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.
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(Leonard Gerome) was killed in a car accident that is ultimately revealed to have been more complicated than it’s originally made to seem by Aggie, who is consumed by vengeful rage against the possibly drunk other driver involved, a local Long Island teen named Teddy Fenig (Bubba Weiler).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…
