TV Surfing

Bela Talbot (Lauren Cohan)

Gender: Female
Occupation: Thief
* First appeared on October 18, 2007 in the episode Bad Day at Black Rock.

Appearing only in the third season of the TV series, she is depicted as a character who uses knowledge of the supernatural world differently than the series' main protagonists, Sam and Dean Winchester. She is self-centered, a thorn in the side of the main characters, and makes her living by stealing occult objects and selling them to wealthy clients. While critical reaction to the character was mixed, fans responded very negatively to the character, leading to her departure at the end of the season.

Plot

In her first appearance, "Bad Day at Black Rock", Bela Talbot hires two crooks to steal a cursed rabbit's foot from deceased hunter John Winchester's container at a storage facility. The foot grants anyone who touches it incredible luck, but ultimately causes them to die. She intends to sell it and shows no concern for the fate of the thieves who steal it for her, although she knows anyone who touches the foot will ultimately die. John's sons, Sam and Dean, get the foot but are cursed by it, so they attempt to destroy it. Bela interferes and shoots Sam in the shoulder in order to steal the foot back, but Dean tricks her into touching it so that she too falls under its curse. She gives it up for destruction, but manages to steal $46,000 in winning lottery tickets from Dean that he had purchased using the foot's granted luck.

She next appears in "Red Sky at Morning", an episode in which the Winchesters are tracking down a ghost ship which has been haunting the area and killing people. Bela fools them into helping her again, with the three of them working together to steal a Hand of Glory, a precious and magical artifact. The Winchesters plan to destroy it in order to end the curse, but Bela steals it from them to sell to a client. However, Bela then witnesses the ghost ship, which only appears to those who have spilled the blood of a family member, thus condemning her to death. Frantic, she turns to the Winchesters for help. Dean is prepared to leave her behind to die, but Sam comes up with a plan to save Bela's life. This time, Bela gives them $10,000 as a "thank you" before she leaves, as she does not like being indebted to others.

In "Fresh Blood", hunter and recently escaped felon Gordon Walker manages to track Bela down and threatens to kill her unless she reveals the location of the Winchesters. Initially she refuses to tell him anything, but after seeing his priceless mojo bag, decides to exchange information for it; Gordon complies and Bela proceeds to tell him where to find the Winchesters. She then "forgets" to warn the Winchesters that Gordon is coming to kill Sam. Once they confront her, she uses a Ouija board to get information on Gordon and his location.

In "Dream a Little Dream of Me", Bela returns when the Winchesters contact her for help in saving fellow hunter and family friend Bobby Singer after he has fallen into a mystical coma. They need dream root in order to allow them to enter Bobby's dreams and find out what is keeping him asleep. She claims nothing from them in compensation, saying that she is helping them in order to repay a debt to Bobby, and she stays around, seemingly concerned. However, after Bobby awakens, the Winchesters discover that she was lying, having helped them in order to give her an opportunity to steal the Colt, a mystical gun capable of killing any being. Enraged, Dean and Sam attempt to track her down in "Jus in Bello", but instead are led into a trap she has set up, causing the Winchesters to be arrested and thrown in jail. By the end of the episode, Sam and Dean are free of the demon infested jail.

In "Time Is On My Side", Dean tracks down Bela and discovers that she has sold the Colt. He gets her criminal record from England and learns her true name is Abbie. He also discovers that she had her parents killed in exchange for her soul as part of a ten-year deal she made with a Crossroads Demon when she was 14 due to what is implied to be sexual abuse by her father. Now desperate because it's been almost ten years, Bela tracks the Winchesters down and tries to kill them, but they anticipated her and escaped ahead of time. They then call her a few minutes before her deal is up. She confesses to them that she tried to get out of the deal with the Crossroads Demon by trading the Colt, but once she gave it up, the deal was changed so that she had to kill Sam as well. She pleads for them to help her, and though Dean refuses, she reveals to him that the demon Lilith holds all the contracts brokered by Crossroads Demons, including his own. At the stroke of midnight, Dean hangs up after saying, "I'll see you in Hell." Her death is inevitable, but not shown.

Characterization

Speaking of her character, actress Lauren Cohan described Bela as "a female Humphrey Bogart". During her audition, the Bela character was described to her as "a mercenary, very much out for herself", she also felt that Bela is "a little bit manipulative" and "always wants to be in control". On Bela stealing artifacts for profit rather than for helping people like the Winchesters do, Cohan commented, "She thinks she's justified, thinks that the boys are really naive and kind of endearing but at the same time sees everything as an opportunity." On this aspect of Bela, writer and producer Sera Gamble commented, "I always suspect when someone is that blasé that there's something underneath, and we're finally getting into that". Likewise, after talking with the writers about later episodes, Cohan came to the realization that Bela is a "really damaged character" who, due to terrible experiences in her life, has been shaped into a character that is "a lot less heartful" than she was expecting. Cohan noted, "She keeps those walls up and very rarely lets them down. She does but then she quickly builds them back up because she doesn't like to ask anyone for help."

Development

According to Gamble, the show's writers were all excited by the concept of Bela, as she is someone "who moves through the supernatural world in a very different way than Sam and Dean, with different goals". In developing the character, the writers decided that they wanted Bela to be a character that the fans wouldn't love. Speaking of Bela, Gamble stated, "She's a self-interested, wily mercenary who put our heroes directly in the line of fire with no remorse. You're never going to love her. Hopefully, you'll love to hate her. That's the sweet spot."

Due to the fact that, as creator Eric Kripke put it, "the fans are a protective and occasionally nervous bunch", Bela was meant to be introduced in "small doses". He wanted fans to know that the show would always be about Sam and Dean Winchester, and nothing else. " there for important plot elements, but it's not the Ruby and Bela show, nor is it about the four of them cruising around in the Impala together. It's about the guys." Therefore, Bela was not introduced to be a love interest for Sam and Dean Winchester, but rather to be an antagonistic character.

Cohan originally auditioned for the part of Ruby, the other recurring female character introduced in the third season. However, she was cast as Bela, and the character was reworked due to Cohan's British accent. According to Cohan, Kripke was "really psyched about being British", and Cohan herself pictured the character that way, feeling that Bela "has some kind of cool shading and sneakiness, which fits the British accent".

In order to prepare for her role, Cohan received weapons training in order to be "well equipped with swords and a lot of instruments - sharp instruments".

Reception

BuddyTV staff columnist Don Williams felt that the addition of Bela was a "cheap ploy" to attract teen male viewers, and that the character distracts viewers from the "brotherly bond that made the show so special in the first place". As well, he felt that her "sexy cat burglar act, coupled with her flirtation with one of our heroes, is cliched and has been seen a thousand times before", and he likened her to a combination of Catwoman and "the equally annoying Electro-Gwen from Angel". However, he later admitted that Bela was "a great comic foil". Karla Peterson of the The San Diego Union-Tribune, on the other hand, felt that Bela "got gone just as getting interesting", and deemed her a "decent traveling companion".

Fans were at first very wary of bringing in female characters to the male-dominated show. To make matters worse, when coming up with the scenes for the auditions for Ruby and Bela, Kripke and executive producer Robert Singer wrote lackluster scripts that were not intended to be used in the show. Kripke wrote for Ruby, and Singer wrote for Bela, both finishing in about an hour. They gave the scripts to the casting director at 11am, and by 3pm that day the show's fans had found them on casting websites and were "obsessively going over these scenes". According to Kripke, the fan reaction was that the characters "really look like they suck". While Kripke wanted to integrate Bela the same way as he did Bobby Singer - slow and sporadically - he feels that he and the writers pushed it too far in the episode "Red Sky at Morning", stating his opinion that it "was by far the least successful episode this year because it really kind of became the Bela show". Kripke has stated that part of the decision to kill the character off was due to the negative reaction from the fans.