***The following contains spoilers for 4.11***
In the most recent episode of
Evil, which premiered on Thursday, a woman, Ellie (Anna Chlumsky), claiming to be Kristen (Katja Herber)’s daughter Laura from the future, reveals some disturbing news. Meanwhile, the future of the assessor program is threatened. On the other side of things, Leland Townsend (Michael Emerson) is brought to trial after Sheryl (Christine Lahti) provided evidence that led to his arrest. The two victims he had imprisoned died, so he’s left trying to blackmail Dr. Boggs (Kurt Fuller) into helping him with an insanity defense. As he tries to mount his defense, he also tries to get his lawyer (John Carroll Lynch), who isn’t much help, changed, only for him to reveal he’s actually a demon.
Always delegating his dirty work, Leland clearly did not ever expect to get caught and arrested. How will he deal with the fallout? “He's going to deal with it the same way he deals with all kinds of intrusion or regulation from the normal world in his affairs with the 60,” explained Emerson during a recent interview with SciFi Vision, adding that the delegation is a survival technique. “[H]e usually has someone he can call,” continued the actor, “someone that they own, someone that's in their pocket, but he doesn't always know who they are or from which direction they might be coming.”
The actor also admitted that Kristen has become a distraction from his work with the 60. “[I]t's probably the reason he's not more successful in the corporate world of the 60, because he has these petty little wars that he maintains,” said Emerson. “He's just so busy trying to bring down David (Mike Colter) and Kristen that sometimes he doesn't help his own career that much.”
Unfortunately the series only has three more episodes to wrap up the plot. Can Leland get a happy ending? Emerson isn’t sure, but he did say that whatever “makes [Leland] happy is going to make lots of other people unhappy.”