To answer this question I feel like it’s important to remember that Sean’s mother did raise him and probably knows her son better than anyone else. So she may be the least surprised person by his choices. In fact, he may have learned the things that led to those choices directly from her.

I’d also hesitate to call Sean “full on evil” at this point, or to say that he’s throwing his mother’s sacrifices away purely for the sake of power. First, it’s pretty clear to me that while power may be Sean’s goal, he doesn’t want power for power’s sake. There’s a long and complicated history there, much of which Sean has felt relatively powerless.

It’s also important to note that the single thing which seemed to turn Sean from a reluctant half-participant in Black Claw’s machinations to a full on company man? Was not the promise of power, but the moment they reunited him with Diana–the daughter he was powerless to protect once before. They were promising him power from the start, but it wasn’t until they put Diana in front of him that he got on board with their plans. So I think it’s pretty clear that for Sean, power is a means to an end: protecting himself and his loved ones.

As for the other part of that, he is definitely a full-on antagonist in a way he’s never been before now, but evil? Thus far in his stint with Black Claw he’s done nothing more gruesome or horrible than he’d done in any previous season, and he’s arguably killed fewer people than Nick by a lot. The only difference is that now he’s doing these things to characters we like.

Most of the time, this show’s antagonistic characters aren’t evil so much as they are suffering, and lashing out in one way or another due to that suffering. Many times there are extenuating circumstances that explain their actions, and/or they are not in control of their actions at all for one reason or another. So I would really hesitate to label most of the previous antagonists morally evil in a show which has never clearly defined its internal morality with any level of consistency, and which sets the morality bar for its heroes somewhere around charcoal gray.

Sean in particular has always struck me not as evil, but as shrewd, calculating, cautious, and ultimately self-serving. He does what he has to do to protect himself and his own, which is something I think Elizabeth would understand easily, even if she disagreed with his way of going about it.

So TL;DR: I feel like we’d have to have a much bigger discussion about the nature of moral good vs. evil and where that value judgment comes from–the action itself, the spirit or motivation behind it, the intended result, the actual immediate result, or the reverberating consequences, not to mention whether it’s actually a choice being actively made or simply the only possible or perceived possible action–before stamping Sean or any other character on the show with “evil.” And to be honest, I’m not sure I have the philosophical training required to outline the necessary parameters of that conversation, much less tackle the conversation itself.