[Warning: The below contains MAJOR spoilers for Evil Season 4 Episode 8 “How to Save a Life.”]
If you’re looking for a reason why Evil should be saved—and there are many—look no further than the fact that in the latest episode, the Antichrist is baptized.
Sheryl (Christine Lahti) schemes to have baby Timothy in her care long enough to accomplish just that. And it all begins with her going to see David (Mike Colter) in a confessional. There’s a good chance she’ll be murdered in the next few weeks—she wants Kristen (Katja Herbers) and her granddaughters to be safe if so—by Leland (Michael Emerson) for trying to kill him. She can’t go to the police, since the 60 have friends in the department. The church is the one place Leland is afraid of.
If she dies, she needs David to tell Kristen she needs to protect Lexis since Leland thinks she’s some kind of John the Baptist of the Antichrist, Timothy, whose biological parents are Leland and Kristen, and she’s no longer allowed near him. So what happens if the Antichrist is baptized? As David sees it, no child is beyond saving. (Sheryl argues she was baptized, and look at her.) Sheryl tells him she’s going to bring Timothy to him to be baptized.
“I so love that scene,” Lahti tells TV Insider. “It was a very emotional day. I think Sheryl is very conflicted. She has a lot of guilt about what she’s done. She doesn’t believe in God and confessions and the Catholic church at all. But on the other hand, she does want forgiveness for what she’s done. So I think there’s a lot of conflict in it and a lot of need, not just, okay, go in there, get him to do the baptism and get out. I think she finds herself really face to face with some of the dark stuff that she’s done and is really trying to get forgiveness for it by any way she can. Hopefully, it’ll be Kristen that’ll forgive her, but she’ll take whatever forgiveness she can at this point.”
David tries to turn their conversation into a normal confession, but Sheryl just leaves. “I love that,” Lahti laughs. “She’s like, ‘Okay, my business here is done. Get the f**k out of here.’”
As for why she turns to David in the first place, it’s because Sheryl knows how close he and her daughter are. She points out to him that after the baptism, “It can no longer be the Antichrist, and therefore it won’t be treated like the Antichrist, and I think it’ll give the baby a life of love,” explains Lahti. “She knows that David is ultimately a kind man and an empathetic man, so maybe that’s why she trusts him.”
David just tries to get Sheryl to talk to Kristen, but she refuses because she doesn’t think she’ll believe her. Herbers agrees that Kristen doesn’t believe in a lot of this stuff, such as original sin or that Timothy is even the Antichrist, and confirms that her character wouldn’t have any issues with David agreeing to the baptism without telling her.
“She sees no harm in baptizing if that has some psychological effect on anyone, and if my mother is in such distress and she asks for something that benign as a baptism, I don’t feel like that’s the kind of thing that I would feel betrayed by or anything,” Herbers says. Still, she would “absolutely” delight in it just for Leland’s reaction. “It’s a hilarious ploy and it works so well, and I think it’s something that Kristen could have come up with herself.”
When it comes time for the baptism, of course, timing doesn’t work out as planned and instead, Sheryl ends up driving over to the church at night as it’s storming. David’s not there, and Sister Andrea (Andrea Martin) is the one to answer the door. She, at first, tries to send Sheryl away—but once she hears it’s the Antichrist and Leland is the father, she sees the baby as a demon and goes to get Father Ignatius (Wallace Shawn), insisting he baptize him immediately. But then there’s no water in the pipes, so Sister Andrea collects rainwater. Sheryl hurries Father Ignatius along as much as she can. And then when it’s done, Sister Andrea sees Timothy just as a normal baby, and Sheryl takes a photo of her, Father Ignatius, and the baby (say Jesus) and makes sure she gets a baptismal certificate.
“I loved working with Wally Shawn and Andrea. It was really fun,” Lahti laughs, recalling that scene. But while “things went crazy” during the baptism, “I think [Sheryl] feels like she has accomplished her mission, not that she even believes that much in baptism, but she knows that Leland does. She doesn’t believe that much in the Catholic church at all, but she knows it scares the s**t out of Leland.”
She continues, “All she really wants is that proof of baptism, that picture that she gets taken. If she can prove to Leland that she had Timothy baptized, all bets are off and Leland will be devastated, and no longer will Leland believe that Timothy could be the Antichrist. So it not only saves Timothy’s life and gives the possibility of love in this little child’s life and maybe Kristen actually adopting him, but it destroys Leland’s hopes of rising in the Satanic world because Leland had his bets on this Antichrist and he thinks that’s going to give him a lot of power in this world, but I think once I do this, this is going to destroy his career, his ambition and his credibility.”
Alyssa Longchamp / Paramount+
Sheryl then nails the certificate and photo to Leland’s door. When we suggest that Sheryl’s only regret is she couldn’t get a photo or video of Leland’s reaction to seeing them, Lahti agrees, adding, “That’s actually a good note. We should have done that.”
Leland, of course, panics upon that discovery, even going so far as to hold a pillow over baby Timothy, but with the stockholders arriving at his apartment in an hour and the baby needing to be ready, according to a text from the Manager, he stops, burns the proof, and dresses Timothy like the Antichrist he isn’t. But he’s worried.
“This is potentially his political downfall and in the circle he runs in your political downfall is likely your death or worse,” says Emerson. “So it’s sobering for him. Things have fallen apart rather drastically. He better scramble, he better think of something.”
Evil, Thursdays, Paramount+