Inside “Evil”'s Series Finale: Katja Herbers Breaks Down the Show's Cryptic End (Exclusive)

The actress shares her interpretation of the highly-awaited finale of the Paramount+ series

Warning: This story contains spoilers from the series finale of Paramount+ series Evil.

After four seasons of exploring the unholy and supernatural, the Paramount+ series Evil is finally coming to an end.

In the series finale, which debuted on Aug.22, Kristen Bouchard (Katja Herbers), Father David Acosta (Mike Colter) and Ben Shakir (Aasif Mandvi) faced the reality that after four years together as assessors, their trio was disbanding, with David reassigned to Vatican security in Rome. His reassignment irked Kristen, even more so when she learned that David would leave in four days.

But David made one last attempt to keep the group together when he invited Kristen and Ben to continue their roles as assessors in Rome. If they’re willing to travel overseas, he’d get them paid almost twice what they were making in the U.S. (But that doesn’t impress Ben, who had moved onto a plush gig that earned him a whopping $650,000 a year.)

"Help me get up and running for six months," David implored Kristen, cradling her hand. "Save some money. Then move back if you want."

Related: Despite Starring in Horror TV Show 'Evil', Katja Herbers Does Not Watch Anything in the Genre

While Kristen initially rebuffed the idea — "I need a normal life," she explained — the forensic psychologist mulled David's offer over that evening, opened up her laptop and loaded the Find My Doppelganger website. She pulled up a live video of her uncanny Danish counterpart, who gave someone two pieces of sage advice as they lazed in the grass: "A risk not taken is a life not lived," and "Never give up a chance to f--- or travel."

Kristen's night was interrupted when Leland Townsend (Michael Emerson) crept into her home trying to kill her — a move Kristen saw coming. She came from behind, wrapped a climbing rope around Leland's neck and pulled him to the ground, trying to strangle him. But as Leland came dangerously close to losing consciousness, David and Ben barged into the room, pleading for Kristen to stop, ostensibly before she did something she regretted.

Katja Herbers tells PEOPLE she believes Kristen would have “killed” Leland without her friends’ intervention.

“I think what they [David and Ben] do is very sweet. They prevent her from having to do it. We know she [Kristen] has killed before," says Herbers, referring to the murder of Orson LeRoux (Darren Pettie). "She killed a man who certainly deserved it, one could say, because he was trying to kill her family and nobody was doing anything and he was a serial killer.”

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“You could say that it's justifiable that she kills him, but I think killing is not good for the soul,” the actress, 43, continues. “Even if you kill someone who deserves it, even if you kill a rapist, murderer, whatever, it cannot be good for you. And we've seen Kristen, that whole second season, dealing with the reckoning of that she had killed someone — and it is hard on the soul.”

The trio dragged Leland, kicking and screaming in a sack, to the silent monastery featured previously in the season 2 episode “S Is for Silence.” They shoved Leland into the demon cabinet, where — god-willing — he is trapped indefinitely. (“If words are spoken, the demon gets released,” Herbers offers as a reminder.) Sister Fenna (Alexandra Sochia) who lived in the monastery was also on hand for this holy milestone.

As the finale reached its conclusion, the episode cut to Kristen in Vatican City with her four daughters — Lexis (Maddy Crocco), Lynn (Brooklyn Shuck), Lila (Skylar Gray) and Laura (Dalya Knapp) — and the infant son Leland bred using Kristen’s eggs without her consent. Italy has clearly been kind to the forensic psychologist, whose cerulean blue wrap dress looked more runway-ready than the more casual threads she'd previously worn.

Once Kristen and her daughters wrapped a video call with Ben, who stayed in New York City but vowed to visit, Kristen gazed down upon her young son — his eyes turned a ghastly white and his teeth became fangs. When it dawned on Kristen then that her son was truly the antichrist, she shoved a pacifier into his mouth to hide his sharp chompers. He may become the harbinger of doom one day, but for now, he's an innocuous, gurgling baby with an emerging demonic streak — and Kristen was actually okay with that.

“[Kristen's] incredibly maternal — and we've seen her, even in her nightmares — nurse an actual weird looking freaking demon … She was even able to love that,” Herbers says, adding, “One of the big themes in our show is nature versus nurture, and I think Kristen, when she sees that laugh on that demon baby … she decides to cover for the baby, puts a pacifier in its mouth and says, ‘No, everything's good. We're good.’

Related: 'Evil' 's Katja Herbers Says Playing Her 'Extreme' Character Makes Her Think She's 'Losing Her Mind'

That moment crystallized how much Kristen has evolved since Evil’s first episode when she viewed the world in black and white: demons were make-believe to her, and Satan was a long-held myth. But since then, Kristen has seen and done things that have forced her to reevaluate her belief system.

When David sidled up to Kristen in Rome in his clergy robe, she offered him a loving glance before they strolled away together and the camera panned out. It was a deeply suggestive look that could make some hopeful viewers wonder whether the two are now something more than just good, platonic friends.

“I kind of played it with a bit of a twinkle in the eye and for me secretly, as an actor, what I was playing was like, yeah, David's my god. He's my father. He's my daddy,” Herbers muses.

For four seasons, the sizzling onscreen chemistry between Kristen and David begged the question: “Will they or won’t they?” And while many moments of Evil are left somewhat open to interpretation, Herbers puts the kibosh on the theory that Kristen and David had somehow consummated their searing hot romantic feelings for each other.

"These people have had sex with each other in their minds a hundred times over. They haven't in real life," she explains. "They've worked together under crazy circumstances, these crazy cases, enormously bonding experience. They're really good friends, and they have this insane attraction to each other, and they also understand that it's not going to happen, or something, while still fantasizing about each other. So I think Kristen respects David so much that she's not going to coerce him into having some — just a bit of sex — with her. I think it would be all or nothing for them.”

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All four seasons of Evil are available to stream on Paramount+.

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