This is my post advocating for a new consensus on the Evil Dead Cinematic Universe canon, specifically that of the fourth and fifth instalments.
Reasonings
- Fede Álvarez stated that Evil Dead (2013) "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.)"
- Sam Raimi stated that he thinks that Evil Dead (2013) is "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".
- In Evil Dead (2013), audio from The Evil Dead of Cheryl Williams saying "one by one, we will take you" is played half-way through the film.
- In Evil Dead (2013), Raymond Knowby's recording from Evil Dead 2 is played during the credits.
- In Evil Dead (2013), Ash Williams appears in a pitch black location, and says his iconic "groovy" line before turning to the camera in a post-credits scene.
- In Evil Dead (2013), Ash's oldsmobile is outside the Allen cabin, so someone must have drove it there and left it to rot.
- There was a plan to have an Army of Darkness 2 and Evil Dead (2013) 2 that would lead to a crossover between Mia and Ash, but the television series lead to this being scrapped.
- Bruce Campbell stated that Evil Dead Rise can be called a "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?"
- Bruce Campbell stated that Evil Dead Rise has "no connection to any of the movies", meaning that it is an unrelated storyline, before explaining that it is "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 (original trilogy), Fede had one (2013 film), 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…"
- The films after Army of Darkness are standalone stories exploring the concept of different Necronomicons, branching off from the scene in Army of Darkness where Ash comes across two other books. Bruce Campbell, Lee Cronin and Sam Raimi all had discussions behind-the-scenes, and it certainly appears that there are three books and they're the books seen in Army of Darkness.
Sources:
https://www.thecomicboard.com/threads/evil-dead-canonicity.14963/
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.
- 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.
- Ash's oldsmobile is outside the Allen cabin in Evil Dead (2013), however it was sent back in time with him in the original trilogy and the cabin seen in Evil Dead (2013) is not the Knowby cabin.
While these can be reconciled, I'll acknowledge them as such anyway.