I have been enjoying the new Netflix mystery The Beast in Me, which stars Claire Danes as an author attempting to write about possible-murderer Matthew Rhys, which twists and turns its way through deceit and death.
I was enjoying it until the end, however. Spoilers follow.
The end of The Beast in Me paints Claire Danes’ Aggie into a corner, as somehow Rhys’ Niles Jarvis has planted the corpse of the man who killed her son in a car accident years earlier, after years of her threatening him. There is no evidence tying him to this kill, nor to the long-suspected death of his wife, and absolutely no one seems to know that he has beaten an FBI agent to death in the last few days. How can Aggie be exonerated at this point? How can Niles be caught at this point? It’s a compelling set-up for what you hope is going to be an epic, smart finale.
It is not that. Instead, it relies on one of the oldest tropes in murder mysteries. Aggie convinces Niles’ wife, Brittany Snow’s Nina, that Niles is definitely a murderer. This was less than brilliantly set up, as in the previous episode, we saw Nina tell Niles that his wife was an FBI informant, and the next day she disappears and allegedly commits suicide. The idea is that “she didn’t want to know,” but it’s so stupidly obvious that it’s hard to believe.
The trope in question is that Nina gets Niles to rant about his long list of crimes, where he confesses to both the murder of his wife and how he killed the man in Aggie’s house and framed her. Naturally, of course, we just saw her plug in her phone moments before this, and the entire thing is recorded as a voice note. What once was an interesting mystery and scenario to lead into the finale is just erased by the classic “bad guy spells out his entire slate of crimes he doesn’t know is being recorded.” That’s just…so lame.
There are other bits and pieces to the ending. Niles’ uncle turns on him once his father, the one he actually cares about protecting, is incapacitated after learning about Niles’ latest crime. Aggie gets to finish her book with a lengthy prison interview before Niles is shanked to death as commanded by his uncle. I’m not sure anyone ever was able to prove Niles murdered Brian Abbott, and as it’s not even mentioned again, nor is the alleged list of past murders he committed before all this happened. None of that is great either.
It’s a frustrating series. It was interesting enough to keep me engaged for its full duration, not something all mystery shows can do, but it just threw everything out the window with its dumb recording trope, and there had to have been a better way to resolve all this. But they didn’t bother trying to find that.
Follow me on Twitter, YouTube, and Instagram.
Pick up my sci-fi novels the Herokiller series and The Earthborn Trilogy.