Warning: This post contains spoilers for The Beast in Me.
Five years after the finale of Homeland, Claire Danes has reunited with one of the creators of the Emmy-winning series for a new cat-and-mouse thriller where her character must once again contend with some pretty intense inner demons.
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Netflix’s The Beast in Me, all eight episodes of which are now streaming, pairs showrunner Howard Gordon (Homeland, 24) with creator Gabe Rotter (The X-Files) for a character-driven psychological drama that explores humanity’s collective need to scapegoat through the lens of Danes’ Aggie Wiggs, a once-acclaimed author paralyzed by grief in the wake of her young son Cooper’s death. Cooper (Leonard Gerome) was killed in a car accident that is ultimately revealed to have been more complicated than it’s originally made to seem by Aggie, who is consumed by vengeful rage against the possibly drunk other driver involved, a local Long Island teen named Teddy Fenig (Bubba Weiler). However, it comes to light that Aggie herself was distracted by a phone interview at the time the accident happened.
“[W]e love finding a villain. We love putting the blame on one person or one thing. We love looking outward rather than inward. I think, to some degree, all these characters are doing that,” executive producer Daniel Pearle told the Creative Process podcast. “As you said, what does it say about us as a culture that we love true crime? We love it. I would posit that it’s the illusion that there is one bad guy, and you can solve the problem that way. I think that Aggie comes to reckon with [that] in this story. When we meet her, she’s fixated on the notion that there is one guilty party in the death of her son.”
The Beast in Me follows Aggie as she begins to break through her writer’s block after meeting her new neighbor, a wealthy real estate mogul named Nile Jarvis (Matthew Rhys) who was the prime suspect in the disappearance and possible murder of his first wife, Madison (Leila George). While attempting to unravel the truth about Nile’s past in her new book, Aggie is forced to confront her own dark urges as she comes to realize she is dealing with a far more sinister individual than she ever imagined.
How does The Beast in Me end?
After Nile learns Aggie has evidence that he did in fact kill Madison and tries to frame Aggie for the kidnapping, torture, and murder of Teddy Fenig in response, Aggie must find a way to prove her innocence and prevent Nile from getting away with yet another brutal crime. Luckily, she is able to convince Nile’s new wife and Madison’s former assistant Nina (Brittany Snow) that what she’s discovered about Nile is true. A pregnant Nina then goads Nile into a confession that she secretly records and turns over to the FBI. Nile is arrested and sentenced to three consecutive life sentences in prison, but gives one final interview to Aggie from behind bars.
When Nile’s father Martin (Jonathan Banks) receives confirmation from Nile’s uncle Rick (Tim Guinee) that his worst fears about Nile have been realized, he suffers a debilitating stroke. Prior to his own arrest and incarceration, Rick then smothers Martin to death in the hospital to spare him from witnessing the downfall of his son and destruction of his legacy. Rick also arranges for Nile to be stabbed to death in prison in order to ensure the monster within him is never unleashed on anyone else.
The series ends with Aggie publishing her book (titled The Beast in Me, naturally), in which she admits her hands are “far from clean” in the whole ordeal. “The real question, and I’ll have to leave it to the audience…[is] whether [Aggie] recognizes the complicity in her having wound up [in] this—by telling a monster or presumed monster, her deepest id, her wish that Teddy Fenig paid the price that he did,” Gordon told TV Insider. “It really is about a squaring with herself, a narrative that she’s told herself and the price of that, which she again says in her own book, confessionally, I’ll have to live with the fact that I have now been part of taking a son from another mother.”
Meanwhile, Nina is grappling with the first seeds of doubt about her newborn baby’s future, seemingly fearing her child may inherit his father’s evil nature. “Just like Jonathan Banks’ character and Matthew Rhys and their duality—I do think you wrestle with what are you giving your child to set them up with,” Snow told Netflix’s Tudum of her character’s fate. “Are you setting them up for success? Are you setting them up for failure in what you give them and how you give it?”