‘Evil’ Stars on Fallout From Kristen & David’s Kiss, Sheryl’s Power, and More in Season 3

“There’s a way Kristen and David can have their cake and eat it, too,” Katja Herbers teases of her and Mike Colter’s characters in Evil Season 3 following that kiss.

The Season 2 finale ended with Kristen Bouchard going to the newly ordained David Acosta and confessing to the murder of serial killer Orson LeRoux (Darren Pettie), who had been a threat to her family. After that intimate moment came another, with the two sharing a kiss. But he’s a priest, and she’s married.

“I really love that scene. I think they really do love each other and there’s nobody else who knows this and he accepted her in her darkest moment, with all her ugliness and her sins laid bare,” Herbers tells TV Insider. “That transitioned into the kiss, [which] I thought was very beautiful.”

However, they’re now facing the problem of “now what?” she continues. “Because I think they were so connected and at the height of their connection with this kiss. She kissed her best friend. How do they proceed? I think she feels pretty lonely after that because they can’t be together and now they have to deal with that happened between them and they’re awkward and then also David is living in a different reality than she is about their relationship, to put it vaguely.”

David, for his part, is struggling with quite a bit when Season 3 begins. There’s what happened with Kristen as well as the fact that he is now a priest and he must grapple with that that means, including for his day-to-day life. “It’s kind of like marriage. No matter what you tell a person prior to them getting married, it doesn’t translate and they don’t know until they actually experience it,” Colter explains. “David has really just stepped into a world where I don’t think he understood what it was like.” Ben Shakir (Aasif Mandvi) raised questions about David taking that step last season, and while he was so certain then, that’s not necessarily the case now.

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“I think first episode, you start seeing David’s like, what is the day-to-day life of a priest like?” Colter previews. “It is not necessarily fun, you do things that, they’re of substance, they’re appreciated, you’re serving a purpose, you’re serving a community, you’re serving a church, but it is a selfless life and it is a bit lonely. I think he right away is starting to have a little bit of regrets, and he’s trying to navigate it. The first couple episodes are about, what does this new life entail and what can I do to spice it up?”

Also struggling in Season 3 is Ben, who, while he started out as a skeptic, has seen things that are hard to explain. “He wants to be able to explain everything. He’s a scientist. His worldview really has been challenged over the first two seasons, and so when we find him at the beginning of Season 3, we realize that all these things he’s been coming up against and he can’t figure out [have led to him] struggling with ‘what do I believe?'” Mandvi says. “‘How do I manage to stay in my own belief system when there are all these things that I’m struggling with and I can’t believe?’ He’s struggling with the inability to explain things away as easily as he is used to or wants to be able to do.”

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Another challenge in Season 3 is Kristen’s, when it comes to how to deal with the evil Leland Townsend (Michael Emerson), who has been focusing on her daughter, Lexis (Maddy Crocco). “At the end of Season 2, Kristen was actually on her way with her ice axe to take Leland out, but she didn’t want to do that, so she left the ice axe at David’s and so now she has to think of other ways to take him out,” explains Herbers. “The threat is not gone. He is still after her girls. She’s going to have to now abide by the law to try to get him away from her and not take matters into her own hands.”

For Emerson, “I feel like it puts Leland on the high wire of villainy to come after a woman he both fears and admires, come at her by way of her children knowing it would be so provocative, but maybe that’s what he wants. He seems to be addicted to engagement. The worst thing for Leland is to be ignored, I think, but he’s really quite daring and shameless in the way he goes to work on people. It’s fun.”

Elizabeth Fisher/Paramount+

Kristen isn’t the only source of contention for Leland. There’s also Sister Andrea, but in Season 3, there’s “not much with Leland,” Andrea Martin teases of her character, who has brandished a knife on him and tricked him with ammonia. Instead, we’ll see her with Kurt Boggs (Kurt Fuller), Kristen, and Ben. Still, Leland is “threatened by [Sister Andrea] because she speaks the truth and is not intimidated by him at all,” so he will try to bring her down. “I miss him actually,” she admits. “I love working with Michael Emerson, and I miss that, but they gave me the opportunity to work with a lot of actors. It was wonderful.”

And what about Sheryl (Christine Lahti), who has proven that she can hold her own against the man who approached her as a way to get to her daughter, Kristen, and has instead brought her deeper and deeper to the dark side? When we last saw her, she became head of a sigil (remember the map of 60 demonic houses?) and had two creepy Eddie dolls. In Season 3, Sheryl “does continue to have a strong relationship with [the Eddie dolls],” says Lahti. “I think she uses them as a kind of meditation to access her own self-worth, her own power. She has felt marginalized and held back by men in her whole life, so she’s just beginning to get a taste of her own power, and I’m afraid to say, she doesn’t handle it in the most gracious way, but she is determined to not be held down anymore, so I think the Eddie dolls give her strength.”

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As for being head of that sigil, it means Sheryl is “a real threat to Leland,” she teases. “She’s trying to pretend that he has power over her, but I think because she’s the head of this sigil, she knows, whether he knows it or not, that ultimately, he’s coming down.”

Evil, Season 3 Premiere, Sunday, June 12, Paramount+