‘Evil’: Can Sheryl Earn Kristen’s Trust Back? Christine Lahti Weighs In

[Warning: The below contains MAJOR spoilers for Evil Season 4 Episode 7 “How to Bandage a Wound.”]

Both Sheryl (Christine Lahti) and Leland (Michael Emerson) walk away from their fight, but they are bloody and injured in the latest episode of Evil.

Sheryl has learned that Leland, through Andy (Patrick Brammall), tried to kill her granddaughter Laura, and she is pissed. In fact, she reminds him of the very specific rule she had (“Don’t ever touch my granddaughters, and if you did, I would cut off your dick”). He stabs her in the shoulder with glass, and she in his leg with a knife.

That scene “was so fun and insane,” Lahti tells TV Insider. “Of course we had a fight coordinator and a stunt guy, but I think we just did it.”

Admits Emerson, “I thought I had reached a point years ago where I would not be called upon to do combat anymore. And yet it seems like every show I’m on, there’s fighting and stabbing, shooting, running and ducking and hiding in tight dark places. And I know Christine feels the same way. So we go into work that day and it’s like, ‘Here we go. Let’s see if we can get out of this alive without any tragic accidents and stuff.’ I mean, it’s all very carefully rehearsed and we always have stunt doubles or combat doubles, but at the end of the day, it’s our faces that are going to be on the camera. Once in a while, there’ll be a little insert, a little something of someone flying or dropping to the floor without catching themselves, that kind of stuff.”

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As Sheryl leaves Leland’s, he warns her she won’t survive coming after him. But don’t count her out. “I think she’s scared, but she’s just going to spend the next however many days making the final plan of how to do him in,” says Lahti. “This was like a practice run-through, but I know they have both met their match. This is not going to be easy, but I think she’s determined.”

She continues, “Once she knows for a fact that Leland tried to kill her granddaughter—or had Andy try to kill her, which is same thing—that’s the last straw, and she is out to bring him down.” In her mind, that’s always been Sheryl’s plan, infiltrating the dark world, even though she has also benefited from it. “I think she has gained a lot of empowerment and self-esteem in a weird way,” she explains. “Little did she know that the patriarchy was going to be even more oppressive in the dark world than it is in the normal world. So she’s got a lot to battle.”

Just look at her office with that low ceiling! “Exactly,” Lahti agrees. “[Leland’s] done everything he can to humiliate her, to hold her down.”

Kristen (Katja Herbers) may not want her mother anywhere near her daughters right now, but she still goes to the hospital when called then helps Sheryl at home. While Kristen stresses that nothing’s changed, Sheryl says she’ll earn her trust back, and yes, she thinks that’s possible, “by defending her granddaughter and by bringing Leland down,” according to Lahti.

“She has every confidence that she will prove to her daughter that she’s brought down the devil—not the devil, but the evil force that has been plaguing her daughter and her granddaughters and herself for all this time,” she continues. Being the one to bring Leland down “will be the final, ‘Look, you can trust me because look what I did. I saved your life. I saved my granddaughter’s lives.'”

Who do you think will come out on top between Sheryl and Leland? Let us know in the comments section, below.

Evil, Thursdays, Paramount+