The Beast in Me Recap ‘Ghosts’: Not Like Us

The Beast in Me Season 1 Episode 7

The Beast in Me followed the traditional format of mysteries, of the penultimate episode being the one that fills in the backstory. It was the perfect illustration of The Best in Me as a show – competently done, though not necessarily a story that takes your breath away. It’s good, you’d be hard pressed to find something to criticise, but it is also not one that would take hold and not let go. And hey, I’m all for well done stories. So, let’s head back to December 2019, and the events that led to Madison Ingram Jarvis’s death.

The episode opened to an FBI raid of a private plane. Brian Abbott headed straight for the plane seat and cut it open, revealing bundles of cash. This was not a lucky guess, he knew the cash would be there. He had an informant deep inside the Jarvis organisation, as Nile himself figured out.

The plane belonged to Pedro Dominguez, a developer from Miami who also served as a front for the cartel. He was arrested during a party at Madison’s gallery for illegal transport of undeclared currency. Nile had the party cut short, and once he was alone with his father Martin, he provided the explanation.

Due to interest rate hikes the year before, the business experienced a shortfall of 200 million dollars. Half of that was covered by James Ingram via the family trust, the other half by Pedro Dominguez. Martin knew all this. What he did not know, what Nile kept from him, was that Pedro’s money was cartel money.

Nile was not worried about Pedro; he had already given them the cartel money, he had every incentive of ensuring that Jarvis Yards was a success. The problem was Nick Ryder, in house counsel. The FBI would have no trouble tracing the money to Ryder's account, but the buck stopped there. If Ryder could be persuaded not to talk, father and son were home free. 

Nile called Ryder to a creepy meeting in an empty floor of the Jarvis offices and made his pitch – either Ryder would take the fall, or they all fall together. In exchange for taking the fall, Ryder would receive 10 times his annual pay for every year he served in jail, plus a point to Jarvis Yards. Nile spelled out his offer, this was generational wealth that Ryder would not have been able to acquire through his work.

It was a generous offer, like Nile’s later offer to Olivia Benitez, but the setting made me think of what he would have done had Ryder refused (and had Olivia not had her chief of staff with her during their meeting). Would Nile simply have disappeared Ryder? Perhaps. We would never know, because Ryder agreed to take the money. 

Abbott, of course, immediately figured out that Nile paid off Ryder, when Ryder simply surrendered and confessed. For Abbott, this was not a matter of professional pride; he was concerned for his source, the one who has been feeding him notably accurate information – Madison herself.

Why did a rich trust fund girl turn against her very wealthy husband? Madison was bipolar, and she had a tendency to skip her medicines, but that did not mean that she was not right about Nile. When she met up with Abbott, and Abbott had to tell her they had no case against Nile unless she testified, Madison lost it. Abbott pointed out that people got divorced all the time, she could leave Nile, but Madison tearfully told him that she could not leave, Nile would kill her.

And then the pattern. Two years ago (this was 2017, the same year that she attempted to commit suicide and Nile found her and saved her life), she was working with a new sculptor named Theo. Nile was jealous of Theo and thought they were having an affair, though Madison denied it. She claimed that it was the angriest she had ever seen Nile. Two weeks later, Theo was stabbed to death outside a bar in Bed-Stuy, supposedly a mugging gone wrong.

Madison claimed that all of Nile’s life, people in his orbit had gone missing – a camp counselor when he was 17, a maid in a hotel in Paris in 2010 who was murdered on the same night that Nile was supposed to be in Milan but he was not, he was staying at a different hotel just two blocks away. Madison had no proof, only fear. She told Abbott that Nile was ‘not like us’. Madison, pleading for protection, even tried to seduce Abbott, and though they kissed, Abbott ended it before it got any further.

When Abbott told Madison that maybe she needed help more than protection, it was probably with some awareness that Madison was mentally unwell. That was the heartbreaking challenge of a witness with mental health issues. Madison was right, Nile was a murderer, but even the FBI agent she has been cooperating with would not wholly believe her.

Madison was devastated and in tears as she left the building where she and Abbott had met. It was probably the worst time for Nina to show up.

Nina claimed that she tracked down Madison through her phone because she found her lithium in her office; Madison had stopped taking it, again. Nina also admitted that she was offered as job as associate gallerist at Threlkeld and that they were announcing it tomorrow. Madison felt used, and when Nina tried to defend herself, Madison uttered words that cut. She has not promoted Nina because she did not have it. She could spot trends, not talent, Madison called her a social climber from New Jersey with too much makeup and shtty taste. 

It could not have been easy for an ambitious woman like Nina to be around the kind of wealth Madison had and not want at least some part of it, not wonder what it would be like to have it. She was obviously furious with Madison, but professional to the end, she still went to the office that night and did some last minute work. It was where an on-the-edge Nile found her. 

Nile suspected Nina as the leak. Experienced operator that he was, Martin told Rick to find someone inside the FBI they could lean on, someone close to Abbott, and find out who was feeding them information. Rick found Erika (more on this later), and Martin called Nile to tell him the mole hunt was handled. Nile did not appreciate being told to just keep his head down.  

With anger still coursing through his body after being made to feel like a boy whilst the grown-ups handled the problem, Nile caught sight of Nina entering his office. He confronted her there, called her resignation funny timing, practically accused her of being the leak. Nina, also angry from her confrontation with Madison, blurted out that the leak was Nile’s own wife. Nina claimed that she saw Madison sneaking out and thought it was another affair, so she followed her. She saw Madison meet with Brian Abbott. Nina pointed out that she knew how Nile could ruin her. Why would she take that risk? She also gave him Madison’s lithium, which Maddie had stopped taking, and her bed medicines, which Nina took because she was concerned Maddie would try to swallow them again. She declared that she was done trying to save Madison from herself.

Nile found Madison at her gallery, where she claimed she was just taking her passport for their trip to St. Croix in two weeks. Given that she was also taking bundles of cash from the safe, she was very likely about to run from Nile. Nile mentioned running into Nina, then asked if Madison was sleeping with Abbott, or just telling him his secrets. Madison must have known there was no going back now. Nile was filled with fury as he ranted about how he saved Madison’s life only for her to stab him in the back. Madison countered that when she looked at him too long, she could see this animal in him.

Nile strangled Madison, but she was able to pepper spray him and get away. He caught up with her before she could exit the gallery, and in the midst of this horrific violence, I noticed a nice narrative touch. Early in this episode, as Abbott was leaving after arresting Pedro Dominguez, Nile angrily followed him. Abbott was cocky and intentional in pushing Nile’s buttons, he even ‘accidentally’ bumped into a table with a golden sculpture. Nile secured this sculpture from falling with his hand. Later, it was this same sculpture that he grabbed and used to repeatedly bash Madison’s head in. 

Once Nile had gotten the bloodlust out of him, he predictably called his Dad. Martin arrived with Rick and furiously slapped Nile twice. Rick remained calm and instructed Nile to take a shower and put his bloody clothes in a bag. Then, Rick laid out two choices for Martin, either they helped out Nile, in which case there was a chance they would go down with him, or they called 911 and let the chips fall where they may. Martin, who built his extreme wealth from nothing, decided to save his son.

Madison’s body was dumped in a landfill; Nile had to do the dirty work himself, with Rick operating an excavator. Martin remained inside his vehicle; he looked quite unwell, this could be around the time he had a heart attack that Martin had alluded to before. The next day, Nina went to the gallery, perhaps to get the last of her things, and found Madisons’s ‘suicide note’.

This is, from start to finish, a solid episode. Even the way it ended, on happier times with Aggie, Shelley, and Cooper in their very nice house that was not yet suffused with grief and guilt, with anchors on TV discussing Madison’s disappearance, was a nice touch. There was a sustained kind of mood that never dissipated into suffocating darkness through the episode which was not at all easily accomplished so kudos to writer Mike Skerrett and director Antonio Campos. With just one episode left, The Beast in Me is looking at a successful first season.*

Rating: A-

Strays:

📬*Yes, I know this is supposed to be a limited series, but so were Untamed and Shogun, and those excellent shows were renewed.

📬Another nice touch – Following Pedro Dominguez’s arrest, James Ingram went up to Ryder and asked if the issue wouldn’t delay construction. Ryder assured him the foundation money was safe. I like these types of callbacks to earlier episodes. 

📬Madison was doing drugs. Poor Nina had to wipe the coke off her nose before she rejoined the party.

📬When Nile brought up his suspicion that Nina was the leak, he mentioned how she was ambitious. Madison stood up for her. 

📬Yet another small but impactful scene -- that short scene of Nina looking at herself in the mirror whilst wearing Madison's dress.

📬How did Erika become entangled in the Jarvis web? Her husband Frank was an independent contractor who used off-market concrete he purchased with cash from the back of a truck in one of his jobs. This resulted in an accident and the victim would probably never walk again. The DA wanted to make an example of him, and was only willing to accept a plea of reckless endangerment in exchange for dropping criminal negligence. This meant that Frank would be guilty of a felony, and though he would avoid trial, his victim would very likely file a civil suit and take away all the money the family had. His solution was for him and Erika to get divorced, separate their assets, he could then file for bankruptcy, which would mean Erika and their children would not be financially ruined.

Erika was approached by Rick with his offer – a bigger win for the DA to persuade him to plead down Frank’s case to a misdemeanor, and money for the victim – in exchange for a favor. Erika seemed to have taken this deal, because next we saw her, she was chatting up Abbott.

Episode Title: Ghosts

Episode Writer: Mike Skerrett

Episode Director: Antonio Campos

Original Air Date: November 13, 2025

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