Murdoch Mysteries has done plenty of Christmas episodes, but The Face of Evil might just be the show’s first Easter special. The episode stitches together the biblical narratives of creation and resurrection, Frankenstein, Face/Off, and not one but two of the show’s iconic villains. It is completely mad. And it is So. Much. Fun.

James Gillies (Michael Seater) is the gift that keeps on giving. Despite getting hanged almost ten years ago and his brain sitting in a jar in the morgue, the moment Detective Murdoch (Yannick Bisson) thinks he sees his old adversary, doubt creeps in. Murdoch is visibly rattled by the sightings and the clues that are left for him – including Gillies’ catchphrase We are going to have so much fun and a doll talking in Gillies’ voice wearing the same dress as the doll from Murdoch in Toyland. It makes for a first ten minutes that are genuinely scary and suspenseful, as a shaken Murdoch tries to make sense of it all. I kept coming up with possible scenarios that would make it possible to resurrect Gillies: time travel perhaps, à la Macy Murdoch, or a twin brother. I even had a fleeting thought Ralph Fellows (Colin Mochrie) might be involved, though I never for a second imagined he would plot to do a Face/Off-style face swap!

FrankenGillies

The Fellows reveal – Hello, Detective – is masterfully done (apart from one thing, see Bits and Bobs) and marks a tonal shift from suspense to creepy fun. The self-styled famed criminal madman may believe that Gillies is Murdoch’s second greatest foe, but it’s clear that as far as nemeses go, Gillies is ranked higher than Fellows. Murdoch is strapped to a chair in a dilapidated morgue, there’s a Gillies lookalike – brilliantly named FrankenGillies – with a face made from the features of several asylum patients, and there’s a masked surgeon measuring his facial proportions (they’re quite good) so she can swap Fellows’ and Murdoch’s faces. Yet he never shows any of the fear triggered by the mere thought of Gillies coming back. He’s not even worried. If anything, he’s annoyed and exasperated: These schemes of yours never work. (He’s not wrong.)

The former lowly hotel detective was last seen getting formally charged with multiple counts of murder and attempted murder and has since been locked up in an asylum. This certainly makes sense: as Chief Constable Brackenreid (Thomas Craig) delicately puts it, the man is as nutty as a fruitcake. It never becomes fully clear whether he actually thinks he is Murdoch, but he definitely has Murdoch Derangement Syndrome. In his latest attempt to outwit the great detective, he is working with Nurse Smith / Dr. Schmidt (Rayisa Kondracki), whom he met in the Walsh Asylum. And if you didn’t get that reference to the 1997 movie Face/Off and its Walsh Institute, or the one in the scene where Fellows is mimicking Murdoch like Nicolas Cage and John Travolta sans their two-way mirror, Murdoch makes sure you’ll get it with this line: You’re going to take my face off? And wear it as your own?!

Chiseled Jawline

This wildly absurd scheme gives writer Keri Ferencz the opportunity to poke some fun at Yannick Bisson’s good looks. I never thought I’d hear someone tell Murdoch don’t worry your pretty little head about that or complain about his jawline: I was expecting chiseled. This is… average at best. I love how this offends Fellows, who, after all, is planning to wear that face: Are you serious? The man is an Adonis, a god to women, the envy of every man!

Though you’d never know it, The Face of Evil is Craig Grant’s directorial debut. Loyal fans will recognize his name, as he has served as the show’s prop master since the very first episode. As is fitting for an episode airing in the week leading up to Easter, he and Keri Ferencz deliver a basket filled to the brim with easter eggs. The theme of resurrection is never far away and there’s Christian imagery everywhere, subliminally planting the idea of Gillies returning from the dead in both Murdoch’s and our own heads: wooden crosses, a rosary, a painting of doves above the fireplace, the Hallelujah Chorus from Händel’s Messiah, Gillies’ mother (Soo Garay) saying the words As your son was raised, Lord Jesus in prayer, FrankenGillies asking for forgiveness. Yet funnily enough, Murdoch never once makes his usual sign of the cross.

Both Dead and Risen

Speaking of Gillies’ mother: what a stroke of brilliance to include her. Weirdly, when Gillies was still alive and making Murdoch’s life hell, I never thought about him having a life, let alone a mother. Soo Garay plays a lovely, nuanced role, where you’re never sure if this woman was the reason Gillies turned out the way he did, or if his actions caused her to go slightly mad herself. When she props up her son’s portrait against what looks to be an urn holding his ashes, apparently unconcerned that he can’t be both dead and risen, you don’t know whether to laugh or to feel for her.

Where Mrs. Gillies is all nuance, Nurse Smith / Dr. Schmidt is gloriously, unashamedly over the top, adding her own brand of evil to the turpitude already brought by Gillies and Fellows. Fellows and Murdoch accuse each other of hubris, but it’s she whose actions echo Dr. Frankenstein’s It’s alive! It’s alive! In the name of God! Now I know what it feels like to be God! She makes sure that Murdoch knows she’s not a nurse but a doctor; then again, she’s no native German speaker either. Her German is abysmal, and I never get why the bad guys always revert to their original accents once they’ve been caught. Still, she’s the ultimate mad scientist. And why that mask? My guess is so that Murdoch can give us that terrific look when she first enters: Who the hell is that?

Iconic

In a season that’s not short of highlights, The Face of Evil still manages to stand out. I’m running out of synonyms to describe its suspenseful yet creepy yet zany script and have nothing but compliments for Craig Grant’s direction. The final scene with that image of Murdoch listening to Fellows practising his I am William Murdoch – gone straight to my desktop background collection – is perfection. Michael Seater plays FrankenGillies as different from Gillies as he possibly can: soft-spoken, contrite, gentle – in short, like the Creature from Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. The sets – that old morgue! – and locations – Auchmar House in Hamilton, Ontario – are wonderful, the make-up and costumes great as ever, and Robert Carli’s music from the Gillies episode The Murdoch Trap is reused to eerie effect with those Psycho-like screeching violins. They never explained the hair, but I give it ten FrankenGillies out of ten.