While each of the Evil Dead franchise’s movies is great, the best outing in the series isn’t any of these gruesome horrors. The Evil Dead franchise’s changing body count is an easy way to track the changing face of the franchise. Starting in 1980 with director Sam Raimi’s ambitious, intense supernatural siege horror The Evil Dead, the series progressed onto the goofier, more self-parodic horror comedy classic Evil Dead II in 1987. The next sequel, 1993’s Army of Darkness, had a drastically higher body count as the Evil Dead series morphed into a more outright comedic affair.

2013’s reboot, simply titled Evil Dead, took things in the opposite direction, shrinking the body count massively for another lone-location siege horror. Director Fede Alvarez’s reboot was darker, bleaker, nastier, and more humorless than even the original movie, while 2023’s Evil Dead Rise saw the series bring back some of its dark sense of humor without sacrificing any of this mean-spirited brutality. Now, 2026’s upcoming reboot Evil Dead Burn looks set to add more action to the franchise’s unique blend of genres.

However, none of these movies is the best outing in the franchise so far. As great as all the Evil Dead movies are, it is the three-season Starz show Ash vs Evil Dead that captured the franchise’s appeal and distilled it best. Set three decades after the ending of Army of Darkness, the show stars Bruce Campbell as the underemployed, beleaguered protagonist of Evil Dead II, Ash Williams. After surviving a string of Deadite attacks, Ash tries to keep a low profile until the eponymous monsters return, and he is forced to enlist the help of his coworkers in taking them down.

Ash Vs Evil Dead Is The Franchise’s Most Impressive Achievement

With a pilot episode directed by Raimi himself, Ash vs Evil Dead was an admirably ambitious attempt to bring the movie series to the small screen without sacrificing its tricky balance of humor, gore, action, and genuine terror. With a 98% rating from critics on Rotten Tomatoes, it is fair to say that season 1 of the series succeeded in this goal, and Ash vs Evil Dead seasons 2 and 3 went on to earn an even more impressive perfect 100% rating from reviewers on the site.

Since the Evil Dead movies always walked a tonal tightrope between silliness and scares, Ash vs Evil Dead holding onto this style was always going to be a challenge. However, the show’s ability to maintain this balance of genuinely funny comedy, genuinely tense scares, genuinely compelling (albeit goofy) characters, and genuinely shocking gore across a much longer TV show’s schedule is truly amazing, especially since Ash vs Evil Dead began airing in 2015.

Ash Vs Evil Dead Fleshed Out The Franchise

In the years since Ash vs Evil Dead’s story started, a string of subsequent horror comedy shows like Happy, Preacher, The Bondsman, the fellow ‘80s franchise spin-off Chucky, fellow Campbell vehicle Hysteria, Daybreak, and Crazyhead have all attempted a similar blend of gore, scares, and character comedy. Ash vs Evil Dead paved the way for these later efforts, especially in the show’s expansion of the franchise’s existing lore.

From meeting Ash’s dad to finally exploring the lives of main characters who aren’t Ash, as well as even providing some semblance of a coherent explanation for the Deadites for the first time, Ash vs Evil Dead expanded the franchise’s lore more than ever before. Without cutting down on terrifying moments of horror, light-hearted comedic relief, or character development, Ash vs Evil Dead made the Evil Dead series feel real and lived-in a way that shorter, punchier movies never could and became its best single outing in the process.