look at the book. Hawkins said the book is an actual gateway to hell, and explained the book in a super cool animated sequence. "The Dark Ones created this book as a weapon against humans. The passages contain the power to connect portals between our world and the deep world where Evil resides. The book is harmless unless wielded by someone very evil or very stupid."

Ash asked again about a reversal, and he was told "the annulment resides inside the origin of the man" so it sounds like there's something inside Ash that can stop it. Pablo says, "wish we could just summon the answer," and Ash thinks that's brilliant. Crap. He wants to find the weakest demon in the book and summon it, to ask it how to stop everything. This will go well.

Amanda and Kelly have a bit of a heart to heart, and Kelly now has some doubts about trusting Ash.

Hawkins makes a demon-catching circle, and Pablo is not having any of this. Ash continues to try to convince him it's fine. "It's like spilling paint on a painting, there's already paint on it so it's fine." A minor demon that possesses knowledge of the mindscape is who they've chosen to bring into the human realm. Hawkins starts the summoning spell, and everything in the shop starts moving around again. This doesn't look good.

Amanda and Kelly continue to chat, or rather Amanda is talking. They figure out that they have both seen people turn into monsters. "The guy you're trying to pin it on could've left me alone to die with her and he didn't," Kelly says.

Hawkins continues the summoning, and now we're in full on earthquake mode. Outside we see something moving through the forest again. Wind is picking up in the shop, and now a full storm outside – um, and inside. Floorboards start to creak, and Amanda begs Kelly to let her free so she can help.

The spell is complete and something starts to emerge from the circle, which now looks like a ghastly portal. It's all smoke – and a horrifying faceless demon emerges. "Why have you summoned me, Ashley?" Ash asks the demon how to put everything back. It says "release me and I'll tell you."

"Die quickly, that is my only advice."

Amanda comes in, shoots at Ash, and that makes him move and break the circle. Great work, Amanda. It holds Ash in a sort of telekinetic bind and starts to attack him from inside his brain. While Lionel the bookkeeper tries to send it back, Amanda shoots at it, and it teleports out of the way. It's going all over the place in the room, dodging Ash's shots easily. The demon kills Lionel with some telekinetic shards of glass and starts attacking Ash again. Pablo runs at it and shoots it in the head, it looks like it connected but it also teleported away. It attacks both of them now, and Kelly goes and grabs the book. "Go back to hell" she says with a swing of the book, and it looks like the mouth on the front of the book basically ate the demon, sending it back. Phew.

Ash starts to talk to Amanda. She cuffs him, so he takes off his hand, and cuffs her again, to a table.

"You two learned a very important lesson today, cops don't help." Ash told Kelly and Pablo. Pablo thinks his uncle the shaman could help. Ash is now accepting his new sidekicks, and they drive off.

Amanda's still cuffed inside, and hears something moving around in there. It's Lionel – now a deadite. And that's the cliffhanger.