- Warning: Spoilers ahead for
Netflix 's "The Queen's Gambit ." - In "The Queen's Gambit," a key turning point for Beth Harmon's character comes when she breaks her sobriety streak and gets drunk the night before an important game.
- We're here to break down a fan theory that outlines why Cleo, the French woman with whom Beth gets drunk, may have been sent by Russia to intentionally sabotage the American chess champion.
One of the most mysterious characters in Netflix's buzzy limited series "The Queen's Gambit" is Cleo, the young French woman who befriends the show's protagonist Beth Harmon.
Cleo winds up being the catalyst for Beth's most brutal tournament loss in a game against her main rival, Russian world champion Vasily Borgov.
What if that "chance" meeting wasn't a coincidence?
The first time I watched "The Queen's Gambit," I was immediately suspicious of Cleo. The second time watching the series, I was convinced she was working on behalf of the Russians in order to sabotage Beth, a theory shared by other fans on Reddit.
Cleo's introduction to Beth is suspiciously timed and is filled with a vague backstory
We meet Cleo for the first time in the sixth episode, when Beth, who's now the US chess champion, and Benny Watts (the former champion) are training together in New York City.
Benny invites a couple of friends over to help finesse Beth's already-impressive chess skills. When Hilton Wexler and Arthur Levertov, two other chess pros, come to the apartment, they're accompanied by Cleo.
Cleo comes in, looking fabulous, and pops a bottle of champagne right when Beth settles in to work with Hilton for the first time. She offers Beth a glass and Beth looks over to Benny before she declines the offer.
At this point, Beth had been sober for several weeks. She normally relied on her tranquilizer pills and alcohol to help focus on chess strategies and then wind down. But Benny, and others, had told her to try kicking the habit and so far the advice was working.
Beth seemed to be in the best mental shape of her life, capable of destroying not just Benny in speed-chess rounds, but also Hilton and Arthur at the same time.
Though Cleo doesn't derail Beth's training in New York, she immediately raises some red flags.
When Beth asks Cleo how she knows Arthur and Hilton, Cleo says she happened to run into both of them in Paris.
"Those two stopped me from killing myself," Cleo says. "Like I say, a sad story. But as I walked past, Arthur and Hilton were having a violent argument over a chessboard and I became mesmerized by their passion."
But then Cleo goes on to say that Benny was also there that day and that she became "mesmerized by Benny," who was US champion at the time.
If Cleo was working on behalf of Russia, it makes sense that she might have infiltrated the American chess world by "running into" Benny, Hilton, and Arthur in Paris that day, and making up a dramatic backstory to gain their trust and sympathy.
Then there's the vague way Cleo talks about her job. When Beth asks Cleo what she does for work, Cleo doesn't answer directly. Instead she has Beth guess, and when Beth says "something in fashion," Cleo says she's a model.
What if that was a tactic, a way of letting Beth fill in her assumptions about Cleo while staying vague about the specifics of her job and home?
The show already established how Russian representatives were tracking Beth's life as she ascended through the ranks of the American chess world
In the fourth episode, Beth overheard Borgov and his Russian colleagues talking about her in an elevator. One of the men specifically says they need to "deal with her" either in Mexico or in Paris. Another says there's talk that Beth is "a drunk."
KGB officers follow Borgov everywhere he goes in the US. Wouldn't it make sense that there are also Russian representatives tracking Beth's movements, especially once she becomes the US champion and therefore the greatest threat to Russian dominance in chess?
Cleo sat in the room with Beth, Benny, Hilton, and Arthur, and witnessed exactly how skilled and prepared Beth was for her Paris tournament.
And so Cleo's sudden appearance at the Parisian hotel, the exact evening before her game against Borgov in the tournament finals, feels extremely suspect.
Beth is focused, sober, and ready to take on Borgov. And then Cleo calls from her hotel lobby and asks Beth to come have just one drink with her. Beth declines and tells Cleo that not only does she have a match the next day, but that it's the final.
Cleo gives the appearance of understanding, but then teases Beth by saying she's planning to have a drink by herself at the hotel bar anyways. This succeeds in getting Beth down to the bar, where the young chess star says she'll have "just one drink" and then go to bed early.
Suddenly we cut to Beth smoking a cigarette and sitting in front of not one, but three empty cocktail glasses as Cleo personally refills her cup. Then Cleo is the one who pressures Beth into chatting up some men sitting nearby.
Before we know it, Beth is waking up in a bathtub, late for her game against Borgov.
She loses, of course, too hungover and still high and drunk off the extra booze and pills she takes before the game. All of Beth's careful training went out the window that morning. Cleo slips in mid-game to watch Beth play, but then we never see her again, nor does Beth.
If Cleo's intentions weren't malicious, why wouldn't she have apologized to Beth? Or at least tried to console her after the devastating loss?
Townes mentions that the Russian embassy thought he'd distract Beth - another hint that Cleo wasn't all that she seemed
Just in case you weren't already convinced by the "Cleo was a Russian plant" theory, another clue comes in the series finale. During the Moscow tournament, Beth is heartened ahead of her final game against Borgov by a surprise visit from D.L. Townes, the tall handsome chess player whom she met at her very first tournament.
When Beth asks how Townes managed to get a visa at the last minute to travel to Russia, he says the Russian embassy may have helped because they thought he would distract Beth.
That night at the Paris bar, Beth told Cleo about her unrequited love for Townes. It's the only time in the whole show we saw her talk about Townes to another person, let alone confess her love.
So how would the Russian embassy know that Townes could be "a distraction" for Beth? It only seems possible if Cleo told Russian representatives about Beth's confession in Paris.
So while the show never 100% confirmed Cleo's nefarious intentions, we remain convinced that she's the main reason why Beth didn't defeat Borgov sooner.
For more details and analysis you might not have noticed in "The Queen's Gambit," read our breakdown here.