The Beast in Me ending explained: Did the dog die, how did Nina catch murderer Nile, and will there be a season 2?
This battle between Claire Danes and Matthew Rhys hooks you right in
Netflix’s magnetic miniseries The Beast in Me is up there as one of the TV highlights of 2025, heightened by a bittersweet ending that left author Aggie Wilkes feeling both traumatised and accomplished.
Over eight tightly crafted episodes, we orbited the increasingly dangerous encounters between neighbours Aggie and Nile Jarvis. Suspected of murdering his first wife Madison – her body was never found – the real estate mogul built an uneasy rapport with Aggie that grew into a cat-and-mouse-type dynamic as revelation after revelation burst out of their graves.
We’re picking apart The Beast in Me’s ending. What really happened to Madison, did Steve the dog survive, and how was Nina responsible for Nile’s capture?
***Warning: spoilers from the ending of The Beast in Me ahead***
Netflix’s The Beast in Me ending: What happened between Aggie and Nile?
Pulitzer Prize-winning author Aggie had it in for Nile from the very start. His infamy followed him everywhere he went, so when his first move in the new neighbourhood was to offer to construct a jogging path through the nearby forest, she shut it down. Why should Mr Moneybags get to make his mark, and why wasn’t he behind bars?
As this was the only rebuttal he faced from the deciding parties, Aggie became Nile’s special project of sorts. Although reluctant to play happy neighbours, she allowed him to buy her dinner. Nile’s awareness of Aggie’s writer’s block led him to suggest that she tell his story – what really happened with him and Madison.
Research for the book brought them closer together; Nile even made sure that Madison’s parents were available to Aggie should she want to document their side of things. But they were emotionally compromised on the subject, having pumped a great deal of money into Nile’s family business and lived off the income.
Madison’s brother Christopher handed Aggie his sister’s birding journal, which had a ripped page matching the shape of Madison’s supposed suicide note. Aggie came to realise that Nile had “repurposed” her words from the diary, selling a false melancholia at the time of her disappearance.
He knew that the writer was onto him and sneaked into Aggie’s house to eerily leave notes on the first four pages of her book on him. When Nile’s comeuppance was served by second wife Nina, Aggie visited him in jail to allow him to provide the final word for the book. During their last conversation, Aggie came to realise that she was living her darkest fantasies through Nile.
Did Aggie finish her book?
On her book tour for The Beast in Me, which retold Nile’s sorry crimes, she read this passage: “Is it karmic justice? Retribution is seductive like that, promising a clean line between good and evil, but it’s an illusion. I know because I felt its pull. After losing my son I cradled vengeance like a second grief, a sacred companion.
“Nile smelled my bloodlust and midwifed that story into being. He sucked on my rage and like some dark angel made manifest a wish too horrible to name, leaving another mother to grieve her son. Another rage to grow unchecked. Vengeance birthing vengeance. A wound that never heals. I am complicit in this cycle, my hands are far from clean.”
How did Aggie’s son Cooper die, and did it affect her marriage?
Cooper was just eight years old when he lost his life. The tragedy unfolded while Aggie drove him to a doctor’s appointment.
She was juggling Cooper’s tantrums with a phone conversation on loudspeaker, and then Teddy Fenig smashed into the side of them with his car.
This tore a hole through Aggie’s marriage to Shelley, and four years later they were still at odds about the whole thing. “Teddy killed our son and then lied! He won’t take any responsibility whatsoever. He was drunk!” Aggie stressed at the cemetery. “Sometimes bad things just happen…” claimed her ex-wife.
Apparently, Teddy refused to do a breathalyser at the scene and by the time his blood test was done he was under the limit. The police ruled it as an accident, that Aggie was “driving erratically”. Such were her protests against Teddy’s innocence, she received a restraining order.
Yet the clarity that came with Nile’s downfall allowed the grieving mother to eventually concede she wasn’t “blameless”. She just believed her own lie in order to survive all those years.
The Beast in Me ending on Netflix: Did Teddy kill himself?
Keen to finally provide Aggie with a sense of freedom, Nile abducted Teddy and made it look like he’d drowned himself at the beach. For a while, Aggie believed Nile had turned vigilante on her behalf by actually killing the boy she held responsible for Cooper’s death.
Teddy’s car was found with a note reading “I’m sorry for the pain I’ve caused”. His mum told reporters that this apparent suicide made no sense whatsoever; Teddy and his girlfriend were excited to be going on a snorkelling trip together soon.
Brian was the person who finally got to the bottom of Teddy’s case. He stole files from Nile’s computer, including a live video link of a battered Teddy in an unknown location. Later, Nile brutally murdered Teddy and attempted to frame Aggie for his death by placing his body at her house.
Did Nile murder Madison in The Beast in Me ending?
Via flashbacks, we learned that once Nile discovered his wife was feeding incriminating information regarding his firm’s dealings to FBI agent Brian Abbot, there was only ever going to be one outcome.
He caught Madison collecting her passport from the security safe at Lacon Gallery. “I saved your life Maddie, but that wasn’t it enough was it? You had to go and stab me in the back over and over and [bleep] over again, why? Tell me why!” he yelled, alluding to how he’d found her “blue” in the bathtub after an overdose.
“Because when I look in your eyes too long I see it… this animal,” Madison whispered back. A scuffle broke out between them, culminating in Nile reaching for a heavy statue out on the gallery floor and bashing her head in with it.
Did Martin Jarvis know the truth about Madison’s death?
Once he’d put an end to poor Madison, Nile phoned his uncle Rick, who in turn brought Nile’s father Martin along to the grisly scene.
Slapping his son across the face, Martin raged: “You [bleep] piece of shit! What’s the matter with you?!”
Having sent Nile to clean all of the blood off himself and put his clothes in a bin bag, Rick and Martin decided to help him. They knew that Nile would face suspicion for the rest of his life, but nobody could prove a thing as long as they destroyed surveillance footage and DNA links.
The trio proceeded to bury Madison beneath a huge patch of landfill they owned, under the cover of darkness. Martin later suffered a heart attack from all of the stress and forced his son to move to the suburbs to take the heat off the family.
When Rick informed his brother of Nile’s latest victim, Teddy, he was instantly struck down by a stroke. Rick, who ultimately exchanged evidence for a shorter prison term, suffocated Martin with a pillow as he lay comatose in hospital. This was so he didn’t wake up to see his legacy disintegrate.
How was Nile caught?
Nina was the hero of the day. She recorded Nile’s confession to her about bumping off his first wife and sent it to the FBI.
“Of course I [bleep] killed her!” he shouted in the bedroom. “I did exactly what you wanted me to! Why else would you tell me about her and Abbot? What the [bleep] did you think would happen? She was a selfish self-pitying [bleep] who abused you and then betrayed us both.”
He ended up pleading no contest to all charges and received three consecutive life sentences with no chance of parole.
Why was Olivia Benitez trying to bring down Jarvis Yards?
City Council campaigner Olivia Benitez was dead against the Jarvis Yards development due to its effect on the local community. She led rallies against Nile and Martin’s colossal Manhattan construction project to support affordable housing for New Yorkers. In her eyes, the vision for Jarvis Yards was ugly gentrification.
“DOWN WITH JARVIS YARDS!” and “EVICT CORPORATE GREED!” her flyers read, yet this staunch opposition put a target on Olivia’s back. In the end, having failed to buy Olivia’s silence, Nile and Martin arranged for one of her street protests to be sabotaged by their henchmen. They brought violence to a peaceful gathering, landing her in hot water.
Down and out, Olivia agreed to support Jarvis Yards. Nile announced their collaboration at a press conference and gifted an undeveloped square block to the Manhattan Land Trust for 300 new affordable houses to be built on. Her followers were understandably disgusted by this turnaround, but she’d always been fighting a losing battle.
Did the dog die in The Beast in Me?
Even though Aggie’s pet dog, Steve, had brushes with both Nile and Rick, he made it through to the end. The pair let themselves into the house to spy on the author, but thankfully they never harmed the protective fluff ball.
Steve was there for Aggie on stormy nights and it’s revealed that Cooper gave him his “ridiculous” name.
What happens to Nina in The Beast in Me, and what is endometriosis?
Nina was stunned when her pregnancy test came back positive. She’d been living with endometriosis and told that her chances of motherhood were very slim. Compounding this surprise was the fact Nile never wanted children because he’d “love them too much”.
Discussing their miracle baby, she said to Nile: “I know it wasn’t part of our plan”. He played it cool though, replying: “Plans change, roll with it”, but that was all before she helped bring him to justice by recording their conversations about Madison’s murder.
Fortunately, Nina’s pregnancy went swimmingly despite the personal chaos. The Beast in Me’s final scene featured her at home with a toddler, rocking and kissing him.
As for the condition itself, endometriosis sees tissue similar to the lining of a woman’s uterus growing outside the uterus. It reacts to hormonal fluctuations, causing bleeding and a thickening every month, which then leads to pain and inflammation. This tends to have a negative impact on fertility.
What is Sick Puppy about, and what happened to Aggie’s dad?
Sick Puppy: A Letter to My Father was the title of Aggie’s award-winning memoir. Very few details were revealed about its content, but in a conversation with Nile, Aggie was told that it’s “a love letter” to her unnamed “con man” dad.
“He actually sued me, he said that I’d been profiting from his story,” she smiled.
Her dad was arrested when she was just 12 years old. “It was almost a relief at that point, we were always moving,” she recounted. “Even if I didn’t know why, it was always just this feeling that things could go…” Yet it’s never implicitly mentioned what he got up to or how he treated his family.
Will there be a season 2 of The Beast in Me?
Given the somewhat deserved fate of Nile – Rick ordered his savage death in the prison canteen – there won’t be a season 2 of The Beast in Me.
Each subplot reached their natural conclusions and Aggie released her career-reigniting book The Beast in Me.
