It was an inevitability that Tyler Perry’s Beauty in Black would return for Season 2, and here we are. As with the first season, this one is releasing in two parts, each consisting of eight episodes. Given the high drama of the first season finale, Episodes 1-8 open on a new status quo, with Kimmie the new head of the Bellarie family. But there’s vicious infighting all over the place, Horace is on his last legs, and assuming command of an entire clan that all hate you is easier said than done.
With that in mind, let’s break down the soapy events of Part 1.
Episode 1, “Crowned in Beauty”
Picking up where things left off, “Crowned in Beauty” is mostly just a reminder that Kimmie is in charge now, and that nobody else in the Bellarie family is happy about that.
Horace has done what he can. He’s happy to protect Kimmie, Sylvie, and Rain in writing legally, as well as Angel, if anybody can find him, which they can’t since he has been arrested for the Lakeland carjacking. He also wants to give Kimmie a crash course in leverage before he expires, using Roy’s driver, Alex, as an example. Even though Jules technically employs him, Horace has enough leverage over the ex-cop to press him into Kimmie’s service, though whether he can be trusted long-term remains to be seen.
There’s plenty more going on besides. Roy is furious with Varney for (he assumes) sleeping with Mallory, Mallory is furious with Roy for sleeping with Kimmie, and Charles doesn’t seem to be taking the financial reality seriously. Horace diluted everyone’s shares by 10%, which means their incomes are no longer commensurate with their outgoings, but all Charles is worried about is talking Varney into bed. Problematically, when Varney is leaving, he bumps right into Roy.
Leverage, you see?
Episode 2, “When the Tables Turn”
Leverage remains the theme in “When the Tables Turn”, which is appropriately titled. Roy makes it extremely, embarrassingly clear to Varney that now he knows about his relationship with Charles, he won’t hesitate to use it to ruin him if he doesn’t sort out the family’s financial problems (and the small matter of Kimmie).
Speaking of Kimmie, she’s realizing that there are far more upsides to being Horace’s wife than she initially realized, including a ludicrously lavish lifestyle and millions of dollars in her personal account. This she divides up between herself, her sister, and Rain, but things aren’t going to be all that easy.
Both Jules and Horace try to make the Angel problem go away in this episode, which results in children being threatened left and right and a hit, organized by Horace, that takes Angel’s life (and those of several others standing at a bus stop) at the end of the episode. Mallory also pays Felicia for information about what was going on at the club.
Episode 3, “Blaze of Beauty”
A slightly slower-paced episode nonetheless ends explosively, with Norman violently cleaning up some loose ends. But in the meantime, there are a lot of loaded conversations to enjoy — if “enjoy” is the right word, which I’m not sure it is — as everyone tries to work their own angles and pursue their own agendas.
Mallory confronts Jules, for instance, about the club being used to launder money and exploit the girls, and later, Horace confronts Norman about the same. This is what pushes Norman into his extreme measures, since he needs to take Horace off the board and snip off every loose end.
Meanwhile, Kimmie, despite her newfound wealth, wants to get Sylvie out of the house and away from the family, and wants Rain to help convince her of this. Even Rain doesn’t want Kimmie’s money, and instead wants control of the club (and revenge on Body and Daga).
Simmering tensions are threatening to boil over here. You can see it in Charles trying to warn Roy away from Varney, and Olivia, slightly tipsy, gatecrashing Varney’s dinner with Mallory. But all the payoff for these dynamics is presumably coming later.
Episode 4, “The Next Chapter”
“The Next Chapter” is another relatively slow-moving affair, and a big chunk of it is devoted to what is unmistakably a comedy sequence, with a very drunk Olivia trying to seduce Varney after gatecrashing his dinner with Mallory in the previous episode. But there is plenty more going on besides, particularly involving Kimmie, who decides now is the time to tell Sylvie the truth and make an escape.
Kimmie is inspired here by the news that Horace had Angel killed, even though Angel survived the attack. Rain passes this information on, which was overheard via Alex, sending Kimmie into a tailspin. She’s adamant he can’t be trusted, though she does allow Rain to pump him for some information on a potential escape attempt. She also tells Sylvie the truth about the situation they’re in, and at the end of the episode, decides to make her move.
Naturally, the escape attempt is thwarted by Horace himself, who has only recently been told he isn’t long for the world, given the rapid progression of his cancer.
(L to R) Julian Horton as Roy, Terrell Carter as Varney, Steven G. Norfleet as Charles in episode 201 of Beauty In Black. Cr. Quantrell Colbert/Netflix © 2025
Episode 5, “Hunter’s Prey”
As it turns out, Kimmie’s grand escape attempt amounts to driving the car into a ditch and realising that she didn’t need to escape after all. Horace has returned home to die, at least after giving some experimental overseas treatment a go, and he has Angel with him. Angel being alive kind of dispels the notion that Horace was about to murder them all, so Kimmie finally listens to his point of view, which is mostly being annoyed that she didn’t just trust his word (though, in this case, I can hardly blame her).
There’s a lot more drunk Olivia in “Hunter’s Prey”. She calls Roy to tell him that Mallory is sleeping with Varney, even though she has no proof of that claim, and Roy tells her that he can’t be because he’s sleeping with Charles. So, Olivia calls Charles — who’s trying to pick up another dude who is planning to rob him — to ask him some inappropriate questions about Varney. It’s a mess.
None of this is as messy as Roy and Mallory’s marriage, though. They hate each other, so much so that when Mallory has finished belittling him, he immediately heads to Delinda’s to try and reclaim some masculinity by bossing strippers around. Rain is also at the club, working on her revenge mission against Daga. That’s actually where this episode ends, with Rain and Alex having cornered Daga and Shake Shake in a motel with her latest unwitting victim.
Episode 6, “The Enemy of My Enemy”
Picking up where the previous episode left off, “The Enemy of My Enemy” makes short work of Rain’s revenge storyline — she and Daga get into a fight, and Alex shoots both Daga and Shake Shake dead. The event clearly brings Alex and Rain a little closer together, but it isn’t brought up again for the remainder of the episode.
Roy’s night out, meanwhile, takes a terribly embarrassing turn. After reasserting some manhood via the strippers, he feels emboldened enough to confront Kimmie at his father’s house. However, he’s overheard saying he’d p*ss on Horace’s grave, which his dad doesn’t take too kindly, ordering security to hold him down so he can make good on Roy’s threat. It’s a profound level of disrespect, which I’m sure will be taken incredibly well by someone with such a fragile ego.
Everyone’s ego is threatened by Horace having called a meeting with the entire company staff so they can meet their new COO (and mother-in-law). This includes Mallory, who makes sure to stop by Horace’s place just to interrupt Kimmie’s breakfast and hurl catty insults at her, and indeed Charles, who decides he won’t be attending at all, despite the fact that, according to Varney, he can’t afford to pay the fine for non-attendance. But Charles has bigger problems, since his new beau, Dustin, has been casing his house ready to break into his safe. “The Enemy of My Enemy” ends with the attempted robbery, but it backfires on the intruders when Charles manages to fight his way to a gun and kill them all.
Episode 7, “Gloves Off”
The penultimate episode of Part 1 builds as much tension as humanly possible around Kimmie’s imminent arrival at the board meeting Horace organized. In the meantime, it leaves Charles on his living room floor surrounded by dead bodies, since nobody wants to take his calls, and contrives a subplot literally out of nowhere just to keep things spicy back at the house.
With the murders of Daga and Shake Shake now public knowledge and Jules immediately suspecting Rain and Alex of committing them, that subplot looks like it’s going to occupy some focus, but it’s similarly forgotten about. Instead, all the focus is on Horace prepping Kimmie for the meeting from his private jet while Angel enjoys a newfound luxury lifestyle (I will confess, though, to at least finding his energy quite entertaining.)
Oh, and Roy is now obsessed with Felicia, to the point of pushing Jules to hire her as his assistant. Kimmie’s late arrival at the office has a grandiose feel to it, but nothing happens yet beyond her forcing Roy to show her to her office. The board meeting itself, which presumably crops up in the Part 1 finale, should be fun, though.
The sudden cliffhanger comes out of nowhere. Sylvie meets a stableboy named Glen on the grounds, and they immediately take a shine to one another. When Rain hears about it, she interrupts them getting intimate and chases Glen off the balcony with a pitchfork. Yes, it’s as silly as it sounds.
Episode 8, “Hold the Pleasantries”
(Note: I also wrote a much more in-depth breakdown of the finale, if you’re interested.)
The first big revelation of the finale is that Glen, the stable boy Rain chased off a balcony with a pitchfork, is Jules’s son. This information is relayed to her by Alex, whom she calls for help, but she has to wait all day to receive it. By the time Alex gets there, Glen is alive but messed up, and Kimmie walks in on them conspiring. Something for Part 2 to deal with.
Just as the penultimate episode spent most of its runtime preparing for Kimmie’s boardroom meeting, the finale spends a good chunk of time on it and in its immediate vicinity. There are fun scenes between Kimmie and the rest of the family, especially Olivia, Roy, and Jules, and the big boardroom scene itself is Kimmie’s power play moment that fans have been waiting all season for. With aggressive reallocation of the company’s ad expenditure, call-outs for Norman and Olivia’s offshore shell companies where they keep the kickbacks, and the nixing of Mallory’s “dated” marketing campaign, it’s pretty fun stuff.
Of course, Olivia’s leverage over Varney means that he’s less likely to look into those shell accounts. But it quickly emerges that Varney is going to have bigger problems on his hands. After ignoring his calls earlier and bickering with him in the boardroom, Varney goes to see Charles and finds him chainsawing through the corpses in his ensuite. Without help from the family, Charles has taken matters into his own hands. But he hasn’t timed it very well, since just as he and Varney are both vomiting into the sink, the police — apparently — burst into the house and arrest them both at gunpoint.
