Evil Dead Canonicity

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Canon Reasoning
Evil Dead

Fede Álvarez that "it continues the first one. The coincidences on events between the first film and mine are not coincidences, but more like dark fate created by the evil book. (Ash car is still there rusting away.)"


When asked if it was canon, Sam Raimi stated "I think that's a part of the Evil Dead universe but not part of the Bruce Campbell storyline". When asked if this meant that the remake was another corner of the original universe, he said "exactly".

Ash's oldsmobile is outside the Allen cabin, so someone must have drove it there and left it to rot. It is a 1974 instead of a 1973 strangely.

When Eric is first reading through the Book of the Dead there is a picture of a severed hand with it's middle finger extended, which is a reference to Evil Dead 2, where Ash is forced to cut his own hand off when it becomes possessed.

Echos from the past can be heard, as audio from The Evil Dead of Cheryl Williams saying "one by one, we will take you" is played. In the credits, Raymond Knowby's recording from Evil Dead 2 is played.

In a post-credits scene, Ash Williams appears in a pitch black location, and says his iconic "groovy" line before turning to the camera.

Evil Dead Rise
Bruce Campbell stated "people can actually call it what [they] want: Sequel, remake, reimagining. It really is just another Evil Dead movie. It's book-centric. It's all about [the Necronomicon]. Where does this book wind up and what happens to it over the millennia? In this case, it's set in the city, it's no more cabin in the woods. It's entirely different, unsuspecting heroines who are going to save the day."

Another time, Bruce said "basically, there's no connection to any of the movies. I think it's going to be sort of like that from now on. It's all about the books now, and there are three of them. We found that out in Army of Darkness. These three books could be anywhere. So where did the book wind up now? And whose hands did it fall into? And what happens? [Director] Lee Cronin, who Sam handpicked, did an excellent job. He's gonna be a busy boy because he knows what he's doing."

When asked if Mia could show up in Evil Dead Rise, Bruce Campbell said "no, it's not that kind of timeline. What we're kind of doing now is it's all about that darn book. Where does that darn book show up. So, there's three of them after all, as we learned from Army of Darkness. So, we can kind of go crazy with that for a while, and that darn book is gonna show up in the craziest of places. Maybe the future sometime."


Lee Cronin stated "there are connections to the past, lines are drawn. In one of the early meetings I had with Sam Raimi, I said, 'You know the way in Army Of Darkness, there's three [Necronomicons]? You had one, Fede had one, I'm going to take the other one.' It gave me that platform to nudge things forward, and also to showcase that we live in a world where there is more than one copy of the Necronomicon. Those books may all have slightly different personalities – it's not exactly the same book, necessarily, that Ash had in the cabin. But it's very, very firmly related. It could even be more dangerous…"

Bruce Campbell stated "In Army Of Darkness, we first saw three books. So we know there are three out there, and none of them are any good. It's about: where does that darn book wind up, who gets it, and what happens? But the universe is the same."

Regarding Ash vs Evil Dead continuity, Lee Cronin stated "I intentionally didn't pay any heed to the television series, even though I'm a big fan of it and a big fan of everything. I really was just looking at the canon within the movies, that's where my focus was. From that point of view, it's not impossible equally that the story in Ash vs. Evil Dead is taking place somewhere else without an awareness in terms of my story. For me, it's actually quite simple, and I went to Sam Raimi and said, 'There's three books as shown in Army of Darkness. You've used one book, [Evil Dead 2013 director] Fede [Álvarez] used one book. I'm going to take the third book and open up that other avenue.' Sam really liked that idea because at least it drew a line between the existence of this third book and its appearance in this story in Evil Dead Rise back in time. So there is that connection there. I look at it in terms of Sam's movies, you've got 1 and 2 followed by 3, which is back in time but on that same stretch of timeline. Then you jump forward to 10 years ago, you've got Fede's movie and then you jump another 10 years forward and you've got this movie. So to me, they're in a straight line, and it's referenced in the movie by the priest, Littleton, on the vinyl and his awareness that they found one of the three Books of the Dead. They're aware of the lore, but this particular book, we don't know where it's appeared in the past and it's certainly been locked away for many, many years until this point in time when it appears post-earthquake and when Danny uncovers it. So to me, it's happening not alongside, it's just happening in the here and now, but everything that's happened before could also have happened and taken place."

Continuity Issues
In Ash vs Evil Dead, there was an apocalyptic event in 2018 which involved a temporary world-wide attack from Deadites and a giant demonic creature known as Kandar. From secondary sources, Evil Dead Rise, which is set 5 years later, contains no reference to this catastrophe. Similar things happen in other fictional universes though, so I personally discard it.

While official word dictates that the 2013 and 2023 Necronomicons are the same as those copies that were seen in that graveyard in Army of Darkness, they have a different appearance than they supposedly did in that film. They are magic books, however, and the original book changed designs between every instalment as well, albeit more subtly. It's possible they were made to look like that on purpose to confuse Ash.
 
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This was created so that I could link to it in order to avoid clutter and repeating myself on a discussions post for the Evil Dead wiki as I advocate for the fourth and fifth instalments to be considered part of the original film continuity.

Also, it's nice to be able to have this just in case I come across any Evil Dead non-canoners. Heck, I should make one for Gotham/Pennyworth too. :p
 

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