So as soon as I heard that Hulu’s The Beauty had already started trending after its premiere, I couldn’t stop myself from reading the source material because, like all of you, I too have trust issues with Ryan Murphy. I mean, we know he’s going to butcher the narrative, but to understand the extent of his crimes, one has to pick up the comic books to find out what actually went down in the books. There are around 30 comic book issues distributed over 6 volumes, with stories centered around a world pushed into chaos and carnage with the introduction of “the beauty” virus that makes people look like the best version of themselves, or maybe even better. In short, it enhances their physical appearance and gives people the confidence they have always yearned for. As the story begins, more than 60 percent of the world’s population have been infected by the sexually transmitted virus, and whether they like it or not, they have to live with it, because no one has formulated a cure to reverse the beauty effect. And you see, that’s where the real problem begins. After 2 years, the world finds out that this physical perfection comes with an expiration date. At the end of its cycle, this virus burns up the host’s body from within, exploding itself like a firebomb. Yeah, that’s what happened with Bella Hadid’s character, Ruby Rossdale, in the first episode of Hulu’s The Beauty. As per the show’s timeline, she had been infected by the virus some two years ago, which matches the expiration date and therefore explains the reason behind her sudden death.
Spoiler Alert
Meet the Detectives
The show introduces us to two FBI agents, Cooper Madsen and Jordan Bennett, who have been assigned the responsibility of investigating the mysterious deaths of the beauties across the globe. And while following a potential lead in Venice, Jordan gets the disease after sleeping with a beauty who deliberately infected her to stop the agents from investigating the case. In the comic book, we come across a similar setup, where we are introduced to two beat cops, Detective Drew Foster and Detective Kara Vaughn. They lead a newly created task force to solve beauty-related crimes and catch anti-beauty terrorists. It’s a small unit with limited resources, but Foster and Vaughn are doing the best they can. Also, as the comic book begins, Vaughn is already infected, while Foster gets infected at the end of the first issue, which may suggest that our agent Cooper may contract the beauty virus sooner or later.
The comic book begins the same way as the Hulu show. There’s a gruesome death on the subway. A beauty suddenly explodes from within, and Foster and Vaughn are called in to investigate the case. However, before they can analyze the crime scene, the Center for Disease Control (CDC) takes over the case. It makes Foster and Vaughn suspect that someone higher up may be trying to cover up the situation. They sneak into the CDC office, only to find out that there have been fourteen more beauty-related deaths in less than 3 weeks. It makes the duo realize that beauty is killing people, but some powerful people in the government don’t want the public to find out the truth.
The Monstrous Pharmaceutical Company
The second issue of the comic book reveals that a powerful politician, Senator Timothy Robeson, has been pulling the strings to cover up the beauty deaths for a giant pharmaceutical company called Aberocorp, founded by two twin sisters, the Abernathys. They are the ones who engineered the beauty virus, and it’s likely that they didn’t want the people to find out about its deadly side effect, at least not until they had developed an FDA-approved vaccine to turn people’s panic into cash. Robeson is basically their lapdog who has been paid generously for the cover-up. When Robeson pays the sisters a visit, they reveal that they already have the cure, but they won’t release it yet. They want to cull out the weak and therefore want to hold back the vaccine for 30 days. They also ask Robeson if he no longer needs to hide the deaths anymore, and if he can let the world know the mess they have gotten themselves into.
The Cure
Foster and Vaughn try to blow the whistle to let the world know the problem they are dealing with. However, before they can raise the alarm, the duo are attacked by some hired guns sent by CDC’s deputy director, Agent Brandon, working for Senator Robeson. Foster and Vaughn lose their faith in the department and therefore join hands with an anti-beauty terrorist, Jake Lundy, who claims to have found the cure for the beauty virus.
As soon as Foster and Vaughn arrive at Jake Lundy’s hideout, he narrates his story to them. Back in the day, Jake and Eddie Bennett, an anti-beauty terrorist who was shot dead by Vaughn, were partners who worked for Aberocorp, developing medications and potential cures for a dozen diseases. A year ago, Jake and Eddie conducted research by accelerating the life cycle of infected cells and found out that within 800 days (roughly 2 years), they superheated and imploded. The research gave them an idea of what the end stages of beauty looked like. Their company tasked them with finding a way to slow down the process; however, during the development of the medication, they came across a potential cure that wipes out the beauty virus from a host’s body, but their findings were instantly buried because Aberocorp didn’t want to part ways with their most revolutionary product. When Jake and Eddie resisted, their research was confiscated, and they were threatened with legal action. They didn’t have the means to put up a fight with the Goliath, so they simply left the company and went into hiding, joining the anti-beauty movement as a cover-up to restart their research from scratch, because they knew that sooner or later, the world would need a cure for the deadly disease, as there was no other way to survive it.
Vaughn Volunteers For The First Trial
In the present time, Jake wants Foster and Vaughn’s help to let people know what’s really happening to them, so they arrange enough resources to start initial trials of the cure they have created. Jake is confident that his vaccination will work, but he has no idea how the body is going to react to the treatment. Jake explains that the cure is basically a fast-acting, highly communicable flu virus that acts like backburning a wildfire. Once it enters the bloodstream, it starts eradicating the beauty virus before it can kill the host. However, the beauty virus is likely going to resist the cure, which may have some side effects on the host, but Jake and Eddie never got the chance to figure out that part. Foster and Vaughn try to help Jake and his team, so they get some support to start clinical trials, but before Foster and Vaughn can get the word out to the public, Senator Robeson sends a ruthless assassin, Calaveras, to finish them off. Foster and Vaughn have to abandon their mission and run back to Jake’s hideout, where Vaughn herself decides to take the treatment without bothering about its potential side effects. A few hours later, Vaughn’s body burns from the outside, likely the effect of the backburning that Jake had explained earlier. Vaughn no longer looks like a beauty, but she never liked it anyway. She always hated the way the virus made her look. And now that she has finally gotten rid of the virus, she isn’t recognizable anymore. But hey, she doesn’t mind. From the inside, she’s still the same person she always wanted to be. Her whole body is covered with irreparable burn marks and scars, but she chooses to wear that withered skin like a badge of honor. Her new look reminds her that she’s a survivor who went through hell and made her way out of it. And more importantly, she no longer has to worry about exploding like a firebomb like the rest of the beauties out there.
Calaveras Is Dead
At the start of the story, Foster’s wife, Janna, had taken the beauty virus, which inevitably infected him as well after he had sex with his wife. The next morning, when Foster woke up, he couldn’t recognize himself anymore, and blamed Janna for it, leading to an argument between the two, with Janna finally leaving the house. All this while, Foster had refused to have any contact with Janna, because he didn’t have the strength to deal with his personal crisis. However, in the present time, after Vaughn takes the cure, she encourages Foster to give her a call, as the world has already been pushed to the brink of chaos, and one never knows which day is going to be their last. Vaughn wants Foster to meet her once, as she may still be waiting for his call. Shortly after Foster leaves the bunker where Vaughn has been injected with the cure, Calaveras attacks the facility and kills Jake and his men outside the lab. Well, I think Calaveras should have simply left, but he had an itch to finish the job, and therefore decided to wake up the monster sleeping peacefully in the facility. The moment he and his men walk inside the lab, Vaughn takes them out one by one, eventually killing the skull-masked assassin who has been threatening their lives for such a long time. In the end, Vaughn walks out of the lab, towards the field, to start a new chapter of her life.
In the meantime, Agent Brandon, who had a change of heart and had been helping Foster, Vaughn, and Jake to develop the cure, finally confronts her paymaster, Senator Robeson. Robeson tells her that Calaveras is going to bring him the cure and kill the rest of the team, but Brandon revolts and asks him to call him off. Robeson refuses, leaving Brandon with no other option than to inject the senator with the beauty virus so he’ll suffer the same fate as the rest of the world. In an impulse, Robeson shoots Brandon and kills her on the spot, while his fate remains unresolved.
Foster Takes The Cure
After seeing his wife, Foster heads directly to a crowded airport, where he injects himself with the vaccine. Earlier, Jake had explained that this cure was bound to another virus that was highly contagious, which was why they had to isolate Vaughn in a separate room in the bunker. So if Foster took this unapproved vaccine in public, then the flu virus is going to spread like wildfire, infecting everyone that Foster comes in contact with. However, we don’t know if this cure is going to affect just the beauties, or if it will have an adverse effect on normal people as well. I really wanted some answers here, but the comic book ended without shedding light on these details.
Other Stories
The sixth issue, or the first volume, of the comic book is basically the end of the main storyline, as the world eventually finds the cure to the deadly beauty virus. The creators of the comic book stated in an interview that they didn’t have a lot to discuss after the cure was found, which was why the following volumes of the comic book went on exploring other characters set in the same universe. These stories take place before the world finds a cure for the deadly virus. In the midst of it, we also have a volume that delves into the past lives of our detective duo, Foster and Vaughn, explaining exactly how Vaughn contracted the virus and how the duo became a part of the Beauty Task Force. And finally, in the last issue of the comic book, “All Good Things One-Shot,” the writers finally address the question: what happened to Foster and Vaughn after they took the vaccine?
Vaughn Is Back On Duty
The Beauty’s ending reveals that Vaughn is back to her usual life as a police detective, while Foster has taken an early retirement and is enjoying his life at sea with his wife, Janna. As the scene begins, Vaughn is on a call with Foster, who tells her that they were hit by a storm near Chile that added a couple days to their trip, but there’s nothing to worry about. The duo discuss how the world has changed completely after the beauty was wiped out. Everything is different, and they don’t know if it’s for the better or worse, but it is what it is. The issue also features a flashback sequence where Foster opens up to Vaughn and tells her that he’s tired of being a detective, and doesn’t know if it’s what he wants in life. This is when Vaughn asks her partner what he really wants, to which Foster replies that he wants to take a boat and just sail off and never turn back. So it seems like, after taking the cure, Foster finally found his calling and left the department for those adventurous ones out there. But even though Foster has been living his life, he asks the same question from Vaughn: what does she want in life? Vaughn replies that she always wanted to be a cop…a damned good one. The world has indeed become weirder with the beauty gone, and people are different, but her dreams haven’t changed a bit. She is exactly where she needs to be.
So this is how the story of the two detectives eventually ends. They are not partners anymore, but they are still friends, looking out for each other and sharing parts of their lives. However, if you are still concerned about what happened to Aberocorp and their founders, then I think with the virus finally destroyed, they won’t have much to look forward to either. My best guess is that they might have been charged and arrested for developing a bioweapon and withholding the cure from the world, which could have saved thousands, if not millions, of lives. This means if the old sisters are still alive, they might be rotting in some prison cell, counting their days. So, this was a basic summary of The Beauty, but if you have anything to add, please feel free to drop a comment below.
