The 1949 cast of Season Two of Why Women Kill. Beware of spoilers.
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Alma Fillcot
Alma Fillcot
Played By: Allison Tolman
"I don't know who you are, but you're certainly not a frump."
Alma is a timid and awkward housewife, who remains optimistic in the face of the world’s cruelty. Alma yearns for a spot in the local garden club and to see her ungainly daughter married, but her life is disrupted once she learns of her husband’s secret hobby.
- '20s Bob Haircut: Alma starts off with a similar hairstyle to this, albeit more prim and plain, as befitting her image of "a frump" who hasn't updated her wardbrobe in the last 15 years much less 5.
- Beauty Is Bad: As Alma becomes more aggressive and manipulative, she goes from "frump" to a beautiful, vain woman.
- Beneath Suspicion: Invoked. Rita says that she never even looked twice at Alma, which Alma says was why she turned to the dark side.
- Beware the Nice Ones: Alma has no problem disposing of Mrs. Yost's remains and planning an alibi. She's increasingly violent and has a simmering rage.
- Big Beautiful Woman: As her makeover goes on, the plump Alma is revealed to have a hourglass figure and a beautiful face. Certainly Bertram and Tom Madison thought so.
- Blackmail: Alma uses Joan and Grace's secret affair to get the garden club presidency with the threat of revealing it.
- Evil Costume Switch: Alma's clothing changes between dowdy, shapeless housedresses to beautiful, form-fitting dresses in luxurious fabrics and rich colors as she ascends through the Garden Club and becomes more sadistic.
- Evil Is Petty: As Dee lampshades, Alma plots to kill several people, successfully killing a couple, because of getting into a Garden Club, which is "not a motive."
- Face–Heel Turn: The whole plot is basically Alma's Protagonist Journey to Villain.
- From Nobody to Nightmare: Season 2 is essentially this for Alma.
- High-School Sweethearts: With Bertram, subverted in that they started dating on their Senior Prom Night after her boyfriend Tom Madison was seen with another girl, kissing her.
- Housewife: Of the traditional variety. She cooks, cleans, maintains their home, lovingly tends to her garden, raised her and Bertram's daughter. Subverted when she uses her skills for something more diabolical.
- Humble Goal: Alma's goal does lead her to more general success, her goal is really only to join the Garden Club (later to run it) and to become popular.
- I Just Want to Have Friends: Alma has wanted friends for so long that she desires to be a part of the rich ladies' garden club. Part of it is her longing for the finer things in life.
- I Just Want to Be Special: Specifically, Alma wants to be noticed. In the end, she doesn’t care if she was going to be executed, people see her.
- Lady Macbeth: Alma manipulates Bertram into doing much of the hard work, such as killing Carlo by telling him about Rita's Domestic Abuse claims. She jumps off the slippery slope by herself when Bertram falls into alcoholism.
- Manipulative Bitch:
- Alma manipulates Bertram into killing Carlo by using Rita’s fake stories of beatings. Her grand plan is to pin it on Rita, planting the medicine herself while Rita and Isabel are undoubtedly drunk. After the body is discovered, she calls Catherine to tell her so-called witness statement. All for revenge.
- Alma suggests killing Isabel to Bertram’s horror. When he refuses, she chooses to kill Isabel herself. Using the marriage reconciliation as her cover, she steals the euthanasia syringe and when both Bertram and Isabel are distracted, she strikes.
- Alma manipulates Dee into not spilling the truth with no remorse, using her previous lie of Bertram's affair. What breaks her hold on Dee is Dee asking the right questions about her mom's conversation with Scooter, and realizing the horrible implications of what her mom actually wanted Scooter to do.
- Mum Looks Like a Sister: Even at her frumpiest, she looks quite young to be the mother of the Twenty-year-old Dee. Justified in that she likely had Dee rather young.
- My Girl Is Not a Slut: She informs Bertram, to his shock, that the first man she ever had sex with was Tom Madison, which is shocking given the time setting (the late 1940s).
- Narcissist: What Alma transforms into. Even when she's talking to the clearly appalled (and pregnant) Dee, she only says in apparent hurt that Dee hasn't complimented her outfit for all her work.
- Obnoxious Entitled Housewife: As Alma becomes evil, she starts to abuse whatever privilege she has, targeting Joan for her affair with Grace (as homosexuality was looked down upon in the 1940s) and condescends to the African-American Vern regarding his profession, trying to arrange his murder. Even if it hurts those closest to her, like her husband, daughter, and friend Grace.
- Red Is Violent: In the finale, Alma wears a fitted red silk dress when she's exposed as a Serial Killer and murders Rita.
- Saying Too Much: Alma saying that Isabel left "a postcard", rather than just a note, causes Rita to realize that Alma killed her, too, and Alma kills her.
- Serial Killer: Alma has her husband kill Carlo, and personally kills Isabel, Rita and Mrs. Yost (although the latter was an accident).
- She Cleans Up Nicely: She starts the series being harshly described as a "drab sparrow" in frumpy clothes and an outdated hairstyle, later on after stealing Mrs. Yost's clothing, wearing flattering makeup and hairstyles, and new clothes that showed off her shape, she ends up looking beautiful.
- Smug Snake: Alma is indeed quick-thinking, can keep up quite the poker face, and spin on a dime a plausible story to deflect questions in the short run, but her lack of long-term planning makes her murder spree spiral out of control and her cover stories hold little water upon further scrutiny. Her speech about how smart the new her is falls flat when the viewer knows the mess she's left behind is so bad it's already about to catch up with her.
- Took a Level in Jerkass: Alma becomes progressively nastier and more villainous as time goes by.
Rita Castillo
Rita Castillo
Played By: Lana Parrilla
"I admire women who try to remake themselves. Become someone new. Smarter, stronger. When women like us do it well enough, no one can imagine we were ever anyone else."
Rita is the sardonic wife to the cruel but wealthy Carlo Castillo. As she waits for her elderly husband to die, Rita runs the Elysian Park Garden Club with an iron fist and spends much of her time engaging in an affair with a much younger man.
- Aloof Dark-Haired Girl: Rita has black hair and she's a pretty aloof, snobby person.
- Berserk Button: Rita doesn't like to be reminded of her former profession as a prostitute.
- Blackmail: Rita has Scooter seduce Catherine so Vern can take photos of them while they're having sex to use so Catherine's disinherited and will leave.
- Break the Haughty: Rita after Alma frames her for Carlo's murder. She ends up losing everything.
- Dark and Troubled Past: She is hinted to have been a prostitute when she met Carlo. She reveals she grew up in an impoverished family in Galveston who married young to a man who beat her, her cousin Isabel shot him and they ran off to El Paso where Rita was made a prostitute.
- Domestic Abuse: Carlo is shown to be emotionally abusive of Rita (humiliating her in front of her guests, mocking her past as a prostitute, and throwing her age in her face). He also reveals a controlling streak, as in the past, the only way Rita would be allowed to let her cousin Isabel live with them is if Isabel worked as a maid. Rita is shown to have suffered an emotional and physical sort of abuse from her first husband.
- Even Evil Has Loved Ones: Rita is quite a ruthless woman, but she genuinely does care for Isabel. It turns out they're cousins.
- Gold Digger: She was a former prostitute who married Carlo for his money, and Carlo and Catherine know it.
- Heel–Face Turn: Rita tries to pull this off near the end but she gets killed by Alma.
- I Never Said It Was Poison: Alma saying that Isabel left "a postcard", rather than just a note, causes Rita to realize that Alma killed her, too.
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Jerkass Woobie: Rita eventually becomes this. Even the jerkass part becomes a question since she's obviously taking steps to make amends and refrain from selfish acts from which she would have benefited. - My God, What Have I Done??: Rita is intensely regretful when she realizes her selfishness and cruelty has left her alone and friendless, and even isolated her one true friend, Isabel. When Scooter takes pity on her and brings her some clothes and money, she expresses particular remorse for not having treated him better.
- Obnoxious Entitled Housewife: Rita is very entitled and takes offense when being told the truth, even getting Dee fired because Dee told her off for calling her fat.
- Pet the Dog:
- When Rita finds out Dee is pregnant, she seems genuine when she tells her not to let it ruin her life, saying she's too smart for that. She also offers to give her some money, possibly for an abortion or to help her get settled somewhere new. Dee doesn't take her up on it, but it was decent of her to offer.
- Rita knew Joan was sleeping with Grace, but never told anyone or tried to blackmail her with it—even when she was in desperate need of help and Joan rather cruelly rebuffed her.
- Pragmatic Villainy: Rita is one despite her quick revenge trips. Initially, she plans to kill Carlo and make it look like it was an accident, but she realizes it would cause too much trouble and is not worth it. She knows that he has family who will miss him and attention would be drawn to her as the culprit.
- Predatory Prostitute: Her Freudian Excuse is that she was an impoverished prostitute in El Paso. She deliberately approached Carlos when she and Isabel found out he liked sleeping with prostitutes and was attracted to her. Isabel also tried to kill Rita's first husband.
- Redemption Equals Death: Just as Rita tries to make amends with Scooter and learns to appreciate the people who have loved her, she is killed by Alma when she confronts her about Carlo's and Isabel's deaths.
- Slut-Shaming: Is on the receiving end of this trope, especially as a woman in her mid-thirties dating a man in his early twenties. After she is arrested, her former Garden Club friends cluck that she is now "a whore".
- Socialite: She is a Lady of Leisure who spends her days socializing, visiting her lover, club business, shopping, and maintaining her looks. The rub is that she used to come from an impoverished background, married young to an abusive man and left him, then worked at a brothel where she met Carlos.
- Stepford Snarker: Rita has had a hard and sometimes sad life, but she responds to hardship with a snarky quip.
- Trophy Wife: Deconstructed. She is the young, beautiful, and glamorous wife of Carlo Castillo and maintains their reputation within society but she also is confronted with the fact that she is getting older (though no less beautiful), the men she lured are more attracted to younger women, and her husband is abusive.
Bertram Fillcot
Bertram Fillcot
Played By: Nick Frost
- Affably Evil: Bertram is a genuinely nice man who believes he's helping people by euthanizing them when they're in pain from incurable ailments. He's never less than compassionate and always uses painkillers along with the deadly drug he gives them. However, he doesn't ask if any of them wants his help, but just decides on his own, making this murder and it turns out he's a Serial Killer, having murdered 26 people.
- Big Fun: As implausible as it sounds, Bertram is murderous, but he's a genuinely kind and affable person who is kind to people and animals.
- Friend to All Living Things: Despite his status as a Serial Killer, he's a veterinarian and is truly loved by his patients. His gentle and kindly demeanor makes him a very comforting presence for a sick or injured pet, and, morbidly, means he's genuinely very good at comforting both the pet and their owner when it comes time to put an animal down.
- Kindly Vet: Zigzagged. Bertram is a Serial Killer, but he's also unfailingly polite and genuinely kind. He genuinely cares for his family, animals, and his victims.
- Ironic Echo: In his second scene, he gently persuades a woman that it's time to put her dog to sleep, as the poor thing is in a lot of pain and won't live much longer anyway. While he's doing this, he gives a nice little speech about how it's the merciful thing to do, and that the dog's life had meaning and he'll be missed. Later in that episode, he visits the woman at home... and gives her the same drug he gave the dog, since she's also old and very sick. And then gives an eerily similar speech, still meaning every word.
- Love Forgives All but Lust: Bertram worships Alma, and is only upset when meeting an old boyfriend of hers. He's also extremely adamant that he's never cheated on his wife while confessing to multiple murders.
- Mercy Kill: This is how Bertram justifies his murders. All of the people he kills have some painful, terminal illness he doesn't want them to suffer from. This would be understandable... if he actually asked whether they prefer euthanasia (except in the first case). Instead, he just makes the choice for them. He explicitly compares this with putting down sick dogs (he's a vet), while apparently oblivious to this being wrong at all, believing that it's compassionate.
- No Celebrities Were Harmed: Bertram is loosely based on John Bodkin Adams
, a British doctor who was accused of murdering 163 patients between 1946 and 1956 by giving them excessively large doses of routine painkillers. - Obliviously Evil: Bertram at first does not see anything wrong with involuntarily euthanizing people who have incurable, painful ailments. He's just helping, in his mind, and doing them a favor. Over time, after others learn about this and try to make him stop, he starts to see clearly.
- Serial Killer: Initially, Bertram didn’t want to be one but when his first victim asked him to do it and he saw the peace on their face, he believed he found his calling. While he didn’t ask for consent from his next victims, he selfishly believed he was doing it for their sake. He's killed 26 in total, and he takes souvenirs from their residences as trophies.
- The Social Expert: Bertram is quite sociable and likable in the community, an easy cover for his serial-killing.
Scooter Polarsky
Scooter Polarsky
Played By: Matthew Daddario
- Brainless Beauty: Scooter isn't a complete idiot, but is rather dim-witted and gets along mainly due to being quite handsome (including attracting smarter women).
- Beauty Is Bad: Scooter is a dumb person, but he invokes this when he tells Dee that he hopes their baby won't be handsome, because it's better to be ordinary-looking and "not expect so much out of life."
- Jerk with a Heart of Gold: While he is a cheater and a liar, Scooter still cares about Rita enough to give her money when she loses everything after being freed from prison. He also leaves the hospital immediately after being shot when he learns about Dee and their baby, offering to be there for both of them.
- Mr. Fanservice: Scooter is quite the handsome man, and he plays up his good looks to seduce Catherine, such as by stripping to the waist in front of her.
- Saying Too Much: Because Scooter Thought They Knew Already, he tells Dee that Alma told him about Dee's baby.
- Shirtless Scene: Scooter deliberately gets a stain on his shirt as an excuse to strip it off in front of Catherine, so she's enticed by his Carpet of Virility and muscular torso.
Catherine Castillo
Catherine Castillo
Played By: Veronica Falcón
- Alliterative Name: Catherine Castillo.
- Karma Houdini: Catherine, who gets away with shooting Scooter and Bertram, and trying to ruin Rita's life, before going back to Texas with her chauffeur and her inheritance. She isn't even seen in the finale.
- Letting Her Hair Down: Catherine after Scooter starts to woo her starts to wear her hair long and hanging.
- Prim and Proper Bun: Before her turn towards the sexual and significantly nicer, she wears her hair back in a tight bun.
- When She Smiles: The dour Catherine, according to Scooter, has a very nice smile.
Vern Loomis
Vern Loomis
Played By: Jordane Christie
- Nice Guy: Vern treats Dee with genuine kindness and appreciates her strength of character.
- The Smart Guy: Vern was able to put together the clues that Bertram and especially Alma were involved in Carlo and Isabel's murders. He has reasons to believe Alma was more likely to kill Carlo and Isabel based on his meeting with her.
- Twofer Token Minority: While this season is significantly more diverse, Vern is still the single black member of the cast, and the only disabled one.
Dee Fillcot (Spoiler)
Dee Fillcot /Dee Loomis
Played By: B. K. Cannon
- Big Beautiful Woman: Dee is a heavyset girl who is blonde and pretty with an expressive sense of style and secure in her own skin. Played straight in that Vern and Scooter hold this opinion of her, subverted when Dee talked about how boys in high school would only see her in secret rather than in public for fear of ridicule, and vain Rita ignores the "beautiful" and young parts when she is aghast that Scooter would cheat on her with "a fat girl".
- Hair of Gold, Heart of Gold: Dee has blonde hair unlike the brunettes Rita, Catherine, and Alma, and she is the kindest character.
- Nice Girl: Very much so, not unlike her Nice Guy love interest Vern.
- Only Sane Man: Dee out of her family is this. When she stops being locked out of the loop, she often lampshades how ridiculous the whole situation is.
Isabel Vega
Isabel Vega
Played By: Eileen Galindo
- Blackmail: Isabel tries to blackmail Alma and Bertram with one of the photos of Scooter and Catherine, which show Alma's presence the night Carlo was murdered.
- The Heavy: While Isabel didn't actually kill Rita's first husband, she's also the person who tried to shoot him.
- No Hero to His Valet: Isabel, Rita's maid, having no issue with speaking her mind and pointing out how foolish or even dangerous Rita's scheming is has become subverted in that Isabel is Rita's cousin all along.
