Walking around the set of Ash vs Evil Dead , it's normal to pass decapitated heads, boxes of intestines and empty skin suits. It's near impossible to leave without a layer of sticky blood on the bottom of your shoes. But none of that phases the cast and crew, because it's nowhere near as absurdly, hilariously insane as what is being filmed.

Bruce Campbell as Ash Williams in a promo image for Ash vs Evil Dead: Season 2

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Starz delighted fans of Sam Raimi and Bruce Campbell's cult classic Evil Dead franchise when it announced it would be launching a sequel series reteaming the two called Ash vs. Evil Dead. The first season teamed Ash with new friends Pablo (Ray Santiago) and Kelly (Dana DeLorenzo), who went on a road trip to the infamous Evil Dead cabin to try to destroy the Necronomicon. They ended up unleashing hell -- literally -- in the process.For Season 2, executive producer Rob Tapert promises that things are going to get even crazier."It's a far bigger and more ambitious season than Season 1," he told me, sitting in Ash vs Evil Dead's New Zealand production offices. "From a production point of view, the stories are much bigger, the cast is larger. It's still Evil Dead-like, but the canvas is broader this season. So I think that the writers have posited some really good things, and we've been able to embellish this season, what was in the scripts, and make a really wild, visceral ride for the audience."It takes a while for the current state of the world to weigh on Ash and make him realize he might have made the wrong choice at the end of Season 1. His goal is to return home and get back to his father (Lee Majors) in Elk Grove, Mich., and it's there that he'll have to deal with the pesky problem of the Evil Dead."Season 2 for me is all about Ash going home and seeing the personal side of him," Bruce Campbell said while sitting in his trailer, covered in fake blood and wearing Ash's signature blue button up. "No one knew anything about Ash, where he lived, what he was like. Ash was like a teacher: you'd see him at school, but if you saw him out of school you'd feel weird. Whenever I saw a teacher out of school, I felt was weird; I never liked it. But now we're going home. We're following the teacher home from school."Kelly and Pablo remain his able-bodied sidekicks, but Lucy Lawless's character Ruby adds a wrinkle to their trio dynamic by offering a different perspective on things. Now that the mystery of Ruby's identity has been revealed, Ash vs Evil Dead can explore who she is and what her motivations are -- including why she and Ash need to become unlikely partners to defeat Ruby's enemies."Ruby is, really, the root of all their problems, but she's completely dismissed that. She is in complete denial that she is the whole problem. She's just your friendly neighborhood psychopath, and they have to work with her, try to put her demon spawn back in the box," said Lucy Lawless with a big laugh. "She's learning how to behave like a human, and she often succeeds! And, not infrequently, she doesn't."As much as Season 2's end goal continues to be to defeat the Deadites and send Ruby's demon children back into the ground, each episode is going play around with different horror conceits in a manner unique to Evil Dead. While I was in New Zealand the crew was filming an asylum episode -- shot at the notoriously haunted Kingseat Hospital near Auckland -- that had a number of people in the cast and crew seeing ghosts and coming home terrified.According to the cast, those raised stakes and more focused episodes are translating into an even scarier, funnier and more insane Season 2. The writing team learned from missteps in Season 1 to create an even stronger and more focused sophomore season, taking advantage of Ash vs Evil Dead's tight half-hour running time to tell organic Evil Dead stories that surprise viewers in unexpected and crowd-pleasing ways."It does get much more intense. It's way bigger, which is really difficult," Lawless said. "The writers just give no quarter to the needs of production when they write things, so it's enormous like a movie -- you'll see it. It's still only a half an hour of television, but it's really epic. Often, again, when I read it with a production eye, I just think, 'Oh my God, how are we going to shoot this in the amount of time that we have?' But they're really intense and bringing in a lot of those kind of horror movie tropes."

Terri Schwartz is Entertainment Editor at IGN. Talk to her on Twitter at @Terri_Schwartz