There were some rather dodgy statements coming from cable company Starz! and the people behind Ash vs. Evil Dead that season three of the beloved cult show may well be the last.

Turns out, it is.

Cheryl Eddy over at i09.com offers the news…

Aw, hell, Ash vs. Evil Dead will not get a fourth season

As I said above, there were hints this was going to be the case.  Bruce Campbell, Ash Williams himself, mused during an interview that if the show wasn’t renewed for a fourth season, that would effectively be the last time he’d play the character.

It was a curious statement to make and it made me think he knew more of what was going on than he was willing to say…

I’ve seen all but the last three episodes of this season and, though I’m a huge fan Bruce Campbell’s Ash and love me some Evil Dead, this latest season was… not particularly good.  In fact, I’m still where I was, stuck on episode 5, when I wrote about my ambivalent feelings about the latest season of the show.

I will repeat something I’ve said many times before: I’ve enjoyed the first two seasons of the show, the second more than the first, but felt each season had a weak ending.  Nonetheless, there was a beautiful balance between the absurd and the gory and I really, really liked the characters introduced around Campbell’s Ash.

This season, though, the original writing show runner left due to clashes with one of the series’ original producers (I wrote about that here), and strangely enough his plans to make Dana DeLorenzo’s Kelly Maxwell turn out to be Ash’s daughter (something which, if you watch the first two seasons of the show realize was in the works from the start) was replaced with… bringing in another actress to play Ash’s daughter.

I don’t want to slam the actress, but the role to where I’ve seen the show has been… thankless.  There would have been, IMHO, much more meat in the bone if Kelly’s character turned out to be Ash’s daughter and we wouldn’t have had to introduce a new character and try to incorporate her into the story in any significant way.

But that’s not the worst of it.

Again, I’m repeating stuff I wrote before (and, if you click the link above you’ll read what I originally wrote), but this season of Ash vs. Evil Dead has featured our main characters curiously split from each other, doing their own thing and that, too, is dull.  It was fun to see Ash reacting to the others and vice versa.  But now, they’re spread out and floundering.

Now, I haven’t seen any of the episodes after #5 and, therefore, have half a season -when its done- to go.  I hope things pick up.  I especially hope, given that this is likely the last we’ll ever see of Ash, that the show finally has a strong ending.

We’ll see.