Venice.
The FBI agents arrive in Italy with a clear mission, but traveling across the world does not discourage them. On the contrary. There is a sense that they are facing something larger than a series of crimes. At the crime scene, they find yet another body destroyed from the inside, consumed by the same phenomenon they had already witnessed in Paris, Berlin, and London. In the victim’s room, one detail stands out: the Egyptian symbol of beauty, nefer. This is not just a virus. It is an idea.

In Rome, the narrative shifts to another axis of the story. A hired assassin tracks down a man accused of stealing the beauty formula and spreading the infection. The corporation behind the product makes its creed clear: beautiful people do not need to follow rules. The mission is carried out without hesitation. Here, beauty is not merely aesthetic. It is power.

The victim in Venice had posted a video shortly before dying. “Don’t do it,” she warns. But the message is too vague. It is unclear whom she is addressing or what exactly she is trying to prevent. As Jordan and Cooper attempt to decode the warning, they are called back to the United States. In New York, the editor-in-chief of Vogue has exploded.

On a personal level, the relationship between the two agents begins to shift. Jordan likes Cooper, but she realizes he is getting too involved. What exists between them is supposed to be casual. Cooper insists they are on the same page. Yet doubt has already taken root.

Tension escalates when Cooper is attacked by two men on his way to the hotel. After a brutal fight, he manages to escape. Far away from him, Jordan decides to spend the night with a stranger. When she wakes up, something is wrong. Her body collapses. The thirst returns, pain spreads, her interior seems to burn. Jordan breaks down, literally. She has been infected.

What follows echoes the process Jeremy went through in the previous episode. A cocoon, a metamorphosis, a rebirth. But unlike him, Jordan does not celebrate. When she reemerges with a perfect body, her reaction is not euphoria. It is despair.

In its second episode, The Beauty ceases to be merely a series about victims and investigators. Jordan stops being an observer of horror and becomes part of it. And it is at this moment that Ryan Murphy radicalizes his thesis: the beauty virus is not just an external threat. It is the desire that everyone, at some level, has already accepted.