Bruce Campbell Announces Ash Williams’ Retirement
It’s time to lay down the boomstick.
Ash Williams is laying down his boomstick. And good for him. It was hard enough for him to watch two girlfriends in a row get turned into Deadites back in the ‘80s, and then before he even had the chance to finish his shift at S-Mart, he got hurled back into the medieval era to fight stop-motion skeletons. He tried to leave the supernatural butt-kicking game after that, but he just couldn’t park the Necronomicon on the shelf, and his adventures continued on premium cable. Comics, video games, cameos in other Evil Dead movies — our guy is tired.
And so, while it’s definitely sad — especially for those of us who grew up with the character — it’s with gratitude and wistful nostalgia that we report Bruce Campbell is retiring the character of Ash for good. He said as much in a new interview with ScreenRant, telling the outlet that “Ash is done.” And although Campbell had previously hinted that he might be up for voicing the character in an animated revival, he added that he will “not [be] going to do any animated voice work" as Ash, either. "There are ways to [recreate my voice] now,” he said, presumably referring to voice-cloning software and/or AI voice generators.
This comes in the wake of Campbell’s announcement that “appearances and cons and work in general need to take a back seat” as he embarks on a series of treatments for a “treatable, but not curable” form of cancer. This happened back in March, and since then Campbell has been quiet except for promoting his new movie, Ernie & Emma, a passion project and Campbell’s first movie as a director since My Name is Bruce back in 2007.
But while this announcement presumably has a lot to do with Campbell’s health and plans for his own future, after 45 years as the same character — especially a character that’s been closely tied to Campbell’s own image — we wouldn’t blame him if he just wanted to give Ash a rest. Campbell was an executive producer on Evil Dead Burn, but was minimally involved in this latest film. The franchise is going in a different direction by bringing in new directors and characters: the next installment, Evil Dead Wrath, directed by Last Stop in Yuma County’s Francis Galluppi, is reportedly a prequel, with Alyssa Sutherland’s Ellie poised to become the new connecting tissue between the films. They’re going to be fine.
As for Ash, it’s finally time for him to crack open a Shemp’s Beer and relax — if he ever gets tired of space truckin’, of course.
