Evil Creators Robert and Michelle King Weren't Ready to Think About an Ending

[Warning: The following contains spoilers for the Season 4 premiere of Evil, "How To Split an Atom."]

Unlike your typical haunted house, the writing was not on the wall for Evil. Robert and Michelle King's supernatural drama is always divinely good, and it remains so in its fourth season, which premiered Thursday on Paramount+. But the joy of Evil's return is complicated by the news that Season 4 will be its last. Fans can take some comfort in the fact that the season is being expanded with four bonus episodes — on top of the original 10 episodes — to wrap up the story, but it's still a more abrupt end than the show's creators were expecting.

The Kings told TV Guide they didn't go into the fourth season thinking they were closer to the end of the show than they were to the beginning. "I just hadn't started to think in those terms," Michelle King said.

The couple noted that the situation felt different than it had with their two legal dramas, CBS's The Good Wife and Paramount+'s The Good Fight. "With Good Wife, we always kind of thought [it would run for] seven seasons, which is why we did the number of words in the [episode] titles going up to four and then down again," Robert King said. "With Good Fight, we all felt like the pronouncing of campaigning by Trump felt like a natural end. With this, evil doesn't seem to have an end, so it felt like it could go on for a little while longer."

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The show clearly still has enough new tricks (and treats) up its sleeve to fill more than one season. Season 4 builds on a gag that started in Season 3: inserting funny notes in the opening credits that warn viewers not to skip the intro or they'll be haunted. This season, every episode gets its own unique warning, which Michelle credited to Robert. 

"One of the reasons I hate [the 'skip intro' button] is it often skips over who wrote the episode," Robert said. "People spent a lot of time doing this work. The actors did. So to make fun of people who skip titles, even though I will confess to doing it sometimes too, seemed like a good use of our time."

The fourth season is also themed around a new pop-up book, The Big Pop-Up Book of Science, following Season 2's Pop-Up Book of Terrifying Things and Season 3's Pop-Up Book of Contemporary Demons (and, occasionally, Angels). The scientific focus kicks off with a bang in the Season 4 premiere, titled "How To Split an Atom," which sends Kristen (Katja Herbers), David (Mike Colter), and Ben (Aasif Mandvi) underground to investigate rumors that a particle accelerator could be opening the gates of hell.

For the Kings, this season is about poking holes in certainty. "What was attractive to us was the idea of the arrogance of science," Robert said. "We have a certainty that this particle accelerator is impregnable, that it will do everything we say. And yet you're not allowing for the fact that the world is a weird place. Sinkholes will open up under it."

"[There's] just this, to my mind, misguided confidence that they have things under control when that's just not the way the world works," Michelle added.

It's an idea that's especially resonant for resident science guy Ben, who's zapped by an ion beam in the particle accelerator. Despite all his attempts to rationalize what he's experienced, he can't shake his visions of a powerful jinn. "There are things that happen to him this season that he cannot explain scientifically," Mandvi said. "So it's really a challenge for him to stay in his empirical view of the world, because he's dealing with stuff that's so personal."

"I really thought [this season] was going to be about science," said Mandvi, "but it's actually about the paranormal and how science bumps up against it and is challenged by it."

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Observant viewers might also have noticed that the particle accelerator's sinkhole opens at Bend 33, an echo of last season's ghost highway, which ended at Exit 33A. Given the Kings' tendency to insert puzzles into each season of Evil, every number could have deeper meaning. "I just love the idea that demons are into numbers," Robert said. 

But the Kings are into numbers, too; creating a motif with recurring numbers is a bit that stretches back to their previous shows. "In Good Wife and Good Fight, for some reason everybody was trying to win $22 million. That number came [up a lot]," Robert said. "Here, I think 33 is one of the obsessions, but I also think other numbers are coming up and that science introduces that idea."

"To me it's like the opposite of music," he continued. "Angels work with music. Demons work with numbers. I don't know why."

New episodes of Evil Season 4 premiere Thursdays on Paramount+.