At the start of Season 2 of Beauty in Black, Kimmie (Taylor Polidore Williams) announces to the Bellarie family that she will no longer be treated with disrespect. By the end, she’s made that extremely clear — and she teams up with enemy turned ally Mallory (Crystle Stewart) and new husband Horace (Ricco Ross) to do so.
In Part 1 of the season, which dropped in September, former exotic dancer Kimmie became the new Mrs. Bellarie. The new HBIC — head Bellarie in charge, of course — has plenty of ideas for taking the Bellarie family’s Beauty in Black hair-care empire to the next level now that she’s chief operating officer.
The season follows the aftermath of Kimmie marrying her former client Horace and taking on the mantle of COO — much to the shock of Horace’s offspring, who thought inheriting the family business would be their birthright. Horace, however, has grown tired of the entitlement of his sons, Roy (Julian Horton) and Charles (Steven G. Norfleet) — not to mention his shady brother, Norman (Richard Lawson), and resentful ex-wife, Olivia (Debbi Morgan).
In Part 2, which is now streaming, Kimmie finds an unlikely ally in Mallory, who’s more than eager to cash in on the business she’s been running all these years — especially while taking down her unfaithful husband, Roy, in the process. There are also multiple murders, plenty of sex, and, of course, new problems our hero manages to find herself entangled in.
Read on to revisit the biggest revelations from Beauty in Black Season 2, now streaming on Netflix.
No, Kimmie does not die in Beauty in Black Season 2. After her hospital-bedside nuptials, Kimmie dives right into shaking things up at Beauty in Black. Horace tries to advise her on business matters while undergoing experimental cancer treatment in Italy, but she doesn’t need his help: She’s been doing her own research and has her own in-depth plan. We first met Kimmie at a business workshop, after all.
“Kimmie’s transformation has honestly been one of the highlights of my career so far,” Williams tells Tudum. “Getting to dive into a character’s evolution is one of my favorite things ever about acting. I think her confidence really stems from Horace. He believed in her from the start, and he’s been coaching her on how to not only survive this family but to take up her rightful space with them. Now we’re finally watching her step into that power, and it’s so fun to play.”
Kimmie presents the board with a fully formed plan to shake up the business, but the rest of the family worries it’ll end their free meal tickets. As the spurned Bellaries team up to try to fight Kimmie, she knows she needs the help of someone else inside the organization.
Enter Mallory. While the rest of the family lets their own pettiness consume them, Mallory realizes that Kimmie is her way out of this mess. Together, Kimmie, Horace, and Mallory might have the power to take down the bad influences in the Bellarie family. But that’s only if Kimmie’s able to clean up a few problems that pop up with her little sister, Sylvie (Bailey Tippen), and BFFs Rain (Amber Reign Smith) and Angel (Xavier Smalls).
“When I read that in the script I was like, finally! I knew they’d end up teaming up, because they’re just too much alike,” Williams tells Tudum. “Kimmie and Mallory have spent the whole season circling each other, but they’re also two of the smartest players in the room. Watching them go from enemies to reluctant allies was exciting because their conflicts don’t disappear. Everything just becomes more strategic.”
Mallory isn’t too happy about being dethroned from atop her hair-care empire, and she spends the first half of the season making sure Kimmie can’t take control of her business without a fight.
“Mallory doesn’t do ‘nice’ for very long,” Stewart told Tudum when Part 1 came out. “It’s more of a tactic than a personality trait. Once she realizes Kimmie isn’t impressed or intimidated by her charm, that mask is going to slip fast.”
The mask has never been up between Mallory and Roy, who have maintained a picture-perfect relationship in public but can barely stand each other behind closed doors. In Part 2, Roy’s philandering at the club and even in their own home ignites the simmering hatred Mallory has been harboring toward her husband.
In a fit of rage, she locks Roy and his flavor of the week in their bedroom and methodically runs an SUV into the side of their mansion, setting the house on fire and leaving Roy and his girl trapped in the flames. They escape, but after this breakdown, Mallory decides to partner with Kimmie and Horace to take down her husband and the rest of his enabling family.
“None of these characters are naive enough to fully trust the others, especially after everything they’ve been through,” Stewart tells Tudum. “What connects them is that they each understand the bigger picture and that there are forces around them that are even more dangerous. So in many ways, they need each other right now. It’s almost like a temporary alliance, where everyone has their own motivations and their own agenda.”
Unfortunately, Roy has put some of his illegal shell companies in Mallory’s name, implicating her in his wrongdoing.
Charles’s life on the DL — at least where his family is concerned — is over. After Roy walks in on him and attorney Varney (Terrell Carter) together, he weaponizes this intel by informing the rest of the family. But that situation is nothing compared to the mess Charles is in after the most recent robbery attempt against him.
In Part 1, a few club employees try to relieve him of some fancy watches and other valuables following a night of partying. Charles shoots and kills them. He asks for Varney’s help in handling the situation, and Varney walks in on Charles going full Dexter, trying to dismember and dispose of the bodies.
In Part 2, Varney tells Charles to handle the situation himself — so Charles calls his mother instead. Olivia shows up much more prepared than anyone expected: She has a cleanup crew on speed dial. “Charles is going to [owe] her big time, and she does plan to collect,” Morgan tells Tudum. That’s not a metaphorical debt, either — she needs cash, and fast.
Olivia’s cleanup crew works fast, but it comes at a price: She already owes money to the organization she calls in, and they need to be repaid ASAP. The amount she charges Charles isn’t even everything she owes them. She negotiates a bit more time before the situation becomes life-or-death, but it’s more of a stay of execution than anything else.
While Kimmie has things handled at work, chaos reigns at home. Her BFF Rain might have survived her botched BBL — and the results are better than you’d think after she was hospitalized near death — but she wants revenge. Rain enlists Officer Alex (Bryan Tanaka), who’s been assigned by the head of security, Jules (Charles Malik Whitfield), to keep an eye on Kimmie and company, to help. Alex and Rain grow closer as he drives her around the city, which is why, when she confronts Daga (TS Madison) for disfiguring and almost killing her, Officer Alex shoots Daga and her accomplice from the club, Shake Shake (Shayla Bell).
Back at the Bellarie compound, Rain gets into more trouble by pushing Jules’s son, Glen (Ace Small), out a window when she walks in on him having sex with Sylvie. (Rain mistakenly thinks Sylvie is being assaulted.) Glen is rushed to the hospital with life-threatening injuries; he lies in a coma as the doctors try to save him.
He’s eventually declared brain-dead. Jules makes the difficult decision to pull the plug, and Glen dies. While Jules is suspicious that Kimmie’s crew had something to do with Glen’s fall, he has no proof — yet.
While Horace inadvertently gives the OK to have Angel killed, the attempted hit fails. (Angel, unhurt, plays dead after being sprayed with bullets at a bus stop). But if Jules and his crew find out he’s still alive, they’ll go after his baby mama and kid, so he hides out at Horace’s — and takes advantage of the black card at his disposal, recklessly splurging on shopping and partying.
Good things can’t last forever, though, because mobile banking still works in Italy. Horace sees the damage to his credit card bill and cuts Angel off.
Yes, the Italian doctors tell Horace that the experimental treatments he’s receiving are working. At the end of the season, he flies back to Chicago just in time to support Kimmie and Mallory in their bid to push the rest of the Bellarie family out of the business for good. He informs the family that this new trio of allies has turned state’s evidence — aka handed over information to the government — and called in the feds.
“Checkmate, motherfucker,” he tells his family as the FBI raids the office.
Horace is good with his new allies — “I think Horace trusts Kimmie, and Kimmie is beginning to trust Horace,” Williams says — but the two women are still skeptical of each other. “Trust might be a strong word,” she says. “I think they all understand each other. In that world, everyone is dangerous, and they completely understand that they must look out for themselves. But sometimes survival means recognizing when your enemy might also be your best ally.”
Just because these three characters are working together for now doesn’t mean it’ll stay that way. “They may be standing on the same side of the battlefield for the moment, but that doesn’t mean they’re not also watching each other very closely,” Stewart says. “The tension, the drama, and the power struggles are only going to deepen from here, and viewers are going to see these characters pushed further than ever before.”
Stay tuned to Tudum for more intel on Beauty in Black, and learn more about Season 3 here.
