The article contains spoilers for Evil season 4, episode 10, "How to Survive a Storm."

Summary

• Sheryl's death in Evil season 4 was heartbreaking but necessary for the show's conclusion.
• Christine Lahti reflects on the challenging journey of portraying Sheryl and embraces the character's flaws.
• Sheryl's sacrifice and redemption affect her daughter and granddaughters as Leland faces consequences.

Evil season 4's Christine Lathi offers a thoughtful response to her character's death. On the way to its conclusion, the Paramount+ supernatural thriller has been setting up a fatal showdown between Sheryl Lauria (Lahti) and Leland Townsend (Michael Emerson). Even though Lathi ultimately succumbs to her injuries, after being thrown out of a window by Leland, she is forgiven by her daughter Kristen (Katja Herbers) and manages to get one last laugh against Leland when the police show up to arrest him.

In an interview with TV Insider, Lathi opened up about her character's death in season 4, episode 10, "How to Survive a Storm." The actor, who has been with the show since the beginning, spoke candidly about the way Sheryl's demise is so heartbreaking. She also reflected on why Sheryl makes for such a complex portrayal, and talks about the face-off with Leland and the villain's demonic tactics that led to Sheryl's downfall. Read the quote below:

I think she thought she had it all worked out, that he would be drugged, and then she would be able to slice his throat and kill him, but she wasn’t prepared for the demon or the henchman. For me, for Sheryl, it’s not a real demon. It’s just an evil man, like a henchman, like a guy that’s going to help out Leland, [like] a bodyguard. So she wasn’t prepared for that, and that was her, I guess, fatal flaw, that she didn’t expect there to be anyone else there that would do his bidding.

Heartbreaking. Really heartbreaking. We had to shoot that many months later [due to the strike], but I had been thinking about it for many months as well. So I was not only saying goodbye to my granddaughters and my daughter, but I was saying goodbye to being in this show and being part of this family because we didn’t know that the show was going to be canceled at that point. I thought they would go on for Season 5 and Season 6, whatever, but without me, of course. So I was saying goodbye to just being part of this incredible ride and this journey of Sheryl, saying goodbye to Sheryl as an actress. What a journey. What a fun, challenging, exhilarating, crazy, f--ked up character. And I just have loved it. I love the challenge of it. I’ve loved the challenge of how to make somebody so flawed and insecure and dark somehow also understandable and empathetic and battling a world of misogyny wherever she goes and doing the best she can, even though she does some bad s--t

Why It Was The Right Time For Sheryl To Die

It Was Redemption... But With The Ultimate Sacrifice

Although creators Robert and Michelle King have indeed often intentionally avoided the expected storytelling paths, Sheryl's foreshadowed death was necessary and well-earned.

Evil season 4 did not attempt to conceal the fact that Sheryl was headed for her death, seeing as how the character tells David (Mike Colter) that she fully expects not to survive her showdown with Leland. It was more a question of how she would die and what would happen as a result. Leland faces a setback, as he's arrested, and the loss will impact Kristen and her granddaughters.

Evil season 4, episode 10, "How to Survive a Storm," was written by Rockne S. O’Bannon & Anju Andre-Bergmann and directed by John Dahl.

But there was probably no better end for Lahti's character. She willingly embraced working for dark forces to benefit herself and knowingly violated her daughter's trust. Even if the conclusion of Evil leads to a point where Leland is fully vanquished, there is no way to fully rebuild the relationship that Sheryl broke. The best that she could have hoped, especially knowing Leland, was to go out swinging for the way that Leland targeted her granddaughters.

That's especially true, considering the series finale, which is just five episodes away. The Paramount+ drama needed a massive loss among the Evil cast of characters to give the impression of raised stakes and to offer a sense that everything was on the line. Although creators Robert and Michelle King have indeed often intentionally avoided the expected storytelling paths, Sheryl's foreshadowed death was necessary and well-earned.

New episodes of Evil stream Thursdays on Paramount+.

Source: TV Insider