Ever since Sam Raimi’s 1992 Army of Darkness hit theaters us horror fans have been clamoring for more Ash.

For years Raimi and franchise star Bruce Campbell have been teasing audiences with “plans” for a fourth Evil Dead.

All sorts of weird shit has happened over the years. There was nearly an Freddy vs. Jason vs. Ash film, which would have been a sequel to Freddy vs. Jason. And at one point a company claiming to own the rights to Army of Darkness announced a sequel to that film, originally released through Universal Pictures.

And in the mix of all this madness, Raimi decided to remake his 1981 cult classic The Evil Dead, which went on for nearly a decade. At the end of the 2013 Evil Dead, directed by Fede Alvarez, we were treated to a shot of Campbell once again donning the Ash costume. This caused an eruption among fans that maybe once day Ash would return – maybe even in a sequel to the remake (which we’re told is actually a sequel and lives in the same universe, thus Ash and Mia would have teamed up top fight the Deadites. Shit, maybe it will still happen?).

Anyways, now that Raimi and company have decided to take Ash’s story to Starz in the upcoming 10-episode “Ash vs Evil Dead” series (airing October 31st), Raimi has finally revealed shocking plot details for the now defunct Evil Dead 4!

Screen Crush moderated a Q&A after a very special screening of “Ash vs Evil Dead,” which included Jill Marie Jones, Ray Santiago, Dana DeLorenzo, and “Xena: Warrior Princess” herself, Lucy Lawless, and of course Raimi. After a fan asked about the alternate ending to Army of Darkness, which is now available on various formats, Raimi rattled off a shocker regarding plans for Evil Dead 4. Here, I’ll let them explain:

The story came in response to a question about the alternate (technically original) ending to Army of Darkness. Raimi initially planned to end the movie with Ash, who’d been tossed through time back to the Middle Ages, messing up his return trip to the present. A wizard provides him with a sleeping potion that will allow him to hibernate his way back to 1992. In the original ending, Ash messes up the dosage, sleeps too long, and wakes instead in a post-apocalyptic future.

That ending played on the film internationally, but ‘Army of Darkness’ ‘ American distributor, Universal, hated the downbeat conclusion and demanded a happier alternative. Here’s what Raimi and his team came up with:

Like Ash taking his potion, that brings us back to the present. An audience member asked Raimi if they’d ever considered using the darker original ending from ‘Army of Darkness’ as the jumping-off point for the new show. He replied — and I am paraphrasing here — that before ‘Ash vs. Evil Dead’ fell into place, he and his brother Ivan were working on a script for a fourth ‘Evil Dead’ movie. And at that point, their bold plan was to actually make a movie starring two Ashes, one from each of ‘Army of Darkness’ ‘ endings. In other words, this ‘Evil Dead 4’ would have continued Ash’s journey along both possible timelines in two parallel stories: Present Ash in one, future Ash in the other.

They continue to explain that “Ash vs Evil Dead” still technically is the fourth Evil Dead. The Raimis ultimately felt it would have gotten too confusing and convoluted, so they decided to just focus on present-day Ash from the theatrical ending.

Now, how is that a way to end the week? What do you guys think? Personally, I find that brilliant stuff that would have furthered the story and genre quite a bit, unfortunately it would have been pretty confusing to outsiders.