The Beast in Me Recap: Like Father, Like Son

"Exactly what kind of twisted family is this? Well, it's the kind in which 8-year-old twin brothers are encouraged to fight, literally, over their iPad. Martin lets them have at it. "Survival of the fittest," Nile explains to Aggie over an interview, "that is my father's dogma." Martin is a tough, no-nonsense, Logan Roy kind of patriarch, inclined to making his children squirm. And having children he can torture is what matters to him."

"The most disturbing (and telling) story Nile tells about Martin involves Nile's late mother, whose cervical stenosis led her to miscarry literally a dozen times before her first child. "The pregnancy nearly killed her," Nile says, and the doctor advised her to not have any more children. But Martin wouldn't have that, and he wouldn't have an adopted child, either."

Martin Jarvis co-owns MHJ Real Estate Corp with his son and is the older half-brother of Rick. Martin enforces a survival-of-the-fittest dogma that encourages cruelty, such as letting eight-year-old twins physically fight over an iPad. Martin behaves as a domineering, Logan Roy–style patriarch who values producing and tormenting children. Martin pressured his first wife through repeated pregnancies despite cervical stenosis, causing many miscarriages and her eventual death from ovarian cancer, and he refused adoption. Martin later fathered IVF twins with a new wife. Nile internalized this upbringing and fears his father’s reaction, shaping his violent tendencies.

Read at Vulture