| Beef Nate | |
|---|---|
 Beef Nate, None Shall Pass 2: The Children's Crusade | |
 Evil Beef Nate, None Shall Pass 6: The Blood Oath | |
 Young Beef Nate in Timeline B, None Shall Pass 9: Red Tooth and Claw | |
| Full name | Beef Nate Kavanaugh |
| First appearance | None Shall Pass (2007) |
| Last appearance | None Shall Pass 9: Red Tooth and Claw (2018) |
| Role | Protagonist of the first three films; antagonist, as Evil Beef Nate, of the fourth through sixth; protagonist, as Young Beef Nate, of the seventh through ninth |
| Timelines | Timeline A (Prime), Timeline B (Divergent), Timeline C (created in the finale) |
| Affiliations | His own circle of friends (first three films); his own court of lieutenants and henchmen (fourth through sixth films); the Timeline B resistance (seventh through ninth films) |
| Title | Chosen One of Timeline A |
| Lineage | Described as a reincarnating hero and an incarnation of Cúchulainn; son of Autumn |
| Spouses | Raisa (Timeline A; widowed); Nadia (Timeline A); Kristal (Timeline A, as Evil Beef Nate); Cristina (Timeline B; widowed); Julia (Timeline B) |
| Status | Alive at the close of the series, in Timeline C |
Beef Nate is the central character of the None Shall Pass film series (2007 to 2018). He is introduced as a young man in California's South Bay who goes to war with a local gang over a girl and a kidnapped friend, wins, disappears for eight years, and returns as the very kind of figure he had once fought. The series presents one person from three vantage points: the hero of the first trilogy, the villain of the second, and a younger variant of the same man who is stranded in a divergent timeline and must confront both.
¶ Naming: the three Beef Nates
The series and this wiki use three names for what is, in narrative terms, two people.
- Beef Nate is the protagonist of the first three films, set in Timeline A.
- Evil Beef Nate is the same man eight years later, from the fourth film onward. He is neither a double nor a possessed body. He is the Beef Nate of the first trilogy further along in time, shaped by the shadow war into its next tyrant. From the eighth film he is also an invader in Timeline B.
- Young Beef Nate is a variant. When Ronald travels back to the era of the first film to assassinate Beef Nate before he can turn evil, an event that splits reality into Timelines A and B, he stabs Beef Nate at the moment immediately after Beef Nate has asked Shereen out. That Beef Nate is stranded in Timeline B. He never goes on the date, never confronts Chris, and never meets the Timeline A Necromancer. When Evil Beef Nate eventually stands before him, Evil Beef Nate is therefore not strictly his own future but the future of the Beef Nate he might have become.
The nickname is used on screen by friends and enemies alike. Gordon's battle cry in None Shall Pass 3: The Dark Ages is "Kill. Beef. Nate!", and Ronald addresses the resurrected Raisa as "wife of Beef Nate." The surname is spoken twice: once as a question in the first film, and once by Evil Beef Nate himself, introducing his wife as "Kristal... Kavanaugh."
In the finale Evil Beef Nate offers his own reading of the relationship to Young Beef Nate: that the two of them are the same person, and that Young Beef Nate needs no friends, only him. Young Beef Nate's reply is that he needs his friends and does not need Evil Beef Nate.
¶ Biography: Timeline A
¶ The war with the Syndicate
In None Shall Pass (2007), the first film in the series, Beef Nate asks Shereen out at a fountain. Her brother Chris, a gang leader who is secretly the Necromancer's pawn, forbids the relationship, and the refusal escalates into open conflict when Chris kidnaps Beef Nate's youngest friend, Keegan. The bedridden Mike warns Beef Nate of what he is dealing with ("He's got mob ties. He's a killer!") and deduces that there is a traitor in the group. The traitor is Alex, who secretly helped Chris take Keegan; Keegan's mother confronts him with it and curses him ("There's no redemption for what you've done!"), and Alex returns to Beef Nate's side.
Beef Nate rallies what remains of his friends and leads them, armed, against the Syndicate. He marches in sunglasses and carries a sword, and the film's title card appears in the middle of the battle. The fight, which takes place off screen, costs the lives of Chris, Adam and Viggy on the Syndicate's side, leaving Max its only survivor, and of Greg, Alex and Little Dave on Beef Nate's. Beef Nate survives, as does Mike, who was too ill to march. The film's epilogue shows Beef Nate waking from a nightmare.
¶ The dead walk
None Shall Pass 2: The Children's Crusade (TCC) opens on Beef Nate's romance with Raisa. The dead then return: first Keegan, confronting Max, his old guard, outside a store ("I told you I knew what it was like to be dead, brah!"), then Alex and Greg, and Little Dave, who pulls a stake from his own chest and stands. Beef Nate's first question to the returned Alex, "Are you friend or foe?", is the film's central concern. Greg, Alex and Little Dave have come back as thralls of the power that raised them. When Beef Nate confronts Greg and Alex with a stake, Greg answers with the line "What is dead can never die."
Two scenes establish Beef Nate's place in the wider story. At a statue he tells Greg, "I've come here for answers," and is told, "There are no answers here." At a barred gate, the braided figure who has shadowed the group finally speaks the series' title line. Beef Nate is the one who pleads "Let me pass!"; the Necromancer is the one who answers "None shall pass."
Shereen holds Beef Nate responsible for her brother's death ("Forgiveness? You killed my brother!"). The ghosts abduct Raisa. Beef Nate marries her and is widowed within the same film ("Your wife was very brave").
¶ The Dark Ages
None Shall Pass 3: The Dark Ages (TDA) is the last film before the series' eight-year gap, and the one in which Beef Nate is drawn into the Necromancers' family quarrel. It opens with his friend Dr. Balistreri shaking him awake for an interview, and with a courtship that is played as a bargain. Nadia will not go out with him until he has completed "all my fifty first dates," a montage of women that ends with Beef Nate announcing, "I haven't felt this great in years, man. I'm even going back to school." Dean John O'Day enrols him late ("I like your face, so why not? You're something of a dark horse pick, aren't ya?") and delivers the film's joke on the series' title: "None shall pass... this class... if you don't do your homework." Nadia is Ronald's agent, placed to betray him, and Ronald's instruction to her, "Did you do what I said?", is heard before the marriage is.
The Necromancer himself then asks Beef Nate for help against his own son. "Why should I help the likes of you?" Beef Nate asks, and is told, "Because you know what it's like to love." The son in question is Ronald, of whom his father says, "There is no scruple in him, no mercy. If he wants you dead, he will have you dead. And he wants you dead." Beef Nate's reply to Dr. Balistreri's warning that the Necromancer cannot be trusted is "I can't trust anyone." Ronald states the Prophecy's stakes to Beef Nate directly ("You're the chosen one. And I mean to undo the prophecy"), and Ronald's enforcer Gordon sends Beef Nate's own dead friends against him ("Kill. Beef. Nate!"). It is in this film that the thralls are freed: Vincent, the Necromancer Hunter, releases Greg and Little Dave from the Necromancer's hold through the Blood Oath, at the price of the oath itself. Vincent also tells Beef Nate what to look for ("You must find the amulet!"), and O'Day warns him that "your wife is not who she seems." Nadia's betrayal follows ("Did you ever really love me?"), and Raisa returns from the dead as Ronald's agent ("Nate, I'm back!"). Ronald assassinates his own father, the Necromancer, with the Roman Dagger.
The film's thesis is stated by Beef Nate himself, to Ronald: "You'll always be alone, Ronald. My friends are my strength, even the ones I've lost." Nadia's plea to spare him is refused, and the film ends with Beef Nate beaten unconscious and carried from the field by Greg. The closing line belongs to Keegan's mother, Holly: "So did he pass or what?" Beef Nate then disappears for eight years.
¶ The gap and the return
None Shall Pass 4: A New Hope (ANH) is set eight years later, and Beef Nate is absent from almost all of it. What the film offers instead is other people's accounts of him. Sheriff Ara is circulating his photograph ("Have you seen this man?") and believes he has been "captured by the one they call Gordon." Max has heard that "he's working with Coffin Conor, the Manburner." Mike knows only that "he's looking for something, I just don't know what it is." The length of his absence is itself a running joke: Mike twice says ten years before Ronald corrects him, "Eight. Eight, actually."
The Necromancer's posthumous videotaped message, around which Mike, Vincent and the now-alcoholic Ronald assemble their opposition, is about him: "The chosen one still lurks in the shadows. Find him and the artifacts, and the world will be broken." The missing man then returns, bearded, in the film's final scene, and Gordon kneels to him with the words "I have done well, Master?" The question goes unanswered. This is the first appearance of Evil Beef Nate.
¶ Evil Beef Nate
None Shall Pass 5: The Gift of Fire (TGoF) opens with Greg's summary of the new order: "Our good friend Nate, now evil," his henchmen Coffin Conor, the Bugle Boy and the Jolly Man, and Ronald's brother Gordon, "are looking for three artifacts and killing anyone who gets in the way." The artifacts are the Key, the Codex and the Amulet. Evil Beef Nate obtains the Amulet from the Jolly Man under a streetlight ("Promises were made"), at the price of Keegan's mother, whom the Jolly Man tortures. O'Day, who had struck an agreement with Evil Beef Nate that she was not to be harmed, is answered with "Mistakes were made." When Delongy claims the Amulet as his birthright, Evil Beef Nate replies, "Does it look like I care? I will break the world."
His treatment of his old friends is the film's cruelest thread. To Keegan's "You don't know who you're fucking with" he answers, "Actually, I do, brah!", with a playful punch on the chin. When he takes a familiar pair of aviator sunglasses from Sheriff Ara's face and learns that "they were my brother's," he orders Gordon to drag Alex back from beyond the Final Death ("Bring him back, or you'll wish you had"). He then marries Kristal, not for love but because the resurrected Alex loves her, and presents her to Alex with the words "I'm sure you remember my wife, Kristal... Kavanaugh." Yet when Coffin Conor objects that Alex is "not one of us," Evil Beef Nate's answer is "He's my friend," and the film's closing image is the two of them falling in behind Mike in a park. His manifesto is delivered to Alex: "They took everything from me. Now I'll have to take everything from them. But perhaps I'll give them one last gift. The gift of fire."
The film's climax answers the question left hanging at the end of ANH. Gordon, having defeated Vincent and taken his weapon, kneels and presents it: "I have done well, Master?" Evil Beef Nate says "No," stabs Gordon with it, wipes the blade, and walks away. In the same film he is confronted by the Inspector, who claims to know "the truth that others have died for": "You're the chosen one, that's true. But did you ever consider why?"
In None Shall Pass 6: The Blood Oath (TBO), Evil Beef Nate holds Mike captive and completes his collection of the artifacts. Two of his oldest allies die by his hand or his order: Delongy, beaten and killed against a curb after Evil Beef Nate strips him of his claim on the Amulet ("You can forget about that birthright"), and Dr. Balistreri, who goes to confront him alone against Mike's warning and is killed by Coffin Conor before he arrives, his last words being "Nate, this must end." Vincent, who comes to rescue Mike's kidnapped and pregnant wife, is beaten by Evil Beef Nate and left to die in the street, and Evil Beef Nate telephones Mike from the dying man's own phone to tell him where to find the body. By the film's last act Evil Beef Nate possesses the Key, the Codex and the Amulet. As Glen puts it, "He can break the world at his convenience... So then he's won." In the film's final minutes Mike comes to him alone and appeals to the man he was ("I remember a good man... You have the artifacts, you haven't broken the world yet. Why?"), and is answered: "It's over, Mikey. You lost. I won. First time I met Shereen, I had a dream that I'd break the world. I'm starting to see that dream come true. It's over."
The cost is everyone around him. Near the end of Timeline A he recites a litany of his dead: "Alex, Mike, Little Dave, Keegan, Shona, Pat, Glenn, Michael, Iman, Shereen, Raisa, Nadia, Kristal. Every one I've ever loved, I let them all down."
In the final fight Ronald comes at him from behind; Evil Beef Nate reads it in Mike's eyes, stabs Ronald in the chest, and then stabs Mike in the stomach. The dying Ronald crawls to the Codex, reads from it, and travels back to the era of the first film to kill Beef Nate before any of this can happen. Reality splits.
¶ Biography: Timeline B
¶ The stranded Beef Nate
Ronald's attempt fails to kill Beef Nate, but it leaves the first-film-era Young Beef Nate in a coma for several years and strands him, together with Timeline A's Max, in a world in which the Syndicate never fell. This is the setting of None Shall Pass 7: When the Storm Came (WtSC). On waking he is told what has happened by the Inspector: "When Ronald used the Codex to go back in time and attempt to assassinate you, he set off a chain of events that led to this corrupt reality," and what he must do: "You need to rejoin the two realities, or there will be dire consequences." In this timeline Keegan is dead as well, Little Dave has gone broke, Alex has married Keegan's sister, and Mike is hunting Ronald. Chris never died, and serves a Necromancer who places Young Beef Nate under his protection. Young Beef Nate finds work alongside Sim, a Timeline B native who is skeptical of his stories about necromancers and other timelines ("Did you go crazy when you were in a coma?"). At the fountain where the story began, Shereen tells Young Beef Nate that she is married, introducing her husband Conor ("This is my husband, Conor"), who is Timeline B's Demon Lord. The film ends with Young Beef Nate asking who the Demon Lord is and the Inspector answering with a question of his own: "Have you forgotten his face already? You dream it every night."
¶ The Necromancer's daughter
In None Shall Pass 8: The Necromancer's Daughter (TND), Young Beef Nate and Max free the Demon Lord's daughters from the Brothel, and Young Beef Nate falls in love with Cristina, the daughter of Timeline B's Necromancer, who has resolved to become the next Necromancer herself. Her dying father contemplates what a child of theirs would be ("My bloodline and his combined"), a weapon in the Necromancers' rivalry with the Demons, and names her his heir. The Demon Lord, for his part, had set his daughters one task, to seduce Young Beef Nate; when they fail because he is devoted to Cristina, the Demon Lord orders her killed and sends Cooper to do it. At 17:07 the film delivers its true ending: Evil Beef Nate has crossed into Timeline B, by means the series never explains, and greets his younger self.
¶ Red Tooth and Claw
In None Shall Pass 9: Red Tooth and Claw (RTaC), Cristina is dead, killed by Cooper. Young Beef Nate, widowed a second time in a second life, marries Julia, the Demon Lord's eldest daughter. The marriage is her own arranged "power play": a child combining a Chosen One's bloodline with the Demon Lord's would be insurance against her father. Young Beef Nate also learns what he is. He is an incarnation of Cúchulainn, killed some forty-nine times over the centuries by the Demon Lord, and he is the son of Autumn, who was never dead. She hid him as a child because every power in the world, the Necromancer, the Demons, the Geomancers and the Sisters of the Bright Lantern, knew what he was and would have hunted him. Her charge to him is to go and become who he is.
He fights the Demon Lord in an orchard with Excalibur, agrees to fight hand to hand and drops the sword; the Demon Lord wins, holds the blade, and then drops it and walks away rather than kill him, and Young Beef Nate picks it up and stabs him in the back. Evil Beef Nate tempts him and attacks his sense of self, mocking the shaved beard as a costume of heroism. On the pilgrimage through The Ranch, guided by Timeline B's Adam, he meets Cristina's ghost, who tells him that their marriage was the happiest time of her life, and the Inspector, who is the Prophecy itself. The rejoining of the timelines cannot save his home: if he succeeds it will create a third reality, safe but not his. Young Beef Nate hands the ending to the one person able to carry it, Chris, and Chris, the true successor of Timeline B's Chosen One, ends the Prophecy with his own death: "No chosen one, no prophecy."
A third, safe reality, Timeline C, is created. Beef Nate loses everything he had in both timelines. In Timeline A his friends, lovers and wives are dead and he himself became the villain; in Timeline B his wife is dead. The ending is framed as a genuinely selfless sacrifice, and as the answer to the line he spoke to Ronald in TDA about his friends being his strength.
¶ Relationships
| Timeline A | Timeline B (Young Beef Nate) | |
|---|---|---|
| Shereen | The girl at the fountain and the cause of the war; she blames him for Chris's death. Killed by Adam in The Blood Oath. | Married to the Demon Lord, Conor. |
| Raisa | First wife; abducted by ghosts and killed in TCC; returns as Ronald's agent in TDA and is still at large in TGoF. | Not present. |
| Nadia | Second wife; Ronald's agent (TDA), who betrays him and then pleads for his life. | Not present. |
| Kristal | Evil Beef Nate's wife (TGoF), married to spite Alex. | Not present. |
| Cristina | Not present. | Wife; the Necromancer's daughter; killed by Cooper; returns as a ghost. |
| Julia | Not present. | Wife; the Demon Lord's daughter; a bloodline marriage. She is pregnant at the finale. |
| Autumn | Mother; presumed dead, in fact in hiding until RTaC. | |
| Mike | Best friend and bedridden oracle; later leader of the opposition against him, whom he holds captive and finally stabs in The Blood Oath. | The "Golden One" of the prophecy. |
| Alex, Keegan, Greg, Little Dave | His circle of friends; all die in the first film and return. Alex is the traitor he forgives, and, as Evil Beef Nate, the one friend he insists on keeping ("He's my friend"). Keegan is the friend he went to war for. | Keegan is dead; Little Dave is broke; Alex has married Keegan's sister. |
| Chris | Shereen's brother; the enemy of the first film; resurrected in The Blood Oath. | The successor who ends the Prophecy. |
| The Necromancer | The ancient enemy of the first trilogy, who nonetheless asks his help against Ronald in TDA, and whose posthumous tape sets the second trilogy against him. | Timeline B's Necromancer is Cristina's father, and places Young Beef Nate under his protection. |
| Ronald | The Necromancer's younger son; sets out to "undo the prophecy" by killing him in TDA; an enemy thereafter; stabbed by Evil Beef Nate, which precipitates the Split. | |
| Gordon | The Necromancer's heir; Evil Beef Nate's kneeling lieutenant, whom he kills with Vincent's own weapon in TGoF. | |
| Vincent | The Necromancer Hunter who frees his enthralled friends and first points him to the Amulet (TDA), then joins the opposition against him; dies at his hands in TBO. | Timeline B's Vincent deals with Max, not with him. |
| Sheriff Ara | Alex's brother; hunts for the missing Beef Nate in ANH, and loses Alex's aviators to him in TGoF; executed by Evil Beef Nate in TBO. | |
| Max | A member of Chris's Syndicate and Keegan's guard in the first film; later an ally. | Stranded with him; Timeline B's true Chosen One. |
| The Inspector | Confronts Evil Beef Nate in TGoF with a claim to know why he is the chosen one. | Explains the Split to Young Beef Nate in WtSC; revealed in RTaC as the Prophecy itself. |
| Sim | Not present. | Co-worker; skeptical of his stories. |
¶ Appearance
Beef Nate is recognisable by his sideburns, a clean-shaven face, and a dark track jacket with twin white shoulder stripes. He wears sunglasses and carries a sword for the armed march of the first film. In Timeline B, Young Beef Nate is also seen in a ribbed crew-neck sweater, with the same sideburns. Evil Beef Nate wears a full beard and a zip-up mechanic's jacket; alone before a bathroom mirror near the end of The Blood Oath, he shaves it off. The beard serves as the series' visual marker of the evil self, and Evil Beef Nate throws Young Beef Nate's clean-shaven face back at him in the finale. Because the series' undead wear no makeup and a returned friend looks exactly as he did in life, Beef Nate's transformation is the one visible change the series tracks on a face.
¶ Quotations
- "Let me pass!" To the Necromancer at the gate (TCC).
- "I've come here for answers." To Greg, at the statue (TCC).
- "Are you friend or foe?" To the resurrected Alex (TCC).
- "I can't trust anyone." To Dr. Balistreri (TDA).
- "You'll always be alone, Ronald. My friends are my strength, even the ones I've lost." (TDA)
- "Does it look like I care? I will break the world." Evil Beef Nate to Delongy (TGoF).
- "I'm sure you remember my wife, Kristal... Kavanaugh." Evil Beef Nate to Alex (TGoF).
- "They took everything from me. Now I'll have to take everything from them. But perhaps I'll give them one last gift. The gift of fire." Evil Beef Nate to Alex (TGoF).
- "No." Evil Beef Nate's answer to Gordon's "I have done well, Master?" (TGoF).
- "Every one I've ever loved, I let them all down." The litany of the dead (TBO).
- "It's over, Mikey. You lost. I won." Evil Beef Nate to Mike (TBO).
- "Who is the Demon Lord?" Young Beef Nate's last line in WtSC.
¶ Production
The filmmakers have described the character's arc as a tragedy in the mould of Anakin Skywalker and Darth Vader, deepened by the finale's revelation that Beef Nate was orphaned deliberately. The creation of Timeline C at the end of the series was adopted in part for practical reasons: by 2018 the original cast had dispersed geographically, and any continuation would require a new setting and a new cast.