As the police stormed into Oyster Bay at the climax of "The Beast in Me," their mission was not to search Nile's property, as Agent Breton had promised; instead, they were there to find Aggie. Nile had outmaneuvered her, planting a tip to frame her for Teddy's murder. Now, Aggie was on the run, putting her jogging path to good use as a means of escape. It's tempting to speculate about what might have happened to Teddy if Aggie hadn't inadvertently let Nile know of her proof through a text to Abbott's burner phone. Would Nile have staged a miraculous return for him? Or would he have killed him regardless?
The finale leaves us convinced that Nile would have killed Teddy anyway, his reasons insignificant in the face of his monstrous nature. As Rick tells Martin, Nile is sick; he can't help himself; he's a serial killer. This explanation, while convenient, is the least interesting way to characterize him. It's always difficult to close a mystery, especially when most of the story's drama lies in the unknown, and it's doubly challenging when much of the plot is resolved by events from the past rather than the present. We've known since the beginning that Nile is a killer, but we've also seen him capable of affection and hurt. The notion that all his crimes can be attributed to an insatiable bloodlust pales in comparison to exploring his volatility, his motivations, and the reasons behind his actions.
If we wanted to truly understand Nile, we would have had to read Aggie's book, which must be the last thing on her mind as she tries to reach Shelley from the woods. All night, Aggie fiddles with a SIM card, a puzzling action that suggests she wants to ensure her location isn't tracked. But what difference does it make if she puts it back in to make calls?
Shelley is with the cops, pleading with Aggie to tell her where she is so that everyone can help her; hiding from the police will only make things worse. My initial instinct was to agree with Shelley, as Nina will later point out—there's nothing more suspicious than running. But Aggie has a plan, or at least a hope. She will get Erika to help her through the birding diary. Erika went to Oyster Bay with the intention of showing it to her boss but found herself standing in Cooper's room instead. Her boss tells her that Aggie had been harassing Teddy for years and that Nile called in the tip. Unconvinced, Erika calls a colleague to ask him to pull Madison's suicide note from the evidence archive so she can match it to the diary. But before she can do anything else, Rick shows up at her house with two henchmen in masks and threatens her life and her family. She tries to protest that none of this was supposed to happen, but it's out of her control. Rick says that, like her, he will do what it takes to protect his family. He grabs the birding diary as his men tear up Erika's house.
Once that's done, Rick calls Nile to tell him that Erika is "handled." Nile flips through his copy of "Sick Puppy," seemingly realizing he never had to forge that signature after all. The jogging-path thread is left at a semi-loose end; we know Aggie ultimately agreed to it because construction had already started, but we never see the moment she gave Nile that bit of satisfaction. Meanwhile, while Rick goes over to Martin's to tell him "as little as possible" about why his son is about to be back in the headlines, Nile catches Nina up on why there are so many police in the neighborhood. He tells her that he felt something was off when, that night they got drunk at her house, Aggie told Nile not to go in Cooper's room. But even here, Nina is already suspicious—why would Aggie invite Nile in if she were keeping a barely alive teenager there? Nina wants to talk about the baby, but the conversation gets postponed again. Finally, Nile gets a call from Lila, his father's wife, that Martin is in the hospital.
The news of Nile's unrepentant psychopathy sent him into a tailspin. As Martin celebrated the deal he had cut with Benitez, Rick arrived with the shocking revelation that Aggie was now a suspect in Teddy's murder. But Martin could see the lie in Rick's eyes, the way he thumbed his nose, a tic he'd had since childhood. Rick then revealed to Martin the truth about Nile, that he had killed Teddy simply because he could. The thought of Nile's never-ending murderous rampage, and the burden of covering for him always falling on Martin and Rick, was too much for Martin to bear. He suffered a hemorrhagic stroke and was induced into a medically controlled coma. Rick, consumed by guilt and anger, couldn't bear to be in the same room as Nile in the hospital.
Meanwhile, Aggie found herself at a crossroads. Her phone died after she fiddled with the SIM card some more, and she was tormented by flashbacks of the night Cooper died. The episode reconstructed the details of that day: Aggie had to do an interview for Sick Puppy, but Shelley couldn't take Cooper where he needed to go. So Aggie agreed to drive him and conduct her interview from the car. She was agitated that day, fighting with Shelley over logistics, which led to her being distracted while driving. As she tried to speak with her interviewer, Cooper kept whining and asking for the pilot of his toy plane. It was when Aggie turned around to yell at him that her car crashed into Teddy's. I stand corrected: Aggie was neither driving erratically nor drunk, but she was distracted, which means she is not completely blameless.
In Oyster Bay, Aggie spent the night in a greenhouse. When she woke up to the sound of people coming in to work, she found a charger in a shed and called Erika. But Erika had officially checked out of this mess. When she saw the broken frame containing a photo of her kids in the cold light of day, she knew she had to save herself and her family. She took Aggie's call but pretended not to know who she was or what she wanted. Aggie begged her to at least send her the diary, but Erika said there was nothing she could do. For now, Aggie was alone.
But that wouldn't last for long, and it was due to one mistake Nile made in fixing up this whole thing. He couldn't have known, but he should have let Nina come to the hospital when she said she would. Maybe he told her to go to work instead because the vibes at the hospital were so miserable. Rick couldn't stand to look at his nephew's face. "Ever since you crawled out of your mother's womb, you wanted to kill your father," Rick, the psychoanalyst, told Nile. It was in this context that Nile told Nina to go to work; there was nothing for her to do at the hospital anyway.
And who was waiting for Nina at Jacon if not Aggie Wiggs? From there, she called 911 and turned herself in. Before the cops could arrive, Aggie ambushed Nina in her office and swore on her son's memory that she did not kill Teddy Fenig. Aggie appealed to what she was sure was Nina's deep-down, unspoken knowledge that Nile was a murderer. She speculated that Nina believed Nile's story because it was what she had to do to live with herself—something about which Aggie "You Would Rather Invent a Murder Than Look in the Mirror" Wiggs knew a thing or two. Tears fell from Nina's enormous blue eyes as she listened to Aggie beg her for help.
Nina emerged as the crux of the entire matter, a surprising yet unsatisfying twist. The notion that Nina, on some profound level, understood the depths of Nile's capabilities felt unearned. We witnessed their encounters in isolation a handful of times; their relationship dynamics remained a mystery, except for their disagreements over his enigmatic nature. While that was fair, it was also a common thread in the tension between billionaires with a past and their second wives. As Nina returned home, Nile inquired about Aggie's intentions at the gallery. She plugged in her phone and began to record their conversation, unaware of his or our knowledge. She expressed her confusion about Madison's suicide: despite Madison's vicious, cruel demeanor in the days leading up to it, her suicide note was written in a loving, peaceful tone. She demanded to know if Nile had killed Madison; she had a right to know.
Director Antonio Campos captured this pivotal moment in shadows, a choice that further obscured the truth. Who were these people? Nina was asking herself this question, about herself and her husband. It was our last chance to uncover the truth, yet they remained in the dark. Nile shouted at Nina that she had known all along about his guilt. More than that, he accused her of wanting him to kill Madison—otherwise, why had she told him about Abbott? What did she think would happen?
Nile launched into a tirade about our inherent predators, how we are animals with primitive desires to kill and hunt. What pierced me was that this monologue was directed at Nina rather than Aggie. Nile was clearly appealing to the part of Nina that resented Madison, but his point about bloodlust would have resonated more with Aggie, who found herself on the brink of violence more than once. Angry, resentful, and tested, all Nina had planned was to quit her job and move on with her life. Besides, we never saw how Nile and Nina became involved after Madison's disappearance; how they fell in love or even if they did. The stakes for Nina—while high, she was pregnant with this psychopath's child—did not seem as momentous as those for Aggie, who entered determined to uncover the truth and exorcise her own demons.
By the time Nile cried and Nina held him, it was clear she was about to turn on him. She did so at the press conference announcing the new Jarvis-Benitez venture. Protesters booed and shamed Benitez for her spinelessness. Nile announced to the room that he was donating the undeveloped block to the city for affordable housing. As Benitez stepped up to the podium, he spotted Nina and felt invincible—professionally "back in the game" and believing he had gotten away with multiple murders. Nina reminded him to listen to the message she left on his phone—the recording of his confession—and then delivered her final blow: "You're never going to touch me again. Or my child." The police arrived to escort Nile away in handcuffs as the press conference attendees cheered. Benitez looked completely confused; this had just taken a drastic turn against her. Aggie was there too, watching from the sidelines. She and Nina exchanged smiles as the cops took Nile away.
As the narrative unfolds, we encounter Aggie, her book now a resounding success. Her demeanor radiates a newfound happiness and ease as she receives Carol's compliments. It seems that her relationship with Shelley has also improved, as she attends one of Aggie's book events accompanied by her partner, Meg. Aggie concludes her reading from the book's climax, revealing the denouement of their tale. Initially, Nile struggled to maintain his innocence, claiming the recording had been tampered with, but his claim crumbled when Rick presented a slew of incriminating evidence in exchange for a more lenient sentence. Rick even went as far as to kill Martin in his hospital bed, sparing him the agony of witnessing his legacy destroyed. In her writing, Aggie takes personal responsibility for her desire for violent retribution. When she visits Nile in prison for their final interview, he attempts to stir up old tensions, suggesting they killed Teddy together and implying she was elated upon discovering his lifeless body. But Aggie is now a different person, more assured of who she is. She tells Nile that they are no longer the same, then asks him what it's like being the beast. It is after this conversation that Nile is stabbed to death in prison, under the orders of his old Uncle Rick. Meanwhile, Nina finishes reading the book and comforts her baby, gazing into his eyes and assuring him that he is okay.
