‘Evil’: Aasif Mandvi Says Ben Is ‘Inside a Storm of Just Not Knowing What Is Going On’
![Aasif Mandvi as Ben Shakir appearing in Evil episode 6, season 4](https://www.tvinsider.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/evil-406-ben-1014x570.jpeg)
If you’re wondering what exactly is going on with Ben (Aasif Mandvi) in Evil Season 4, you’re not alone. In fact, you’re in the same boat as the character!
The season began with Ben, Kristen (Katja Herbers), and David (Mike Colter) investigating a particle accelerator, and while there, Ben was hit by a quantum beam and had flashes of demonic beings. Since then, he’s been hearing and seeing a djinn and had his world pretty much turned upside down. He, of course, has tried to approach it from a scientific perspective.
Then, in Episode 7, “How to Dress a Wound,” Ben was surprised to get home only to find that Renee (Gia Crovatin) had moved in—after he supposedly asked her! He had no recollection of that. He returned to his doctor, but there was nothing wrong neurologically. Then, he once again arrived home only to find out that he had another conversation with Renee he didn’t remember, this time about picking up scented candles. When he went to check his call log, she thought he thought she was gaslighting him. But according to his phone, he didn’t call her. With that, she decided to move out.
But before she could do that, there was once again another call from Ben to her he couldn’t recall—this one a video of him singing and begging her to come back. Maybe he could learn to be that Ben, he said, but she left.
But does he want to be that Ben? Does he want to be with Renee? Mandi things a lot of that is unknown to his character.
“I think it’s interesting because I don’t know if Ben knows what he wants. I mean, it’s an interesting thing because he’s experiencing something where he’s having this kind of time gap where things are happening and he’s not remembering them, and then also he’s doing things that are completely out of character for him,” he tells TV Insider.
“So I think there’s a couple of things going on. I don’t think he knows if this is really happening. From Ben’s point of view, on some level, things are explainable, but this doesn’t seem explainable,” he continues. “So he doesn’t know if it’s like Renee is f**king with him or is it from the particle accelerator? He’s experiencing this djinn. Is it to do with that? I think he’s really inside a storm of just not knowing what is going on when we see him in [Episode] 407. Then he starts to figure out some ways of [dealing with what’s happening] later in the season.”
What do you think is going on with Ben? Let us know in the comments section, below.
Evil, Thursdays, Paramount+