The Dead and the Dead and the Dead
The dead are back, and the only man armed enough to answer them is a broken, bitter drunk.
"The Dead and the Dead and the Dead" is the pilot episode of *Ash vs. Evil Dead*, the Starz television series that resurrected the franchise in 2015. It re-introduces Ash Williams not as the gleeful chainsaw-wielding hero of the 1980s films, but as a bitter, alcoholic, washed-up drifter haunting a rundown city apartment, still haunted by decades of supernatural violence. The episode serves as the narrative launchpad for the entire series, re-establishing Ash's relationship with the deadite threat in a modern, grounded urban setting.
As the first entry in the TV continuity, it bridges the gap between the 1992 *Army of Darkness* timeline and the present day, asking what happens to a man who has spent his life fighting the undead and now has nothing left to fight for except his own survival.
- Title
- The Dead and the Dead and the Dead
- Series
- Ash vs. Evil Dead
- Position
- Season 1, Episode 1 (Pilot)
- Medium
- Television (Starz)
- Year
- 2015
- Protagonist
- Ash Williams (Bruce Campbell)
- Setting
- Modern urban bar and apartment
Lore & Background
In the broader mythology of the Evil Dead universe, the deadite plague is an ever-present, regenerative evil tied to the Book of the Dead and the corrupted woods of the Ohio wilderness. By the time of this pilot, decades have passed since Ash's last major confrontation. The franchise's established rule—that killing a deadite merely regenerates it unless the head is destroyed—means the threat is never truly gone. Ash carries the psychological scars of every battle, and the pilot uses his alcoholism and cynicism to externalize that trauma. He is no longer the cheerful, fourth-wall-breaking hero; he is a man who has been beaten down by time and by the relentless cycle of resurrection.
The episode's urban setting is a deliberate departure from the cabin-and-woods imagery of the original films. The deadites here infiltrate a bar, a hospital corridor, a cramped apartment—spaces where modern life is supposed to feel safe. This shift underscores the series' thematic core: the evil is patient, adaptive, and will find you wherever you hide. The pilot establishes that Ash's war is not a single battle but an endless, grinding attrition, and that his greatest enemy may be the memory of every deadite he's ever put down.
In Their Own Story
The bar is half-empty, the kind of place where the neon buzz is the only thing keeping the dark at bay. Ash sits in the corner, a glass of something amber and cheap sweating in his calloused hand. The bartender doesn't look up. He never does. Outside, the city hums its indifferent hum—taxis, sirens, the distant wail of a train.
Then the woman at the next table turns her head too far. Her neck cracks at an angle no spine should allow. Her eyes go flat and black, and she smiles with teeth that are too many. Ash sets down his glass. He doesn't reach for a weapon. He doesn't need to. His hands remember what his mind tries to forget. The bar erupts in chaos—glass, blood, the wet sound of things that were people now lurching and clawing. And somewhere above, in his apartment, the phone is already ringing. It always is.
Reader's Guide
The pilot opens in a seedy urban bar where Ash Williams, now a gaunt, alcohol-soaked drifter, is sitting alone. A group of deadites—disguised as ordinary patrons—suddenly attack, and Ash is forced into a brutal, improvised fight using whatever the bar offers: bottles, a pool cue, a broken chair. The violence is fast, ugly, and deeply personal; Ash fights not with swagger but with desperate, exhausted precision.
The action then shifts to Ash's cramped apartment, where the deadite threat follows him home. A nurse named Kelly, a kind but terrified young woman, becomes an unwilling witness to the carnage. Ash must protect her while fighting off waves of regenerated deadites in the tight, claustrophobic space. The episode closes with the immediate threat neutralized but the larger implication clear: the deadite plague is active in the city, and Ash is the only one who knows what he's dealing with.
Key characters include Ash Williams (Bruce Campbell), Kelly (Jessica DeGuzman), and the unnamed deadite attackers. Major set pieces are the bar brawl and the apartment siege. The episode connects to the larger franchise by re-establishing the rules of deadite regeneration, re-anchoring Ash's character after the *Army of Darkness* era, and setting up the recurring cast and ongoing supernatural conflict that define the rest of the series.
Did You Know?
- The pilot was written to deliberately strip away the comedic, self-aware tone of the 1980s films, presenting Ash as a genuinely damaged, aging man rather than a quipping action hero.
- The urban apartment and bar settings marked a significant departure from the franchise's traditional remote-cabin-and-woods locations, signaling that the deadite threat had become a city-wide, persistent problem.
- Bruce Campbell's Ash in this episode carries visible physical and emotional wear—slower reactions, moments of hesitation, a voice roughened by years of drink—contrasting sharply with his 1981 and 1987 portrayals.
- The episode's title, a tripling of 'the Dead,' echoes the franchise's central theme of endless, regenerating death that no single victory can permanently resolve.