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| “ | Leland Townsend: You are aware what exists beyond the material world. Its a cross we both bear. David Acosta: You don't bear sh*t. You chose evil. Leland Townsend: There's no evil, David. There's free will. God gives us unbearable suffering, uncertainty, death. His only real gift is free will. I am free to do what I wish. Why not stir up strife, discontent, misery? If it tickles me to do so? |
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| ~ Leland to David in "Fear of the Unholy" |
Leland Townsend, formerly known as Jake Perry, is one of the main characters of the television series, Evil. He was once a disgraced man living in Iowa under the name of Jake Perry who changed his name to Leland Townsend and followed in satanism. He is obsessed with trying to morally breakdown and force David Acosta to forsake the church and also obsessed with trying to ruin Kristen Bouchard's life before killing her. His career is in forensic psychology but is later revealed that he works for a business called DF and is part of The Sixty whose goal is to nurture the next antichrist and spread evil.
He was portrayed by Michael Emerson, who also portrayed Benjamin Linus in Lost, Zep Hindle in Saw, Allan Shaye in Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, William Hinks in The Practice, Cayden James in Arrow and voiced Dr. Venom in G.I. Joe: Renegades, Alpha in Ben 10-Generator Rex: Heroes United and Brainiac in My Adventures with Superman.
Biography[]
Past[]
Childhood[]
During his high school years, Jake was a student at a high school who was constantly mocked and berated by his classmates and teachers. He also had many instances of misfortune and would be laughed at and picked on. He eventually graduated high school and held grudge and negative emotions over the bad things he experienced.
Adulthood[]
Jake lived in Iowa and held two marriages before divorcing. He also had the career as an insurance adjuster before leaving the career. Jake became more incense with his own personal issues over time. At one point, he joined the church that David was a part of before leaving to become a satanist. He changed his name from Jacob Perry to Leland Townsend. He moved to New York with the goal of harassing and corrupting David Acosta to be on the side of evil. He joined a new career as a forensic psychologist that worked in the DA office alongside Kristen Bouchard. During this time, he met David and the two became enemies.
Plot[]
Season 1[]
As Kristen Bouchard was working on the case of Orson LeRoux, a serial killer who murdered three families, to assess his mind for his upcoming court case, Leland stole documents from her psychologist to leak to LeRoux to mess with Kristen. Eventually, Kristen and Leland met face to face when she figured out he was behind stealing her documents. Leland threatened Kristen upon their encounter and David confronted him. Leland continues to work on the case to try and set LeRoux free in his plan to try and kill Kristen and her family.
As the case with LeRoux continues, Leland purposely tries to undermine Kristen's other case to get an innocent teenage boy to be sent to prison in hopes that he will be raped and broken. Kristen attempted to record Leland, but the latter used a jammer to stop the recording. Despite what occurred, Ben Shakir managed to restore the audio and Kristen used it in court against Leland.
Leland meets with Sebastian Lewin.
Leland observes Sebastian Lewin, an insecure young man, struggle with attracting a girl he likes at a restaurant. Leland proposes to Sebastian to go to counseling services to mold him into becoming an incel and his own unwitting pawn. During each session, Leland would teach and manipulate Sebastian into embracing misogynistic views of women, encouraging him to harass and intimidate women in public, join online incel groups, and to wield guns. Leland hoped through his manipulations that he would send Sebastian to a prayer group connected to David Acosta to commit a mass shooting by lying to the latter that the group would have mostly women. However, the plan was foiled when Sebastian accidentally killed himself with his gun by pointing it at his head. When Leland realizes this, he gets furious.
Leland begins to target Kristen Bouchard's mother, Sheryl Luria. He meets her on a date with another man and manages to make a great first impression with her. He eventually goes to Kristen's house to meet her daughters, Lexis, Lynn, Laura, and Lila. When Kristen came home, she forces Leland out of her house and slashes his neck deep enough to not make him fatally bleed while telling him to never come near her family again. Despite what happened, Leland maintains consistent contact with Sheryl and continues to visit and date her behind Kristen's back. At one point, Leland proposes marriage to Sheryl to which the latter accepts his offer and plans to marry him.
At one point, Leland influences a young woman into becoming a popular online influencer. He instructs her to make a video that contains demonic rantings that is only loud enough that people under the age of 16, children, and adolescents, can hear the rantings which would cause those who hear it to overtime lose their minds and self-harm. The plan was successful where multiple children at a school began constantly singing and humming a Christmas song until they attempted to mutilate their ears to get the song on their heads. When David, Kristen, and Ben caught onto the woman's actions, Leland instructs her to take down the video and make an apology video.
Leland speaks to his therapist.
During LeRoux's trial, Leland manages to falsely prove his innocence at the cost of an innocent man who ends up going to prison in LeRoux's place. Leland continues to mock and threaten Kristen until she reveals Leland's past to him which stunned him. Leland went to therapy to discuss the incident more in detail while talking about his plan to go against Kristen Bouchard. While LeRoux was out of prison, Leland works with LeRoux and an unwitting Sheryl to try and help LeRoux get close to Kristen's children to kill them only for the plan to fail when Kristen killed LeRoux to protect her family. In spite of what happened, Leland continues with his plan to antagonize David and Kristen.
Season 2[]
Leland meeting with David and Ben.
Leland continues to go to counseling services with the demonic therapist. Leland was annoyed when the therapist was questioning his commitment and resolve. Leland decides to join in David's church as an individual who needs exorcism. While some higher-ups genuinely think Leland needs services and counseling to deal with his problem, David, Kristen, and Ben knew he did not need the services. Leland continues to go the church to directly seek out an exorcism by David Acosta with the intent to waste Acosta's and the church's time.
David, Kristen, and Ben interviews Leland. The trio is very untrustworthy of Leland as he pretends to need their service. Leland speaks to Ben directly threatening him that he will have a bad dream later during the night. The trio keep close eye on Leland by watching him through his computer and going to his home to investigate him further.
As David, Kristen, and Ben continue to go on more cases, Leland and Sheryl stayed together. Leland would throw satanic parties where people were taken in to be drained of their blood in blood sacrifices. At one point when an scheduled exorcism was cancelled, Leland abruptly ended the would-be marriage to Sheryl while admitting he was only using her as a pawn to get to her daughter, Kristen, before insulting her and leaving. Despite breaking up with her, he realized that he still needed to use her and made attempts to try and rekindle the relationship to manipulate her again. Sheryl is visibly angry and does not want to deal with Leland.
Leland continues to pretend to get counseling services by the church. At one point, he informs David of a time in the past where he told an emotionally broken and ill woman to commit suicide because no one cared about her any longer to mock David further. Leland also continued to get exorcism by David where he pretends to be possessed to irritate David further. Leland encounters a nun named, Sister Andrea, who becomes immediately distrustful and hostile towards Leland when she sense his odious nature. At one point, Sister Andrea throws ammonia on Leland during an exorcism which burned his skin and caused him to run out of the room. He later confronts her about what she did.
Leland attended David's priesthood ceremony and was seen eating food. David is surprised Leland joined the ceremony and Leland congratulates David before leaving with the other guests.
Leland manages to get back into contact with Sheryl. While the relationship is no longer romantic and Sheryl is highly aware of Leland's bloodthirsty nature, the two frequently interacted with one another. Sheryl was invited to a social gathering by satanists by Leland. Leland and his associates drugged Sheryl to inject chemicals into her body. After receiving more counseling from his demonic therapist, Leland murdered the therapist and notes that he is committed to the plan.
Leland receiving an exorcism.
Leland continues his exorcism with David and the priests where Leland manages to change voices during the exorcism. At one point he manages to kick a priest away with one kick sending the man flying across the room to shock of David. During another night, Kristen accompanies David to watch Leland's exorcism where Kristen becomes deeply ill and disturbed by the exorcism that she hallucinated a demon coming out of her body.
Despite being told to stay away from Kristen's daughter, Leland have been going to Lexi's school to meet with her in person. When Kristen found out about Leland's actions, she nearly went through with finding and murdering him but stopped herself from doing so.
Season 3[]
After learning about Leland's interaction with Kristen's daughters, Kristen gives Leland a restraining order. Despite receiving a restraining order, Leland kept contact with Lexis through an online game platform where he chooses a pig as his avatar and went by the username of "Pollie the Pig". Through his avatar, he would encourage Lexis and Kristen's daughters to poison their mother among other conversations. Lexis is aware that Pollie the Pig is Leland since Leland informed her on how they can still be in contact.
Leland and Sheryl at their jobs.
As Kristen's husband, Andy Bouchard, forces Sheryl out of their house, Leland helps Sheryl with getting a job to run an online platform to troll users online and influence political opinions and sentiments. While he helps her, Leland purposely puts her in a work environment where the younger employees would constantly disrespect her for old age. Leland also threatens to kill her if she does not perform well on the job before leaving. As Sheryl manages to force an a rude employee out of the job and gain control over the work environment, Leland notices it and becomes a bit frustrated.
Leland attending Sister Andrea's tribunal.
Although Leland still works under the church as an employee, Leland also continues to run his satanic organization where people would be killed in blood sacrifices. As David, Kristen, and Ben continues their cases, Leland takes an opportunity to try and force Sister Andrea out of the church by informing the higher-ups of the church that the nun might be suffering severe mental illness since she was seen by Leland talking to no one. The result of this triggers multiple sessions where the tribunal tries to force the nun to retire only for her to resist and David and Kristen coming to her support.
Leland meets with Korecki where he is about to be fired.
After Sheryl meets the boss of the business and becomes shocked to see his demonic form, Leland also notes that he sees the same demonic appearance of the manager even though most people only sees a normal man. At the same time while Leland continues to talk to Kristen's daughters online, they schemed to expose him as a pedophile online which resulted in Leland being stripped of his professional services at the church by Monsigner Korecki. Leland throws a fit when he got exposed and tells Sheryl that the girls will become orphans.
At some point, Leland, Edward, and Sheryl manages to trick and lure Andy Bouchard in with a fake business proposition. They kidnapped Andy, drugged him, and kept him conscious but paralyzed in a room in Leland's house. Leland got a software to create a facsimile of Andy to trick Kristen into thinking that Andy was on a business trip in Colorado mountain climbing. At one point, Leland becomes stumped when Kristen asks specific details about their marriage. Leland threatens and asks Andy to provide the correct information on the marriage so that he can proceed to trick and manipulate Kristen.
Leland takes the time to corrupt Kristen's therapist, Dr. Kurt Bogg by tempting him to evil. When Grace returns to talk with David and Kristen and that she is piecing together the conspiracy behind Andy's kidnapping, Sheryl informs Leland. Leland takes it upon himself to find Grace to murder her himself to stop her. However, while Leland manages to kill a man, he failed to kill Grace. Leland gets into a fight with Monsigner Korecki where he manages to fatally wound him which led to his death. Leland flees the scene.
Leland speaking at the baby shower.
Leland and his collaborators continues to trick Kristen by informing her that Andy may have died in an avalanche during his trip. When Bouchard's daughters manage to figure out that Leland is using a fake simulation by accessing the game they played, Leland and his colleague, Edward, decided to change their plan with how to deal with Kristen. Leland sends a brainwashed Andy back home to Kristen to trick her and her family into thinking that Andy came back from his business trip. As Kristen personally investigate the whereabouts of her missing egg, it is revealed that Leland and the company he works under procured Kristen's egg to fertilize it with his sperm and be placed within a surrogate mother, Leslie Ackhurst, to celebrate the birth of a baby boy who the company has deemed to be the antichrist. Kristen is shocked by the revelation.
Season 4[]
As Kristen was watching the baby shower and leaving, Leland confronts her to tell her about the prospect of them both being the baby's parents. Kristen mocks Leland over the idea that he will suffer a lot trying to take care of the baby before leaving. Leland continues to manipulate and torture Andy while he is with his family. He brainwashes Andy into thinking that Kristen is having an affair on him with her colleague, David Acosta. Andy confronts David to tell him to stay away from his wife under the false idea they are together which led to Kristen berating Andy. As Sheryl moves up in her workplace to combat the misogyny, she manages to get promoted only for her to have an office below a glass ceiling where the men, along with Leland would still mock and look down on her.
Leland meets with Linda Bloch to prepare the birth of the baby boy deemed to be the antichrist. As Linda was preparing the surrogate mother, Leslie, for the baby's birth, Leland and Linda speaks aloud their intentions to murder Leslie and have her body fed to her child. When Sheryl tells Linda and Leland that Leslie overheard their conversation, Leland tells Leslie that he did not mean to have her murdered and cannibalized and instead meant that Kristen would be killed. Leslie did not believe Leland and decided to leave and ask Kristen for help to give birth to the baby.
Leland checking on Timothy as he is crying.
After the baby is born, he is named Timothy. The baby is put into Leland's care. Leland struggled a lot with calming the baby since the baby would cry a lot. Leland realizes that Kristen's voice is the only thing that keeps the baby from constantly crying. Leland would often time get Sheryl to help him take care of the baby as part of their own deal. While taking care of the baby, Leland and his colleagues were planning to perform a demonic ritual with the baby to help his ascension as the antichrist.
Leland instructing a brainwashed Andy to murder his daughter in her sleep.
When Leland overhears that Laura Bouchard had a heart problem that healed while spying on Kristen, Leland forced a brainwashed Andy to take a syringe and inject a deadly chemical into Laura's body while she is sleeping to induce a heart attack and kill her. Andy nearly injected the chemical into Laura, but managed to resist the brainwashing by Leland and injected himself with the chemicals causing him to fall to the floor. When the girls woke up, they rushed Andy to the hospital where he survived but decided that he is better off staying away from his family out of fear that he will grievously harm him and as a result he was sent to a psychiatric hospital for treatment.
When Sheryl finds out through her granddaughters about the incident involving Andy and realized Leland played a role in the situation. Sheryl confronts Leland and attempts to kill him only to end with Leland stabbing her in the chest with a shard of glass and Sheryl stabbing him in the thigh. Leland treats himself and continues to try and take care of Timothy. As Leland tries to use Kristen's voice to calm Timothy, he becomes annoyed when he realized that Sheryl had all the audio files of Kristen's voice deleted and blocked all attempts to have Leland access Kristen's voice to stop baby crying.
Leland calls Sheryl to mock her only for Kristen to pick the phone up and insult him before ending the call. As Sheryl recovers, she makes her moves to get Timothy and have him baptized to hinder the demonic ritual that Leland and his colleagues planned for him. Leland is informed about the baby's baptism and becomes angry at the revelation. Leland manages to set up and prepare the demonic ritual for Timothy with full knowledge that Timothy was baptized and concern that the baptism might ruin the demonic ritual.
As Sheryl advocates for women to have fairer treatment at their workplace, she informs the boss about Leland's misbehavior which led to Leland getting fired. Sheryl taunts Leland. Leland attempts to stab her only for Sheryl to wear a dress that is impervious to stabbings. As the boss was able to honor the deal with helping the women in his employment, he tells her that Leland will not be fired. Sheryl informs the boss that Leland got the baby baptized which greatly enraged him. At a business meeting hosted by the boss, Leland interrupts the meeting and confronts the boss. The demonic boss begins to collapse in pain and Leland reveals that he used poison on him. Leland killed his boss and ate his heart to usurp the position as the new business leader.
Leland losing remote view and possession over David.
When Hurricane Lucy was coming to New York, Leland manages to move into a house across the street from Kristen. He tries to lure in Bouchard's daughters to his house to trap or kill them with the audio recording of someone who needed help, but they manages to escape. Kristen tries to bring a cake to her neighbor and apologize to the neighbor for her daughter's behavior. But, when she realizes that Leland was the neighbor, she smash the cake into his face and left. Kristen reminds her daughters to be careful. At one point, David tries to remote view into Leland, but Leland manages to take control of David's body and nearly kills David by forcing him to stab himself in the chest with a knife but failed. David and Ben come over to Kristen's house to deal with Leland across the street. David remote views into Leland again and Leland manages to take control of David's body again to try and harm Kristen. However, Ben manages to play a band song which brings up embarrassing memories of Leland's high school years when he was bullied, scolded by his teacher, and humiliated which caused Leland to lose control over David's body. After the hurricane, Leland had to move out of his new home due to legal intervention by Kristen. Sheryl confronts Leland at his other home and attempted to kill him, but was saved when a demon knocked Sheryl unconscious. Sheryl allegedly fell from 14 floors and was rushed to the emergency room where she had her final words with her granddaughters, Kristen, and David Acosta before passing away.
Leland meets with a lawyer before his trial.
Unbeknownst to Leland, Sheryl shared small hard-drives with incriminating evidence against Leland with Kristen and Andy. With the information gathered from the drive, the police was sent to Leland's home and placed him under arrest for information related to kidnapping, two homicides, and other offenses. Due to his imprisonment, Timothy was given custody to the biological mother, Kristen, who accepted Timothy into her family. While imprisoned, Leland recalled his embarrassing memories from the past where he ended up annoying a man who punched him in the past. During this trial, the legal counsel was reviewing the information against him. During his trial, his new lawyer appeared to try to represent him but was terrified when he realized the man's demonic appearance. As Dr. Kurt Bogg makes his statements in favor Leland being imprisoned and Kristen makes her statements against Leland, the lawyer manages to intimidate the judge into murdering Leslie to stop her statements from being used against Leland which ensure that Leland gets off from his crime.
After being acquitted of his crimes, Leland works closely with his demonic lawyer to set up a plan to try and destroy the Entity, an organization working alongside the church. As they prepare their plan by getting a young woman needed to trap them, David confronts Leland about his painting and his past with the church and the Entity where the two spoke on the issue. Leland tells David that when remote viewing, David has a bit of his wickedness in his soul while Leland has a bit of David's virtuousness in his soul to which David denies. David also has another conversation with Leland about their goals where Leland falsely promises that he will leave Kristen alone if David forsakes the church which David did not believe. At the same time, David was gathering data from Leland's phone to share with the Entity. At one point, Leland watches a video of pet dogs and becomes melancholy until he realizes he is not showing sympathy which he is against and decides to watch a video of people fighting for his own amusement.
Leland confronts Kristen at her at-home business.
When Kristen sets up her at-home business to counsel people with personal and mental issues, Leland forged his name with a different alias to sneak into Kristen's place to confront her. When Leland appears, Kristen calls the police to inform them that Leland is violating the restraining order before knocking him out with a stun gun. Each time Leland regains his consciousness and gets up, Kristen tases him until David and Ben arrived to remove him from her premises.
Leland his demonic lawyer prepare for the final stage of their plan to spread evil. Leland and the lawyer held a video call meeting with other satanists about the progression of his plan until one individual noted that they wanted something done about Kristen and Timothy. Leland's demonic lawyer informs him that it is time for him to murder Kristen. Leland and the demonic lawyer manages to lure multiple men to a trap with a young woman present as bait to poison, injure, and murder many of them to which they were successful in doing with only David arriving later on to try and save his colleague.
Leland inside Kristen's house with a dagger looking to find and kill Kristen.
As the Bouchard daughters were very concerned about a vision they saw on a headset about Leland murdering their mother and a countdown to Leland murdering Kristen, Leland prepares to break into Kristen's house to find and murder her. As Leland breaks into Kristen's house, he puts on music and sneaks into her room armed with a dagger. However, as he got distracted by a light in the bathroom thinking she was there, Kristen sneaks up behind Leland to strangle him with a rope that caused him to fall to ground nearly killing him until David calmly told Kristen to stop. After the breaking Kristen's home and the attempted murder, David, Ben, and Kristen puts Leland in a burlap sack bag and takes him to a monastery. Leland yells out who he is and threatens them before they placed Leland inside a cabinet to imprison him.
Gallery[]
Trivia[]
- By Season 3, it is revealed that Leland is 60 years old.
- The song that Leland plays while he attempts to break into Kristen's house to kill her is called "Dang Me" by Roger Miller.
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| Evil Villains | ||
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Leland Townsend | Orson LeRoux | The Sixty | George | Sheryl Luria | Sebastian Lewin | Richard Ghana | Linda Bloch | Abbey | Jinn | Edward Tragoren | Henry Stick | ||