Just three episodes into its second season, Paramount+ has already renewed its hit original series, Evil, for a third. Streaming weekly on Paramount+, ViacomCBS’ live and on-demand streaming service, Evil follows Katja Herber’s cynical forensic psychologist, Kristen Bouchard, who, alongside Mike Colter’s priest-in-training, David, and Aasif Mandvi’s contractor Ben Shakir, investigates the church’s backlog of unexplained phenomenon, including hauntings, miracles, and possessions. Together, the three explore questions of the nature and origins of evil from both scientific and religious perspectives.
The first season was one of the best reviewed television series when it first arrived in 2019. The second season of Evil appears to continue this trend and sees the evil that the cast investigates moving closer to home, with Kirsten struggling with her darker side, David struggling with his choice to become a priest, and Ben haunted by night-terrors. Evil also stars Michael Emerson, Christine Lahti, Skylar Gray, and Maddy Crocco.
Despite being a critical darling, Evil failed to deliver strong weekly ratings, with viewing figures falling from 4.56 million to 3.19 million between its first and final season 1 episodes. However, since moving to Paramount+ for its second season, the show has been a significant draw for the streaming service according to Paramount, with the show posting increasing ratings week-by-week. So much so, that Paramount has seen fit to renew the show for a third season despite the current season only having three episodes under its belt so far. In a statement accompanying the announcement of Evil’s renewal, Paramount claimed: “this season is already one of the service's top acquisition drivers, with viewership growing week over week compared to the first season.”
This is great news for the show, which was incredibly well-regarded despite its rocky start. Critics praised its handling of religious themes as well as the central performances, with many comparing it to The X-Files, albeit with a greater religious bent. It’s clear that with ten more episodes of Evil still to come, Paramount likely expects these figures to continue, if not increase, as the second season progresses. In which case, the decision to release episodes weekly appears to have been a smart move from the company so as to continue maximizing recurrent viewership.
Hopefully, this faith is well-placed and Evil can continue its positive trend of increased ratings. This likely will be the case, though, with the show being helmed by Robert and Michelle King - who previously helped to launch ViacomCBS’ previous streaming platform, CBS All Access, with their critically acclaimed series, The Good Fight. Considering the continued positive reception of that show, and Evil seemingly going from strength to strength, it’s entirely possible audiences will be seeing a lot more Evil and will be flocking to Paramount+ as a result.
Evil airs weekly on Sundays exclusively on Paramount+.
Source: Paramount
