Note: This story contains spoilers from “The Beast in Me.”
If you thought there was no possible way out for Claire Danes’ Aggie in the “The Beast in Me” finale episode, that was by design.
Showrunner Howard Gordon — with whom Danes worked on “Homeland” — specifically crafted the ending of the Netflix series to put the viewer in Aggie’s shoes, thinking there’s no possible way for her to come out on top as Nile Jarvis (Matthew Rhys) quashes her hopes of proving he murdered his wife (and others).
“The feeling I wanted the audience to feel by proxy is the terrible frustration of, ‘Oh my God, she knows the truth, but she can’t get it out there. She’s screwed.’ ”
Indeed, “The Beast in Me” ends with Aggie’s efforts to prove that Nile killed his first wife rendered moot, as Nile frames her for the kidnapping and murder of Fennec after she discovers that he did, in fact, kill his first wife after learning that she was an FBI informant.
But Nile is undone by his new wife Nina (Brittany Snow), who secretly records him confessing to it all. He’s arrested and then shortly thereafter murdered in prison at the behest of his uncle.
“It really is a little bit about the narratives we tell ourselves. What’s the truth? What’s our interest in the truth? What’s our investment in the lies we tell ourselves?,” Gordon explained to TheWrap, pointing out that Aggie must conclude that she was partially responsible for the accident that killed her son, despite blaming Fennec all these years.
“I wanted this to feel like it wasn’t just ‘Check, check, check,’ because there were a lot of braids to knit together. The past murder, present consequences, how the dominoes would fall for every character who was complicit, half complicit, willfully, semi-willingly. Including and more than anyone, Aggie, who has to reconcile herself with the fact that she was indirectly, but directly enough, responsible for the death of her child.”
As for the trap set for Nile, Gordon admitted the tape recorder was originally “a placeholder” until the writers could figure out a different way to bring him down, but they couldn’t beat it.
In fact, for a brief moment, Gordon considered a far bleaker ending for the series: letting Nile get away with it.
“For a second, I woke up one day and I said, ‘What if we just doubled down on that awfulness?’ But it didn’t feel good.”
But Nile is dead right?
Yes, Gordon confirmed. He’s gone. “That character has had his story told,” he said. But we live in the age where limited series frequently evolve into ongoing drama series, so could Gordon see revisiting this story in a second season?
“I think that to the extent that Aggie is a writer who has been delivered to this next stage of her life, whatever that stage is … if there is a story, there might be more. I am tempted by the character of her grifter father in some way. We’ll see how the show does and if an idea comes. But I think they’d be open to more.”
“The Beast in Me” is now streaming on Netflix.
The post ‘The Beast in Me’ Ending Explained by Showrunner: Will There Be a Season 2? appeared first on TheWrap.
