Every big-time soap needs a big-time villain, and it’s starting to look like Leslie (Trisha Mann-Grant) may be that person on Beyond the Gates. Sure, Bill (Timon Kyle Durrett) is a loathsome jerk for what he’s done to Dani (Karla Mosley) and the Dupree family, Dani herself was just waving around a gun at Bill’s wedding and Hayley (Marquita Goings) is clearly selfish and annoyingly naive, but Leslie is starting to give us hints of The Bold and the Beautiful’s Sheila (Kimberlin Brown) and possibly even The Young and the Restless’ Patty (Stacy Haiduk).
Since Beyond the Gates launched, Leslie has been obsessed with Ted (Maurice Johnson) and Nicole (Daphnée Duplaix) and launching her revenge plot, years in the making. She is insistent that Ted wronged her and “their” daughter Eva (Ambyr Michelle), even recruiting Eva to get in on the scheme. Leslie has gone so far as to cause Nicole’s innocent assistant to crash, just so she can position Eva to take the assistant’s place, putting her close to “her father.”
If we played into the narrative that Ted was with Leslie years ago in a hot and steamy romance, and he fathered a child with her, it just seems like there are better ways to go after him for being an absentee parent. Heck, taking the successful doctor to court is a great place to start. But, it appears Leslie has just let Ted “abandoning” her and their child fester for years, pushing her to get revenge.
A scorned Leslie is obviously less concerned about her daughter when it comes to Ted and more concerned about her jilted heart, which is a big red flag as it pertains to her sanity. Bringing Sheila and Patty back up, both have done some truly heinous and criminal things in the name of love, including attempted murder. So we can’t help but think the closer Eva gets to the Richardsons, the more access Leslie will have in order to possibly eliminate Nicole. Again, she already nearly killed Nicole’s assistant who she has no problem with, so we have to assume she’ll be ready to take deadly measures with Nicole without blinking an eye.
And who’s to say Leslie doesn’t have an even longer rap sheet that supports the notion she’s criminally insane? Could she have murdered another one of Ted’s exes to eliminate her competition? Has she previously attempted to kill Ted or Nicole?
But perhaps we shouldn’t be referencing Sheila and Patty alone. The Young and the Restless recently wrapped an arc with a deranged woman named Jordan (Colleen Zenk) who went into a hospital nearly 30 years ago and kidnapped Victoria’s (Amelia Heinle) child, but let Victoria believe her daughter died. Then as the years went by, Jordan raised the young girl to hate Victoria and the Newman family, and worked with her to destroy the family. Could Beyond the Gates be working a similar angle? Is it possible that Nicole and Ted had a child before Martin they believed died, but Leslie actually kidnapped their child in some twisted plot of revenge to groom the kid to go after her own family years later?
We realize that some of our Leslie theories may sound twisted and wild, but we know the soap world can be dramatic and chaotic, so we can’t rule them out. By the way, on another note, is anyone else wondering what the Dupree matriarch Anita (Tamara Tunie) is hiding?
New episodes of Beyond the Gates air weekdays on CBS, and become available to stream the day after on Paramount Plus.
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