‘The Beauty’ Episode 9 Recap – This Isn’t As Romantic As It Thinks

Whoah now, folks. I personally thought that The Beauty was finished with all of its body-horror transformations, and more to the point, I also figured it was done with any major recontextualising twists. But not so fast! Episode 9, “Beautiful Evolution”, indulges in both, leaving us with many more questions than answers ahead of the double-bill finale. This is also the shortest episode of the season, I think, running only 27 minutes or so, including the credits, but that doesn’t lessen its impact. Instead, it benefits mightily from the singular focus (and, as it happens, the complete absence of Byron Forst).

I was right about one thing, at least. The “robot lady” is indeed going to be important. Her name turns out to be Diana Starling, aka “The Mother”, the head of Forst’s robotics division, which his focus on the Beauty has caused him to lose interest in. Worth noting: The ultimate function of this division was the same. Forst seems to have been pursuing immortality for a long time. It’s just that Diana — accurately, I’m willing to bet — considers the pharmaceutical option to be a bit risky, full of more and messier variables. Her plan to create an army of synthetics indistinguishable from regular humans — the “Deacons” she mentioned in the previous episode — takes longer, but is a surer bet, rather apocalyptic undertones notwithstanding.

Also worth noting: It was Diana, with help from Franny and presumably Meyer, who facilitated the prison escape. It’s all part of her plan, which is to prevent Forst from releasing the Beauty officially, since that will be the death knell for her already floundering robotics project. The commados are all Deacons, though I still reckon there are a few out and about posing as humans, based on her conversation with Forst. We’ll see about that, though.

Diana’s plan isn’t complex. Forst just needs to be assassinated, and Cooper is the obvious choice, since he has the skillset. Now, it doesn’t go unnoticed that there’s also a literal assassin sitting at the table who also has the skillset, but it’s assumed that Antonio’s past relationship with Forst would likely complicate the mission, and fair enough. Diana is able to provide some incentives, including a major effort to extend the lives of the already infected, like Jordan. But we also learn that the instability of the lab-leaked strain of the virus will cause it to burn itself out eventually, so I reckon Diana’s proposed solution will be an on-brand suggestion to upload one’s consciousness into a robot. We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.

There’s also another major problem, which is that thanks to Forst’s elaborate security systems, nobody can get close enough to kill him. Except, of course, someone he wouldn’t recognise. What this is building towards is Cooper having to be infected so that he can pass by unnoticed, but he isn’t particularly fond of the big needle that would pump the pharma-derived version into his veins. No, Cooper knows an opportunity when he sees one, and insists that the only way he wants to become infected is by having sex with Jordan.

This is presented as being much more romantic than it turns out to be in practice — Jordan literally gags moments before at the very idea of knowingly passing on an STD to the love of her life — which is probably the only real misstep of The Beauty Episode 9. But once the deed is done, there’s a pretty lingering focus on Cooper’s transformation. And this is where things get a bit weird.

By “a bit weird”, I mean “a lot weird”, since even by the standards of the transformations we’ve seen, Cooper suffers. The Exorcist-style spiderwalking is par for the course, but his transition takes hours, long enough that Jordan worriedly calls Antonio and Jeremy for support. They don’t have any bright ideas either, so it becomes a waiting game as Cooper’s nails peel off and teeth fall out. The coup de grace is his chest bursting open like something from Alien; by the time he finally became still, I genuinely thought he was dead.

Not quite, though. Eventually, the chrysalis forms, and the others burst into the bathroom they locked him in to see him struggling his way out of it. But the fact that the chrysalis is so small is the first clue that something’s amiss here. And that is indeed the case. When Cooper emerges, he’s not the Adonis everyone was expecting him to be. Instead, he’s an innocent-looking little boy.