(Warning: This post contains spoilers for “Chambers” through the Season 1 finale)
Ben Lefevre is no more and it’s pretty much all his fault. On the second-to-last episode of the first season of Netflix’s new horror series “Chambers,” Tony Goldwyn’s character is killed by his wife Nancy (Uma Thurman) when she discovers he led their teenage daughter Becky (Lilliya Scarlett Reid) to commit suicide by helping the cult The Annex resurrect the spirit of Adam’s first wife, Lilith, inside the girl. (Yes, Lilith the first wife of Adam, of “Adam and Eve” fame.)
TheWrap spoke with Goldwyn about the “tragic mistake” Ben made and how it set the entire series in motion, as Becky’s suicide led to Sasha (Sivan Alyra Rose) receiving both her heart and Lilith’s spirit, which is something he knew about the character from the very beginning. And that’s because “Chambers” creator Leah Rachel needed him to know what he was getting himself into.
“Leah really wanted to talk through the entire backstory of Ben and what actually went down and what happened,” Goldwyn said. “And it was very important for me in this to understand that — that he was part of this spiritual community and was a leader in this spiritual community. And this spirit of Lilith that this foundation and group revere, they’re deeply into it in a very bizarre way.”
“But the idea of letting the spirit of Lilith, of the powerful woman archetype into my daughter as the embodiment, we believed that would save the world and transform culture and save the world from a patriarchal society that was leading to our ruin,” he continued. “That’s what these people believed. So they very much believed that Becky, my daughter, was going to be the child to do that. So Ben was all in with that and only believed — this is a major spoiler alert — but only believed this was going to bring beauty and love and goodness to the world. And none of them knew what they were getting themselves into with these rituals.”
For Goldwyn, the “only sin that Ben commits — other than making this tragic mistake that he was unaware of and being naive and foolish — was the sin of omission by not telling Nancy about this, and frankly not telling Becky.” And that is what led to him being killed by his wife in a fit of rage.
“Because the fact that they were secretive about it, because The Annex thought they would get some push back and people wouldn’t understand and that Nancy wouldn’t understand,” he said. “That there was a cabal about this, that was the great transgression that Ben is constantly trying to work his way out of throughout the entire series. In his relationship with Nancy, that’s his guilt. And he’s in denial about it and it starts to creepy on him through the episodes and he starts to realize that he had culpability in this somehow or that they did something wrong, even though he deeply believed that it was not wrong.”
The “Scandal” alum told us that at his core, Ben is “a guy who lost the thing he loved most in the world, which was his daughter” and he really relates to that as a parent of daughters himself.
So because Ben is dead — but this show is, as Rachel put it herself, “really f–ked up” and weird — does that mean Goldwyn won’t return for a possible second season?
“I don’t know. Look, I don’t know a safe answer yet,” he told us, laughing. “I committed for one season and that is what my arrangement was with Netflix, that I would do one season. I don’t know if Leah is gonna come back and say, ‘Hey, I have a crazy idea, what do you think?’ I just have no idea. But I just committed for a season, so as far as I know, Ben’s story is closed. But Leah might have other things in mind that she would want to talk to me about.”
“This world is so weird that anything could happen,” he added.
Let’s hope so! If you are still a bit confused about the season’s ending, you can read Rachel’s own explanation to TheWrap here, and everything she says you might have missed on “Chambers” here.
“Chambers” Season 1 is streaming now on Netflix.