The Beast

"You don't like "lackey"? Hmm. Or how about, uh, toady? Or lickspittle? Lickspittle's nice. Oh, wait, I got it. Flunky. That's it. You're just a big, stupid, butt-ugly, slow-moving flunky."

- Angelus

The Beast was a powerful demon and the enforcer of the deity eventually known as Jasmine.

Biography
In 1789, the Beast was in Prussia; the Svear Priestesses were going to banish him from this dimension and had cast a spell so that he could not touch them. In an attempt to get assistance, he slaughtered several people in order to attract Angelus to him, at which point he attempted to create a mutual alliance with him. He wanted Angelus to kill the Svear and in return, the Beast would pay him back somewhere down the line; Angelus refused and was subsequently beaten half to death before the priestesses arrived to banish the Beast.

Eventually, the Beast rose up from the pits of hell. The first people to encounter the Beast were Cordelia and Connor, who found the Beast arriving on Earth at the exact spot where Connor had been born. A fight ensues, during which Cordelia was injured. Believing that he had something to do with the coming apocalypse, Connor distanced himself from his teammates, who did not trust him. Angel, Gunn, and Lorne decided to take on The Beast. Wesley rejoined them to help in the battle, but they failed and were all badly injured. With the help of a large human sacrifice at the Sky Temple, the Beast conjured the Rain of Fire over Los Angeles.

The Beast, seeking to reach Mesektet (The Little Girl of the White Room), killed everyone working at Wolfram & Hart as he tried to reach the White Room, activating the building's security protocols which turned the majority of his victims into zombies. The Beast killed Mesektet and drained her of her dark energy. Following the death of Mesektet, the Beast hunted down the rest of her "family", an order of mystical beings known as the Ra-Tet. Ma'at, Ashet, and Semkhet were killed by the Beast. The final Ra-Tet, Manjet, was killed by Jasmine/Cordelia in secret. Using the metal wings in Ashet and Semkhet and the heart of Ma'at, the Beast made a ritual to eclipse the sun, which was completed when the dark energy of Mesektet was imbued in the orb which was extracted from Manjet's head. The eclipse began as a sunlight-blocking spot that spread covering Los Angeles and was supposed to eventually cover the totality of Earth.

Angel's team believed that their only hope was in Angel's evil alter ego Angelus, who apparently knew the Beast in the past, even though Angel himself did not remember the encounter. This was revealed to be because all references to the Beast in this dimension were magically erased shortly before its arrival; Angelus was the only entity in this dimension unaffected, as he did not technically exist at the time the spell was cast.

Once freed, Angelus was eventually convinced to reveal the details of his encounter with the Beast, also revealing the "bonus" information that the Beast was actually the minion of a greater evil; the Beast Angelus had encountered was only ever interested in destruction, while his current actions hinted at a deeper, more long-term plan that didn't fit with Angelus's recollections of him. After Angel's soul was stolen and a ritual to restore his soul via dark magic was faked &mdash; the ritual actually temporarily clouded Lorne's ability to read others so that he would read Angel/Angelus as possessing a soul when he sang &mdash; Angelus broke free and sought out the Beast to learn what its next plan was, although he mockingly rejected the Beast's offer to work for his master.

With their options increasingly limited in the face of the Beast and Angelus, Wesley broke Faith out of jail to assist in Angelus' capture and fight the Beast. Although the Slayer was little match for the physically imposing demon, he was in the end betrayed by Angelus, who stabbed him with the knife the Beast had carved out of his own bones as a tribute to his master. The death of the Beast also undid the solar eclipse, leaving Faith in the sunlight and Angelus confined to the shadows, much to the latter's annoyance (Angelus didn't expect that the Beast's death would restore the sun).

Powers and abilities
"Pretty much the only thing that could do damage to that thick, stony hide... is himself. Or, maybe, I don't know, a piece of himself."

- Angelus

The Beast was a particularly powerful demon, capable of effortlessly defeating the entire Angel Investigations team during their first battle, even going so far as to stab Angel in the neck with his own stake. He also possessed a rock-like hide, rendering him extremely resistant to physical damage; he withstood attacks from Angel and Faith without any sign of damage, and even shotgun blasts did little more than knock him off-balance for a few seconds. His strength allowed him to perform massive leaps. The Beast also hit Connor and Faith on separate occasions with a reverse punch which sent both flying back approximately ten to fifteen feet with no apparent downward arc in their trajectory, and in both cases their momentum was only stopped by impacting a large, solid object (in Connor's case, a metal dumpster, and in Faith's case, a large storage crate which was shattered by the force that she impacted it with).

However, the Beast had two weaknesses. The most obvious weakness is that his bulk made him incredibly slow, leaving him outmatched by Angelus's speed, allowing the vampire to easily avoid his blows and even find time to crack jokes while doing so (however, it should be noted that Angelus was more concerned with dodging the Beast's attacks than actually fighting back). In addition, the material of which his own bones were composed of was capable of piercing through his skin, although the difficulty involved in acquiring such a weapon make it hard to exploit this disadvantage.

In addition to his almost limitless physical abilities, the Beast had great magical abilities, allowing him to perform spells and rituals such as the Rain of Fire, draining Mesektet of her dark essence and performing the ritual to blot out the sun, although it is unclear whether he acquired this power himself or was simply using power that his 'master' had provided him with.

Behind the Scenes

 * He was portrayed by Vladimir Kulich.


 * The Beast was written so that audiences would assume that he would be the season's Big Bad, in order to distract audiences from the Cordelia/Jasmine plotline. The Beast and Jasmine (in Cordelia's body) both made their first appearance in the same episode.

Appearances

 * "Spin the Bottle"
 * "Apocalypse, Nowish"
 * "Habeas Corpses"
 * "Long Day's Journey"
 * "Awakening" (only in Angel's fantasy)
 * "Soulless"
 * "Calvary"
 * "Salvage"