Our experience watching Aasif Mandvi play Evil’s Ben Shakir for four seasons has been, much like Ben himself, pretty magnificent. The only difference is, while the series featured the occasional instance of Ben “falling apart” here and there, Mandvi’s performances were always spot on. And, just as both actor and character were starting to do some of their most interesting work yet…some demon someone had to decide we don’t deserve nice things and cancel the show.
Although the phrase “series finale” shouldn’t even be in play right now, our interview with Aasif Mandvi breaks down the series finale, revisits some of the most interesting Ben-centric stories from Season 4, and…is all about us really hoping we’ll get more Evil in the future.
On a satisfying ending…
The obvious first question to ask Aasif Mandvi about the Evil series finale was whether or not he’s happy with how things ended for Ben. “I mean, look…he’s making $650K now. So, he can’t argue with that, you know? He went from $65K to making 10 times that,” he told me, adding that “some things are just practical.” But everyone’s always talking about how money can’t buy happiness (would like to test that theory), and what little bit we saw of Ben’s new job…didn’t look anywhere near as thrilling as his work with David and Kristen. So, Mandvi posed (and answered) the question: “How long is he going to stay at that job?” Although he initially admitted he has “no idea,” he did wager a guess: “I give him a year — I give him a year before he gets bored and decides to go do something else.”
Mandvi also shared his thoughts on “where the show ended up,” overall. “I feel like, you know, I always knew that the Kings were going to end it in a place where there was a door sort of left slightly ajar for future episodes, if there’s another life to Evil…which I think we’re all hoping that there might be. So, yeah. I kind of knew that that’s where we were going to end up. But then,” if we ever do manage to save Evil, “we’d have to find a way for Ben to have to leave that job, and David and Kristen to have to come back from Rome.”
But where did the djinn go?
One place where that door Mandvi referenced was really left wide open, at least from my point of view, was Ben’s deep dive into the supernatural. Specifically…what happened with the djinn, and what are we supposed to take from Ben putting away one of the tools he was using to study it? “I got the sense that…from my understanding, it was that once he had left the world of Ghostbusters, he was no longer plagued by the djinn anymore. And so, it sort of freed him of that. But now, again, I have no idea how long that’s going to be, and whether it’s going to come back.”
Actually, a lot of things about the creature have been a mystery from the very beginning — and could remain that way even if the show finds new life elsewhere. As Mandvi put it, “again…what’s great about the show is that it sort of plays with these realities, right? Like, did that tinfoil hat really do anything for him? Was there ever really a djinn? Or…was he just so caught up in this world” that it made him imagine something? “It’s always kind of a question. So, my feeling from — just from inside of it — is that he didn’t need it anymore because he had decided to leave that world. And so, he wasn’t being haunted in the same way that he was before.”
So, if Evil were to get a second life somehow — insert “oh yeah” from Mandvi as I started to ask the question here — would the djinn maybe come back? “Maybe! Maybe the djinn would come back. I mean, I love the idea that Ben has been challenged in his certainty…and constantly getting challenged.”
Aasif Mandvi on why we should save Evil
But here’s the thing. It’s not just about any one, specific piece of the puzzle. Per Mandvi, “there’s so much story that I think all of us still wanted to tell. And the cancellation of the show, I think all of us feel is premature. Including our fans.” And that group of fans just keeps growing and growing. “I feel like we are a show that is really…We’re at the peak of…people really enjoying the show right now. So, I feel like it would make sense that, at some point, somebody might want to make another season of it.”
For a show like Evil, coming back after the series finale wouldn’t even be that difficult. “That’s the great thing about great storytelling, is you put your characters in a place where you go, ‘well, how are they going to get out of this?’ Or ‘why would they return to this thing that they did?’ …and then you figure out a way of doing that.” So, while Mandvi thinks “that it makes sense where [the series’ main characters] all — sort of — end up…with a sense of potentially having another life,” we can always visit them again.
The alternate reality
In the two episodes prior to the finale, the trio “met” their doppelgängers by glimpsing their lives through an app. (Kids, don’t try this at home.) And Ben was…really interested in the family man, Baashir Benton, who shared his face. So, let’s pretend Evil comes back to us one day. Would Ben be interested in having that kind of life, or would he still be more than happy to visit with the chaos that is Kristen’s daughters and then go home to peace and quiet?
“It’s been Sliding Doors-ish, right?” Mandvi asked. (It’s a film reference, y’all.) “Inside of Ben, I’m guessing that there is, when he looks at that, he sees a path that he could have taken. And [he wonders], ‘what would that have been like?’” The actor also thinks “there’s a loneliness to Ben. And as much as I think he has the friends and all that stuff…he’s ultimately a kind of a loner. A little bit. And so, there’s a version of that, where it’s like, he’s looking at something and going like, ‘oh, I could have been a family man. I could have, perhaps, made different choices. Not that I think he’s upset with the life that he has. But I think if you were to be able to look at a version of a life that you could have had, you might be intrigued by, ‘oh, that could have been me. That could have been who I was.’”
Also on the topic of Ben and his doppelgänger Baashir, the story was actually much more personal for Aasif Mandvi than many viewers might realize. “I think a lot of people don’t know this, but the two actors playing my wife and son are actually my wife and son. In real life. And so, when I was looking at that…I acted the scene with them, so I wasn’t looking at it in real time. But it’s like, you know, that’s where Aasif and Ben sort of, kind of, almost melded a little bit,” Mandvi said, “because there’s a version of me where I could look back at my life 10 years ago, or 15 years ago, where I was a single guy…on The Daily Show. Just living my life, being an actor.” Now, though, “I have a child, and I have a wife, and I have a family.”
So, when Ben looks in on Baashir’s happy family, for Mandvi, “it’s like me looking at myself going like, ‘I can’t believe that that is me,’ you know? It’s not somebody that I would have imagined I would ever have become. So, it’s almost like a past version of myself, looking at the current version of myself.”
…and the series finale’s future that thankfully wasn’t
Even if it wasn’t technically an assessment, the Evil series finale saw the trio investigating some VR goggles that claimed to show people their futures. But in keeping with the theme of the four “bonus” episodes, those predictions were, clearly, everyone’s worst fears. Much like everything else on this series, even something so straightforward — fears — was open to questioning. In the case of Ben, he can’t provide comfort for his sister Karima as she’s dying. Not only that, but when she asks him where Allah is…Ben has no answer.
So, I needed Aasif Mandvi’s take on this gutting moment for Ben. Is it just about losing his sister — his person — or more about really not knowing what comes after we die? Maybe about not having that answer for Karima, specifically? “Yeah, it’s interesting, right? Because the fear that is presented in the goggles is, sometimes, even the thing that we are consciously unaware of.”
In Ben’s case, “there’s a level of conscious fear, which is that his sister would die and he would be left alone, right? And then, there’s the unconscious fear that, even though he can’t believe in anything, the reality that she can then abandon her faith — not abandon her faith, but confirm for him that there’s nothing — is also a kind of…Because nobody can prove or disprove the afterlife or the concept of God or whatever, you know what I mean? Like Allah or whatever, right? So, if she’s saying that to him on her deathbed that there is nothing, it sort of confirms to him something that, maybe deep down inside, he’s terrified of.”
And that’s really something a lot of us are afraid of and can connect with. Which, as Mandvi also points out, Ben’s not-future “is actually similar to, perhaps, what David is going through” with how his doubts fuel his VR experience. “Because nothing means nothing, right? Nothing is not like, ‘oh, you now become an organism that is living in [some form of afterlife]…you have no energy or whatever. Nothing is nothing. So, maybe that is a fear that he harbors deep inside…we’re not sure.”
We’ll just call this part Aasif Mandvi’s love letter to Evil…
Another favorite part of the finale: the scene where Ben, David, and Kristen talk about the influence they’ve each had on each other. So, I asked Mandvi what Ben Shakir and Evil have done for him.
“It’s been an amazing ride. It’s been an amazing experience, working with some of the best creators in the business, Robert and Michelle King. Working with amazing actors, Katja, Mike, Michael Emerson, Christine…Kurt — the whole gang. Andrea Martin…Wally Shawn…It’s been just…There are those jobs that you do because you’re like, ‘all right, this will make some money and I’ll get to work, and blah, blah, blah.’ And then, there are those jobs that you do because you don’t know it’s going to be that way, but it turns out that you just love the experience, and really enjoy the experience, of making the show. And so, I’ve been very fortunate in that way — that I got to [do all of that] and also tell stories. Because at the end of the day, we’re all storytellers, you know?
So, to tell stories that we really feel proud of, and feel like resonate with people, and people are enjoying. And you can tell from our growing fanbase that people love the show, and they’re loving it more and more. So I think that, for me, just the experience of doing that and getting to do that — as an actor, in my career — is a rare thing whenever it happens. So, the fact that it happened at all is kind of great.”
…and his final words on Ben
“I say, ‘never say never,” Mandvi told me. And we kept circling back to our mutual desire to revive or save Evil — whatever you want to call it, take your pick. So, as I put it during the interview: “Look, they brought [Jon] Stewart back to The Daily Show. Anything can happen.”
And, laughing, the former correspondent was like, “there you go — there you go, right?! Annnything can happen! He came back to The Daily Show, you know. So, there you go.”
If whatever forces brought Jon back can do me a favor and manifest us more Ben “the Magnificent” Shakir, that’d be greatly appreciated.
What’s next?
Mandvi will appear in AMC’s The Terror: Devil in Silver, which comes out in 2025. When I asked for a little bit of a teaser on that, he told me, he thinks “it’s a really interesting show. We’ve got a super duper cast…Dan Stevens, Judith Light…on and on…It’s just kind of a great group of people.” This series “leans into the real horror stuff more than Evil does, whereas Evil — I think — is more satire, and more absurd, and sort of psychological in some respects.”
But, with that being said, The Terror “is also very much…not satirical so much. But definitely a commentary on systems and how systems operate, and how good people do bad things inside systems. So, it’s very much dealing with that world.” Mandvi’s “character is very much part of that. Somebody who is caught inside the system.” We’ll see “how systems — whether they’re political, or cultural, or religious, or institutional systems — force us to do things that might be harmful and bad, just to maintain the system.”
We’ll be looking forward to seeing Aasif Mandvi in The Terror. Until then, you can catch all four seasons of Evil on Paramount+, help the series stay in the Netflix top 10 with the first couple of seasons, and just keep hoping the industry’s obsession revivals and spinoffs works in our favor.
