‘Evil’ Team Talks Kristen & David’s Feelings and Ben Struggling With Unexplainable (VIDEO)

[Warning: The below contains MAJOR spoilers for the Evil Season 4 premiere “How to Split an Atom.”]

Kristen (Katja Herbers) may get to laugh in Leland’s (Michael Emerson) face when it comes to having to raise the Antichrist (he’s still a baby) but he might get the last laugh after the wheels he sets in motion in the Evil Season 4 premiere.

The so deliciously chilling Paramount+ drama picks up right where it left off, with Kristen finding out that Leland used her egg with a surrogate, and now the Antichrist will be born in 38 days. “I can’t think of any greater torture I could devise for you than to give you a baby: a crying, s**tting baby. I giggle at the thought of you waking up a 3am because the Antichrist needs changing or dealing with diaper genies and bottles at 4am. And that’s just the beginning. I mean, have you thought about the terrible twos, in your apartment? Did you ever wonder why The Omen skipped the infancy? Because that’s the real horror. Oh, Leland, good job, you just f**ked yourself more than you know,” she tells him, laughing, and walks away.

But Leland and Sheryl (Christine Lahti) are whispering in the ear of Kristen’s husband, Andy (Patrick Brammall), after making him think he was involved in a climbing accident, rather than held captive. Sheryl wants to use him to find a way back into Kristen’s house, but Leland instead plants a thought in his mind: “Why is your wife f**king a priest?” And so Andy goes to confront David (Mike Colter), who tries to tell him he and Kristen haven’t slept together (as he sees Demon Kristen lounging on his bed).

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David then tells Kristen what happened. “Do I have feelings for you? Yeah, but my husband needs to shut the f**k up,” she says. “He has absolutely no right.” She walks off as David tries to continue their conversation. Then at home, Kristen tells her husband not to sabotage her job and insists she’s not sleeping with David, he’s a priest. And no, she hasn’t kissed him.

“Kristen’s having to lie a lot because the feelings are there,” executive producer Robert King tells TV Insider. “There’s a Catholic or maybe Christian concept that even committing adultery in your mind is the equivalent to committing it in person. And whether you believe it or not, there is something about the idea of, Kristen has been unfaithful, not just with the Satanist on another season, but with David in a way.”

She’s not alone in that, he continues. “David clearly has with his demon Kristen. So I do think the very fact that they’ve committed adultery in their mind puts them in a position of feeling guilty when Andy accused David of f**king her, even though he’s a priest. David looks over and sees Demon Kristen on the bed, like sticking out her devil tongue. And yes, that’s right. In many ways he is sleeping with her every time he sleeps with demon Kristen.”

According to Herbers, Andy may have just unintentionally bonded Kristen and David by crossing the line like he has. “I think it’s probably maybe similar to what can happen in life if somebody’s very jealous and they’re like, ‘Why are you hanging out with that person?’ When you then see that person, you’re like, ‘Oh, is something going on with this person or not?'” she says in our video above, with her, Colter, and Aasif Mandvi (Ben).

Adds Colter, “I think yes, he has feelings for her, but also, I think Kristen is such a test of his restraint and his ability to stick to the priesthood. It’s almost like an exercise in torture. But he also signed up for this. He brought this person to be in his close proximity, in his world, in his life that he is attracted to.”

Meanwhile, the trio visited a particle accelerator as part of the investigation of the week, and while there, Ben is hit by a beam and has flashes of demonic creatures. Later, at home, he sees something in the corner of his eye and some sort of creature grabs his from behind. This is going to turn everything he’s believed in upside down.

This is going to challenge Ben this season, confirms Mandvi. “I think that the challenge of having a physical ailment happen to you that’s physical and medical, and at the same time that overlapping with a paranormal sort of supernatural entity is very disconcerting to say the least,” he says. “Also, he doesn’t even know how to approach this. All the scientific methods and tools that he uses don’t come up with answers. So you see him really struggling and going a little bit crazy this season in terms of the things that he can’t explain.”

Elizabeth Fisher / Paramount+

“Ben is our atheist, our pragmatist, and yet visions are coming to him and he’s having to deal with it,” says executive producer Michelle King. “It’s even harder on him than it would be on someone like Sister Andrea [Andrea Martin], who believes it and accepts it.”

Adds Robert, “What interests us is not only migraines and how migraines can bring about sometimes hallucinations—not with everybody, with some—was the idea of how someone who was a man of science, as Ben is, could examine [this], as he does with color charts, okay, the scientific evidence for what these hallucinations are, what are they and how do I reduce them and can I treat them seriously? Especially coming from the Islamic background of djinns, how much is this like a djinn that he was taught as a kid?”

Watch the full video above for more from Herbers, Colter, and Mandvi about the premiere.

Evil, Thursdays, Paramount+