The rebooted Evil Dead franchise has gone seven years without being continued, so you might be forgiven for thinking it’s as deceased as a reanimated hellion bisected by a chainsaw in a fountain of viscera. However, those behind it have always planned its continuation, with the latest revelation being that director Fede Álvarez intended survivor Mia to meet and team up with Ash from the original movies.
One of the film’s multiple mooted endings had Mia collapsing near death on a country road, only to be found by a trucker who begins driving her to a hospital, with the intention having been for Ash to be the driver in question. The idea was nixed by Bruce Campbell though, who felt that there was no real reason for Ash to be driving out there in the middle of nowhere, meaning the encounter would be too random for it to have any real significance.
Nevertheless, the planned sequel still saw the pair encountering each other, presumably involving Ash learning of Mia’s ordeal and realizing he still had work to do fighting the deadites, in addition to a planned revelation that the two were somehow related. This plan ended up being complicated though by Sam Raimi’s development of Ash vs. Evil Dead, with the director having his own ideas about where his most famous and enduring creation would have ended up and wanting to explore that free of other considerations.
Of course, the truck driver coda does exist as an alternative ending, but the man in question is merely an anonymous nobody who just happened to appear at the right time. A YouTube video of the scene has numerous comments stating how perfect it would have been had Campbell been the one appearing at the moment, though.
A sequel to Evil Dead is still planned to go ahead, albeit with a new director. Although Campbell is on board as a producer, since he’s officially retired from the role of Ash the unkillable idiot will not feature in the movie in any capacity. So, we can now only imagine how the dual continuation would have turned out.
