'Beauty and the Beast' Season 2 Retrospective Pt. 2: Holding Out For a Villain
Beauty and the Beast Season 2 Retrospective Pt. 2: Holding Out For a Villain
Beauty and the Beast Season 2 took a while to find its feet, in the opinion of many, although opinions diverge on just why it took so long for the show to get back to what we all knew it could be.
Credit: The CW
When the season kicks off, we know about Reynolds (Ted Whittall), but we don't really know about Reynolds. The Season 1 finale tells us he's Cat's biological father, and we know he's the guy Vincent is working for as Season 2 begins. Some might argue we didn't really have to know much more than that when Season 2 began, but I think the show's overall search for a worthy villain illustrates that this isn't exactly the case. We don't have to have all of a villain's motivations laid out on the table from the get-go, but what we do need is an overall sense of who this person is, how far they're willing to go, and what it is they're after, even if we don't understand why they want what they want. And I'm not sure we got that, which resulted in a season in which we volleyed from one villain to the next in an attempt to find a Big Bad to organize the narrative around.
And yet, I didn't really hate the long line of villains we ended up getting, because it left an evolving list of threats that kept Vincent and Cat in constant peril, meaning that the show rarely got stale in its presentation. The issue is in the quality of some of the villains on the list, as some were definitely stronger than others. But it's worth exploring how these villains shaped the season, and brought us to our endgame with Vincent and Cat, since so much of the season ultimately proved to be about Vincent and Cat overcoming a stacked deck of odds. And how do you stack a deck against heroes but to add a bunch of villains? So let's look closer at some of this season's villains, and explore their affect on the overarching story of the season.
Credit: The CW
AGENT REYNOLDS
Agent Reynolds was a good villain to start the season off with, given that he was a very authoritative presence. This meant that he seemed to be in charge at all times, even when he wasn't, all of which came together to make him seem far more formidable than he ever actually was. Making the FBI the bad guys was always going to be a bit of a gamble, but not as big of a gamble as making Vincent into a de facto bad guy by linking him to someone like Reynolds. And that was the issue I had with it, in that we were just sort of dropped into this storyline without any real explanation for how it came to be this way other than a hand-wave explanation of, "Well, Vincent has amnesia now!"
But I think Ted Whittall's performance as Reynolds went a long way in making that character work, in addition to his connection to Cat. Sure, Reynolds spent his time in the first half of the season tying up loose ends regarding the Beast project, but it grew into something much more substantive when factoring in his emotional motivations for doing so. The story gradually become less about Reynolds wanting to tie up loose ends than it is about him wanting to protect Cat from Vincent and give her a shot at a normal life. He never had the opportunity to be a proper father to Cat, so he's looking to make amends in ways both big and small. Sure, Thanksgiving dinner was possibly the most awkward encounter ever, and the midseason finale made for some similarly climactic TV, as it forced Cat to choose sides between her father and the man she loved (although some would argue it's more a choice between justice and vigilantism).
I could recap Reynolds's entire function in the season, but that's not really what I'm here for, so much as to ask the question: did Reynolds's affect on the season justify having him around?
I would argue that the answer is a resounding "yes". His notion that Vincent has to be eradicated because Beasts never change is echoed later in the season by Gabe, which is why it's so poignant coming out his mouth in the first half of the season, when Gabe is still good and can be pointed to as an example of how Beasts can be reformed. Plus, having Cat decide to shoot Vincent to keep him from killing Reynolds represents a breaking point in their relationship, the truest test of their connection at any point in the series so far. Cat has very little family left, and it's not an unrealistic question to have her consider what the price would be for allowing Vincent to kill Reynolds in cold blood. That their relationship was able to recover from this at all illustrates the depth and complexity of Vincent and Cat's connection, which also served to strengthen the resulting direction of the season, as we know -- from all they went through in the first half of the season -- just how far they're all willing to go to make their relationship work. Hell, it even has another bonus in that Reynolds, at the end of the season, realizing that Vincent could be an example that maybe Beasts can change after all is poignant in how it brings the season full circle. Some Beasts never change (i.e., Gabe), but that no Beast can ever change. It's an important distinction for the season to have made, and it justifies Reynolds's presence.
Credit: The CW
TORI AND SAM
I'm including these two together because, in many ways, the felt like stop-gap villains who weren't entirely villains at all. Sam (Tom Everett Scott) was a much darker character than Tori (Amber Skye Noyes), while Tori had a significantly greater impact on the overall direction of the season by serving as a catalyst for Vincent and Cat's reunion. However, the Tori storyline also served as a catalyst of sorts for the latter-season plot development, as Vincent is arrested for the murder of Tori's father, Curt Windsor. In short, Tori proved more critical to the season's narrative in her short time on the show than Sam proved to be, although both were complex in their own ways.
I'm not sure I ever bought that Vincent and Tori were meant to be any sort of couple. If anything, she came across as a misdirected kid who never fully understood the nature or origin of her Beast powers. This element of confusion feels like an analogy for puberty, in a sense. Her misdirected sense of identity leads to her becoming a bit obsessed with Vincent, and blind to the reality of how Vincent sees her. Even in the throes of his temporary, gem-obsessed villainy, Vincent never really seemed all that into Tori as anything more than his ward, a new person to protect in lieu of Cat. And that's a meaningful distinction, in that while Tori could replace Cat as a warm body to protect, she could never replace Cat in Vincent's actual affections. And Tori recognizing as much and doing her best to win Vincent's approval makes her story unmistakably tragic. She's not so much a villain as a well-meaning little sister who ends up getting her big brother into deeper trouble. When she dies, I'm not sure we mourn the person so much as the concept of that person, a girl who was drawn into something she was ill-prepared to handle, and even less capable of fully understanding. It's no surprise that Vincent's guilt over her death leads him to begin reassessing his priorities, which brings him closer to Cat at the mid-point of the season (leading us to what ended up being a fantastic second half of Season 2).
Credit: The CW
Sam, meanwhile, was less essential. At least in my opinion. Sure, he created the serum that made new beasts, and this arguably led to the climax of the season as Vincent squared off against Gabe. And I suppose his connection to Dana (Elisabeth Rohm) was connected to the inevitable discovery of the Rebecca Reynolds diary, among other storyline facets. But Sam seemed to exist for little other purpose than to illustrate how good men can be corrupted by the heartlessness of evil. He wanted revenge against the men who killed his son by having the men who sanctioned the creation of Muirfield killed, since Sam's son had been used as a test subject of sorts, leading to his death. It's an effective reveal, and I do suppose it serves another purpose in Vincent's final confrontation with Sam. In talking Sam down from the ledge and preventing him from committing suicide and giving in to despair, Vincent further illustrates the extent to which he's changed from his earlier counterpart in the first half of Season 2. We recognize that Vincent has come to understand the nature of vigilante justice and its consequences, and Vincent himself admits that there is a way to change, and that there is a way to affect change in the world through justice the right way. In much the same way Tori's story is tragic, Sam's is every bit as desperate, but both lead to a change in Vincent that sets him back on the path to the person he was in Season 1. So even while I don't think either was the most substantive villain, I feel the season benefited from having them around.
Credit: The CW
GABE LOWAN
Last, but not least, is Gabe (Sendhil Ramamurthy). In many ways, Gabe came close to becoming the show's third lead after Vincent and Cat, as he went from being a goner at the end of Season 1 to suddenly not only being alive, but also being kind of a good guy in Season 2. It was a jarring shift, and I wasn't completely onboard at first, if only because so much of what we needed to know to make that storyline work happened off-screen. Sure, we know a sense of justice and duty compels Cat to save Gabe's life at the end of Season 1, effectively curing him of his beastliness. But we aren't entirely sure why she decides to openly trust a man who, not three months earlier, had a gun pressed to her head.
But Ramamurthy's performance made it far more believable than it would have been in the hands of a lesser actor. Gabe's desperation to be understood and forgiven pours through in the first half of the season, even as we aren't entirely certain we can trust him. Gabe is a man desperate to make amends, to prove that Beasts really can change. In many ways, it's less about guilt and more about proving to the world, and to himself, that a person isn't their worst part. Every individual has complexities to them, and many deserve a second shot. Hell, if this hadn't been Gabe's motivating thesis behind his actions -- if he didn't believe Cat really could forgive him some day -- he wouldn't have stuck around at all. And, frankly, the fact that she does come to forgive him speaks volumes for the likability of Ramamurthy in those early episodes, since there's absolutely no loving reason on Earth that anyone should have felt any affection for Gabe whatsoever after the crap he pulled last season.
However, as is characteristic with any great villain, Gabe was a good man corrupted by his own sense of righteousness. I never believed that a Beast is always a Beast, since that reduces Gabe's agency in his own character journey. In essence, Gabe becomes an exponentially less interesting character if his beastly nature fated him to always be this way. He's a much more compelling character if his gradual slide back to the dark side is a choice he makes after losing the only woman he's loved to the one man he absolutely can't stand. Sure, I believe Gabe showed his true colors by trying to rationalize his campaign against Vincent as being for the purpose of protecting Cat, but I don't think it was always his intention to basically repeat Season 1 all over again by kidnapping a Chandler and fighting Vincent in the finale.
For as much as Season 2 is the story of how Vincent and Cat find their way back to one another, the season is also about the sudden rise and ignominious downfall of Gabe Lowan, a man who spent the first half of the season as a penitent good guy, and the second half as an unapologetic bad guy. No matter how tragically flawed he was, Gabe still needed to be held to account for the decisions he made while motivated by those flaws (such as jealousy, paranoia, and spite). I truly enjoyed the nuance of Ramamurthy's performance over the course of the season, and will miss him in Season 3, even while I can admit his story had nowhere else to go but to the finish line. A reformed man often fights to avoid succumbing to his darker impulses, but not every reformed man succeeds. And not every reformed man has ever truly reformed in the first place. But I continue to assert that Gabe's heart was in the right place at the start of the season, before jealousy and anger won the day. Gabe was a complex villain whom I don't believe was 100% bad, even while I could admit that, by season's end, he was 99% there.
Credit: Ben Mark Holzberg/The CW
CONCLUSION
This season was a rich exploration into the nature of villainy, as Vincent succumbs to the dark side for a brief spell, just as Gabe finds himself stumping for the good guys. It's a strange dichotomy that the season offers, and it makes for a much more interesting overarching narrative, even while some of the choices didn't always work. I admire the boldness of a plot that has the confidence to take its characters through many different phases of challenge in a single season, and I feel that's what Beauty and the Beast achieved here, for better or worse.
So which villains did you think were essential to the season and which were inessential? Which villain(s) would you have cut, and what sort of character would you have replaced them with? Let's get a discussion going! I'll be back later to respond to your comments. Until then, thank you for reading, and I'll see you next week with the next essay in my ongoing series on Beauty and the Beast Season 2!