The drama of The Gilded Age features several antagonists, but in the first season, we realized that the ‘good guy’ Tom Raikes (Thomas Cocquerel) was at least careless with Marian Brook (Louisa Jacobson), being very suspicious from the get-go and an overwhelmed man in New York (for me, a scoundrel). After Marian’s suffering, there is no doubt that the second season is meant to break the hearts of the Van Rhijns, especially Oscar’s (Blake Ritson).

Pressured by society to hide his romance with John Adams (Claybourne Elder), his true love, Oscar Van Rhijn has been the series’s greatest victim since the first episode. He was beaten – literally – when he was in a gay bar, he was forced to choose a wife to have children, and his candidate had to have money… his life is not easy at all. Therefore, the entry of Maud Beaton (Nicole Brydon Bloom) seemed like an angel entering his life. It’s not even a spoiler; we already realize that our Oscar was the victim of a financial scam, but he’s not the only one to fall for the well-crafted farce of this young woman, who has been attending parties and cheating everyone. Let’s remember and try to decipher who Maud Beaton is.

Several new faces circulated between New York and Newport this season of The Gilded Age. Among them is the young Maud Beaton. Maud appeared beautiful, beautiful at a party in Newport, and we saw her for the first time accompanied by Aurora Fane (Kelli O’Hara) and Marian. It is Aurora – committed to finding a husband and wife for her cousins – who recommends her to Oscar. She looks perfect.

As soon as we meet the young woman, we see that she knows how to name the right names, appearing intimate but without clarifying her relationships. She tells Oscar that she has heard about Agnes (Christine Baranski) through “Mrs. Drexel”, a friend of his mother whom Oscar “adores” and assumes is the best social reference for Maud. She disguises it, explaining that she is not staying with the Drexels, but with “friends who live near Mrs. Fish”, taking the opportunity to mention that she attends parties at Mrs. Fish’s house too.

Here, there is already a yellow flag due to the subtlety in which Maud mentions people she knows but omits some facts: the main one is saying where she is staying and with whom. Oscar is so enchanted that he ignores it and asks if, with so many acquaintances in common, they hadn’t bumped into each other, but once again, Maud has an evasive answer: they had never met because she “lived in Europe for a good part of her life”. In Paris. For him, everything makes sense.

The problem with Maud’s hoax is that she first deceived society very well, with a convincing story. So much so that Aurora explains what she heard about her with “It’s complicated”, as she says. The story is that officially, Maud is the daughter of the late John Beaton, but rumor has it that her real father is the feared Jay Gould. “And he takes interest in her,” says Oscar’s cousin, arguing that she has no idea if it’s true, but “she seems to have a good fortune at her disposal.” It’s Oscar’s bait, a man openly seeking a rich wife.

In this case, there would be no way for Oscar to question what Aurora said, so much so that she was the one who presented them with a request, “Don’t make me regret it because she is a good girl, whatever the truth about her.” The words referred to gossip, but we know that they will soon have another meaning.

“She’s at every party.”

“She’s at all the parties”, Aurora comments, considering this as evidence that Maud really has the relationships she mentions, but she never proves it. It would be another yellow sign that everyone ignored. Even John Adams knew of “the lovely Miss. Beaton”, so the blow was very well done.

Aurora tried her best to find out “who Maud Beaton is” and when she commented to Agnes about Oscar’s interest, she said that Maud’s mother “is from the Stuyvesant family”, but that when she lost her mother, the young woman went to live in Europe, where she stayed for a while “until she recovered”. And another sign we should have paid attention to: “I think she has some kind of paid escort,” she mentioned to Oscar earlier on. ‘I think, ‘they say, ‘it seems like’ is the way people talk about the girl. Does anyone really know Maud Beaton?

Her supposed connection with the Stuyvesants even deceives Agnes. When she learns that Maud may have piqued Oscar’s interest, she asks, “What do we know about her?” and when she learns about this connection with the traditional New York family, she is satisfied. The only one with sensitivity who can find out more is Ada (Cynthia Nixon), who suggests that they “ask Mrs. Fish’s husband [about Maud], after all, his grandmother was a Stuyvesant.” Unfortunately, as always, Ada is ignored. If they had asked that simple question, they would clearly know the truth. As Agnes only wants to know if Maud is rich, she discards the idea because Maud meets all the requirements. I go further, exactly because it was Aurora who introduced the young girl to the family, no one thought it necessary to investigate.

Excessively attentive to all the gossip

Maud is elegant, discreet, but… gossipy. It was she who signaled that she had already noticed the romance between Larry (Harry Richardson) and Susan (Laura Benanti), which revealed her mind is attentive to details and secrets that others try to hide. At the dinner for the Duke of Buckingham (Ben Lamb), she asked Enid Turner (Kelley Curran) how she and Oscar knew each other, and the two disguised the truth with an answer of “We were almost neighbors”. I don’t know if Maud didn’t already knew because when she looked at Mr. Winterton talking to the actress Lilly Langtry – a real character – she immediately said that Lilly was the lover of the Prince of Wales (and future King Edward VII), another historical fact, but in fact a scandalous time. In other words, in addition to New York parties, Maud also claims to have frequented London society.

When we pay attention to who Maud suggests she is – a scammer – the innocent question she asks Oscar is, “What did Aurora say about me to you?” It’s time to advance in the game that only she knows is happening, and Oscar’s sweet response, “just that your family is complicated, like all the ones I know”, is the green light for her to act. And it’s fast.

Assuming that Oscar knows about the alleged connection with Jay Gould, she says that her father “is using her to do business without attaching his own name.” It would be another warning, but still, in the role of the innocent young woman with no knowledge of how to manage her own life, she says she cannot deny her father anything. Oscar assumes that she is talking about Gould and says that he would like to help her, but I think that she was making him believe that he was the businessman; in fact, it is her real father who is stealing from the greedy rich people with her.

In a sexist society, a smart woman was able to use patriarchy for her own ends: Maud pretends to be incapable of understanding the financial market, crying that she “hates being part of her father’s fraudulent scheme”, but without knowing how to act. A man from that time was salvation, and Oscar obviously offers to help. “I’m a banker, I can be useful,” he says. Her smile gave me goosebumps.

The final straw in the moral and financial beating that Oscar is about to take, once again, Maud puts Aurora on the straight and narrow. She visits the suitor’s cousin and asks about his reputation as a “fortune hunter”. “If it is, it won’t be the first, but I don’t want to be disappointed again,” she says. With Aurora’s nervous reaction, she knows how much money is the central motivator for Oscar to be with her. She says goodbye and leaves.

At this point, Oscar is emotional about the drama at home and his aunt Ada’s wedding, which Maud takes advantage of to say she’s a romantic like all women, but let’s notice that she says this when she brings him to accompany her to a business meeting with an aloof Mr. Crowther. Before long, Oscar clarifies that Maud explained that the secret investment she is in doubt about is the purchase of the Chicago Railroad by a select group of investors. Everything is orchestrated to seduce a voluble Oscar, using Gould’s name as a reference but without ever giving a single proof. Oscar falls like a duck. So much so that he returns to the office alone to invest his own money. The scammers are so professional that they even pretend to try to convince him to give up, but he is deceived by the guarantee of a high return and invests an even larger amount. That’s right, darlings: Oscar will be humiliated and left poor. It remains to be seen whether it is Agnes’s fortune that he throws in the trash. But there’s more.

How do we know that Maud is really a fraud? If there were still enough hints missing, Oscar comes to meet her at home and finds her waiting for him on the street, in front of the house, and not inside as a lady of the time would have done. Maud claimed she went out to get air. Guys, she was never at the address they believed was hers. She only knew how to name names and situations, and no one questioned her. She knew that Oscar would ask her to marry him, so she told him that she was going away and would be back soon. Convenient, right? To chill us once again, she asks, smiling: “You’re not afraid to take risks, right?”, letting him kiss her. To be fair, there is still hope that she was sincere when she said she said she would like to see him again. Poor Oscar. Literally. He didn’t get that it was a farewell, nor did he catch any of the various warnings along the way. It won’t be an easy season for him…

And who is the real Maud Beaton? In fact, we learn a bit more about her in Season 3, when she makes a brief return. She is, if she’s telling the truth this time, “Dolly Trent,” originally from Arizona and a victim of scams and abuse ever since she arrived in New York, being forced into prostitution and used as bait in schemes like the one that targeted Oscar.

The Van Rhijn fortune is gone, there’s no getting it back, but Oscar, moved by Dolly/Maud’s story, chooses not to report her to the police. Instead, he buys her a ticket so she can escape New York and start over somewhere far away. She tearfully says she regrets deceiving him because she truly liked him. Either way, she boards the train (apparently) and leaves. Will she return?

Probably yes, because thanks to her, another drama unfolded: Marian discovered that Larry had lied to her — that he had gone to the cabaret — and broke off the engagement. We ended the season with her forgiving him (after confirming that he “didn’t do anything”), but now it’s Larry who is hurt and upset with Marian. I can forgive every penny she stole from Oscar — though I do feel sorry for him — but breaking up Larian? Never!

* Updated in September 2025

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