Reviewing Every Villainess from Season One of "Just Beyond"

R.L. Stine, you've done it again!

The family-friendly horror icon who gave us Goosebumps, Fear Street, The Nightmare Room, and The Haunting Hour now gives us Just Beyond, yet another series of books that has been adapted for the small screen! I remember seeing promos for this and as soon as I saw R.L. Stine's name, I said, "Sign me up!"--Stine creates nothing but gold. On October 13, 2021, the entire first season of Just Beyond hit Disney+, and I finally watched the entire eight episode season last weekend. To no surprise, I loved every episode, as well as all of the twists and turns, and have my fingers crossed that we get a second season.

As far as the season's villainess tally, out of eight episodes, we had three female baddies, and all of them were quite interesting. Without further ado, let's get this review started.

Miss Genevieve: The very first episode, "Leave Them Kids Alone," centered on Veronica Vanderhall, whose rebellious behavior drew immense concern from her parents--to the point where Veronica was set to an all-girls school: Miss Genevieve's School for Difficult Girls (that title isn't off-putting at all). The school is basically a nest for "proper" girls all dressed in uniformed dresses and outdated hairstyles, with the headmistress, the titular Miss Evelyn Genevieve, leading the charge and vowing to mold Veronica into her "perfect" image, which is what Veronica's parents want.

Veronica's encounter with fellow student Claire Driscoll ends up being very eye-opening, as Veronica learns what we viewers figured: the girls are being brainwashed. As it turns out, the so-called "salon" where the girls get their hairstyles is also where they are literally controlled by Miss Genevieve to act "proper," with the sinister headmistress being shown with another victim. Claire evaded this due to a metal plate in her head, but on the following day, Veronica sees that Claire had fallen under the salon's power, as the plate was pinpointed.

Just as Veronica was informing her roommate, Heather Corbett, that she was resigning to her fate, Veronica's radio plays, and the music suddenly brings Heather out of her funk. This leads to Veronica standing up to Miss Genevieve as she is being taken to the salon, leading to the villainess ranting that today's children were "out of control and full of themselves," using her rhetoric as a reason for her brainwashing her students. Veronica later gave the signal to play the rock music, and all of the girls were back to their normal selves, leaving a frantic Miss Genevieve to attempt to get the girls back to class, to no avail.

Thoughts: It's always good to see a villainess kick off a series, and Miss Genevieve was quite a fiendish one. Even more epic was the fact that Miss Genevieve was played by Saturday Night Live alum Nasim Pedrad, who is known for her comedic timing and her hilarious characters and impressions (especially her impression of Kim Kardashian), but regarding this role, Pedrad excelled while acting out Miss Genevieve's sinister and cold-hearted nature. This isn't Pedrad's first villainous role; she recurred as villainess Gigi Caldwell on Fox's short-lived series, Scream Queens.

For Miss Genevieve's profile on Villainous Beauties Wiki, click here.

Madison: The third episode, "Which Witch?," gave us Madison, the stereotypical queen bee of a high school attended by Fiona, who is the only teen witch at her school. Fiona, however, opts to hide her identity as a witch in favor of normalcy, though Madison doesn't make it easy for Fiona, as she takes every opportunity to mock Fiona at every turn. She even claims that she would be attending the school's dance with popular boy Emilio, but as it turned out, Emilio would ask out Fiona, who accepts.

Fiona is later visited by her British cousin, Luna, who is also a witch, but doesn't hide it. When Madison encounters Luna, she is threatened with a curse when Madison continues to tease Fiona, but despite this, Fiona lashes out at Luna, as she wanted to continue to blend in. As we later see, Madison steals Luna's wand, and the night of the dance sees the evil queen bee use Luna to send a wave of flying insects to wreak havoc at the dance. Her plan was to set up and humiliate Fiona, which almost works when even Fiona's friends suspect her, but with Luna's help, not only does Fiona embrace her "witchiness" (if that's a word), but she also outs Madison as the true culprit and regains the wand, which she uses to get the dance back on track.

Thoughts: Sarah Borne appeared in this episode as Madison, who was your typical queen bee bully. It's been said that all bullies have insecurities, and it was clear that Madison definitely had some; she clearly didn't want to take any chances regarding the possibility of Fiona outshining her popularity at school. Even worse, Madison decided to play on the fears and people's stereotypes of witches to destroy Fiona. This was an amazing performance from Borne, who acted out Madison's arrogance and bullying demeanor very well.

For Madison's profile on Villainous Beauties Wiki, click here.

Ms. Fausse: The best one, IMO, out of the three was featured in the fifth episode, "Unfiltered," which centered on brainy student Lily Renton, as well as her insecurities regarding her looks. We are later introduced to Ms. Fausse, a substitute art teacher at her school, and she later approached Lily and voiced her sympathy towards her, right before showing Lily a beauty app known as "Let it Glow." Lily downloads the app, and her first use sees her actually change her appearance with a touch-up of her photo, resulting in a brand new look and hairstyle.

However, it is said that beauty comes with a price, and in Lily's case, the price was her intelligence. Nevertheless, Lily basked in her new look and popularity, to the point where she was hanging out with a group of popular girls led by Harper--who later mocks Lily's crush on soccer star Ben. Lily uses the app again, but while her beauty increased again, her IQ took a further decline--to the point where her incorrect answers during the Quiz Bowl's semifinals nearly cost her team. Lily was ejected from the team by her friend Carmen Morris, with Lily even resorting to accusing Carmen of being jealous of her, while Ms. Fausee appeared and supported Lily's new look and popularity.

Lily appeared at a party and approached Ben, but after hearing Ben's comments about another girl, she used the app again, though the results were disastrous. Lily ended up looking, well, "Real Housewives-ish" (for lack of a better description), and after Ben tells her that he loved how smart she was, Lily runs off to Ms. Fausse's home, where she sees people trapped in various mirrors, including herself. Ms. Fausse later appeared and revealed that the "people" were essences of those who wanted to change their imperfections, while revealing that she had been stealing essences for her own beauty for centuries. The villainess also stated that Lily can't undo what she had done, and stated that people would always choose outer beauty over inner beauty, prompting Lily to smash the mirror with her essence in anger. Upon seeing that her action weakened Ms. Fausse, Lily destroyed all of the mirrors, causing Ms. Fausse to age immensely before disintegrating, with Lily returned to normal.

Thoughts: I really loved this episode, as well as its villainess, Ms. Fausse, played by Christina Ko. The reason was simple: the episode was similar to "Headshot," an episode of another R.L. Stine series, The Haunting Hour. That episode also centered on an obsession with beauty, and also featured a demonic villainess, Cassandra Hobbs, manipulating young girls into developing their aforementioned obsession, with Lily Renton being in the same role as Gracie Wild in that episode. Because of this, I knew that Ms. Fausse was evil from jump street, and while Ko played her character's assumed care for Lily very well, she truly shined in Ms. Fausse's reveal, as it saw Ko act out Ms. Fausse's evil nature to perfection. This was a terrific performance from Ko, and in addition, I was also glad that it ended happier for Lily than "Headshot" did for Gracie. In "Headshot," Cassandra got away scot-free, while Gracie turned heel in her quest for fame, and it ended up costing her big time.

For Ms. Fausse's profile on Villainous Beauties Wiki, click here.

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