Created by Sam Raimi, he is portrayed by Bruce Campbell and is the only character to appear in each entry of the series, including a post-credits and audio cameo in the 2013 and 2023 films, respectively.

[8] Ash and his girlfriend Linda, sister Cheryl, and friends Scott and Shelly stay at a log cabin in the woods, where they find the "Naturom Demonto" (renamed or possibly translated to Necronomicon Ex-Mortis in the sequels), a Sumerian Book of the Dead, along with a tape recorder.

By playing the tape, the group unknowingly awaken the Kandarian Demon (the titular "Evil Dead") which can possess the living.

He finally destroys the Book of the Dead by throwing it in the fireplace, and in doing so causes the possessed bodies of Scott and Cheryl to rapidly decay and "die".

Picking up from the ending of the first film, Ash is carried off by the demonic force and briefly possessed, released from the spirit by the light of dawn and falling unconscious.

However, Annie is stabbed by Ash's possessed disembodied hand; succumbing to her wound, she is unable to close the vortex after the entity is sucked away.

Back in the present, Ash returns to his job as a sales clerk at S-Mart; when the store is attacked by a deadite, he kills it and is again hailed as a hero.

Ruby offers Ash a compromise: if he allows her to release her demonic children as well as lord over them, then she will not only spare Pablo and Kelly but also fulfill his dream of living a normal life with his friends in Jacksonville, Florida.

[5] Returning to Elk Grove to search for Ruby, Ash is reunited with his estranged father Brock who disowned him after Cheryl's death.

However, it is revealed that Ash was merely playing along in order to gather the group to return Baal to hell; they succeed but Pablo is killed in the process.

In a grateful speech, Ash declares that he wants to stay in Elk Grove and defend the town if evil ever returns.

Also introduced are the Knights of Sumeria, an ancient order dedicated to defeating the evil that worship Ash and his destiny to save mankind.

With the Dark Ones now in the mortal realm, evil dead are summoned worldwide and a massive creature, Kandar the Destroyer, is unleashed.

In Elk Grove, while military forces evacuate citizens, Ash decides to stay behind in order to finally fulfill his destiny of defeating the evil.

After saying a heartfelt goodbye to his friends and daughter, Ash commandeers an abandoned tank and fires the Kandarian dagger into the head of Kandar, destroying the evil and saving the world.

This game plays through an alternate history: instead of being sucked into the vortex at the end of Evil Dead II, Ash has been placed in a mental institution for the criminally insane.

In 2019, Dynamite launched the crossover miniseries, Army of Darkness/Bubba Ho-Tep, seeing Ash team up with another Bruce Campbell character, Elvis.

Evil Dead, Starz and Bruce Campbell, as Ash Williams, recorded an "Ash4President" bid for presidency in 2016,[24] complete with its own website for the faux campaign, promising to "Make America groovy again".

As of 2024, this marks the first and only instance of Ash being portrayed by an actor other than Bruce Campbell for an officially licensed live-action filmed Evil Dead production.

When creating Army of Darkness, Raimi toyed with giving him the full name "Ashley J. Williams",[32] which was later used by video games and comics involving the character.

[36] His main strength seems to be his ingenuity: although he is repeatedly noted in the audio commentaries for The Evil Dead and Evil Dead II for his stupidity and ignorance, he has from the second film on been shown creating such things ranging from his chainsaw bracket and shotgun harness, gunpowder from mainly referencing its elemental makeup in a chemistry book, a fully functional prosthetic hand from a metal gauntlet, and the short-lived "Deathcoaster".

In the 1992 comic adaptation of Army of Darkness written by Sam and Ivan Raimi, Ash says that he has a degree in engineering from Michigan State University.

Ash's most defining characteristic is the chainsaw attached to his right arm, placed after cutting off his possessed hand in Evil Dead II.

[citation needed] Ash rarely takes situations seriously and is very incompetent as a hero or protagonist; He's often causing the conflict that drives the story forward rather than solving it while having a selfish, self-serving attitude towards others at the same time.

Evil Dead, many of his neighbors call him an "asshole" and complain about his narcissistic cocky attitude while his boss frequently hounds him for making up excuses for getting out of work.

At the same time, Ash has been portrayed as a womanizer and in the television series has been shown to flat out lie and invent sympathetic anecdotes to sleep with women at local bars.

Evil Dead, decades after the original films, Ash has aged considerably; he now wears dentures, a "man girdle", and dyes his hair.

Rather than being overtly evil and openly hostile, it is more subtle and comes across as a psychopath, being friendly and flirty towards Amanda at first but becomes unstable and aggressive when she rejects him.

Ash ranked eleventh on UGO.com's Top 100 Heroes of All Time list, describing him as "an egomaniacal, complaining, misogynistic goon", but also the best "demon and zombie killer ever to be portrayed on the silver screen".

[43] The Evil Dead films and the character of Ash influenced many 1990s first-person shooters such as Doom, Duke Nukem 3D, and Blood.