The men and women of Nemesis are at war on multiple fronts. From the streets of Los Angeles to their own homes, Detective Isaiah Stiles (Matthew Law) and criminal mastermind Coltrane Wilder (Y’lan Noel) are facing off in a power play for the ages — even if their families would prefer otherwise.
“In the beginning of the season, they both have the opportunity to just choose their families [over their work],” co-creator Courtney A. Kemp (Power) tells Tudum. But of course, if they did, there wouldn’t be a television series.
Instead, Stiles and Wilder choose their mission again and again. For Wilder, that means cracking safes and taking on increasingly challenging heists; for Stiles, it means chasing Wilder down.
Neither man is who you might expect from his particular job description. “[Stiles] is a cop who dresses like himself, talks to you colloquially,” co-creator Tani Marole tells Tudum. “And inversely, Coltrane is closed off.” Look a little closer, however, and the pair have more in common than they’d like to admit.
As Stiles and Wilder draw closer and closer to their inevitable confrontation, tensions mount throughout every facet of their lives. Is the thrill of the chase worth dismantling everything these two men care about? “ ‘This guy is not just going to take everything away from me,’ ” Kemp says of the characters’ mindsets. “ ‘He’s going to take it away from me and destroy everything that I’ve built.’ ”
How much will Stiles and Wilder sacrifice to come out on top? And will their families still be standing by them (or standing at all) by season’s end? Read on to learn more.
Stiles is chasing down Wilder, but at home he’s facing another battlefield. He’s sleeping in the guesthouse, and his wife, Candace (Gabrielle Dennis), is so sure he forgot their anniversary that she’s shocked to discover a gift he’s left in her bedroom.
“He’s a genius, but he can’t get it together enough to be in the FBI,” Kemp says. “He’s not that guy. He needs to be running around the streets because that’s what can contain his energy.”
It’s not lost on Candace that Stiles is expending all his energy chasing criminals. All too aware that his focus is far from her and their son, Noah (Cedric Joe), she’s tempted by a missed connection from her college days. At the time, she chose her husband over his romantic rival, Malik Jacobs (Jeff Pierre), who’s now an assistant district attorney.
As Stiles becomes increasingly single-mindedly focused on the Wilder case, the tension with his wife grows. “Isaiah is kind of like a ticking time bomb,” Dennis tells Netflix. “Candace tries to sprinkle a little — I don’t know what you sprinkle over a bomb to make it not work — but she tries. It just doesn’t work.”
By the end of the season, Candace has fled into the arms of Malik, baffled by the changes in the man she loves. “Even as adult humans, even as professionals, we sometimes just don’t communicate,” Dennis says. “His job is so high stakes. So I think that kind of energy and tension he brings to the household and to family life — she gets lost about how to fit in that.”
Whether the pair will find their way back to one another is an open question. “We’re talking about two people who have been in love and in a relationship for a long time,” Law tells Netflix of Stiles and Candace’s marriage. “But now we’re seeing them as they’re on the ropes a little bit. How are they going to navigate this conflict of ‘Are we too far gone, or is this something we can save?’ ”
As he’s torpedoing his marriage, Stiles is also doing some potentially irreparable damage to his relationship with his son, Noah. He’s unwittingly recreating the relationship he had with his criminal father, Amos “Nightmare” Stiles (Moe Irvin). Stiles has never forgiven his father for inviting his brother Josiah into criminal life and leading him to a tragic death.
“You see Stiles trying to overcorrect, but he’s like his dad,” Kemp tells Tudum. “He’s not home, but he’s not home for what he thinks is a justifiable reason. He wants to be a good dad, he thinks he’s leading by example. But his son just wants him around.”
Nowhere is this clearer than the moment Stiles leaves Noah at a diner to race off and investigate Wilder’s diamond heist. “Dad just ditched me and went to work,” Noah texts his mom, adding a few clown emojis for good measure.
“Watching that scene where he dumps his kid on the street corner and just leaves — you’re just like, ‘Oh man, you had it. For five seconds, you had it,’ ” Kemp says. “He figured it out for a minute and then: no.”
For scenes like this, Law drew from the research he did to prepare for the role. “I worked with a couple of detectives who took me out,” he says. “I imagine the push and pull of the actual stress, which is the violence that you’re engaged with every day, and you go home and have dinner, and [your wife says,] ‘How was your day?’ What was really fascinating was asking these people, ‘How are you balancing having a personal relationship or falling in love or raising your son or daughter with the fact that you just came from seeing the worst shit you’ve ever seen in your life?’ ”
By the end of Season 1, Stiles confronts the worst of both worlds — the violence he sees daily at work infiltrates his home life. After Wilder kills Amos in cold blood, Noah catches the vengeance bug himself and tries to hunt down the killer. But an errant bullet hits him as he confronts Wilder, and Noah’s father is forced to choose between his son and catching his quarry.
Just a few blocks over from the Stiles family, Wilder has his own family problems, and they’re very different. “Coltrane’s on the other end. He worships his father,” Marole tells Tudum. “He carries his father’s journal. His father was a criminal who died in jail, yet he looks up to this man.” Stiles wants to be anything but his father; Wilder wants to be what his father never could be.
Both men have important relationships with their fathers, who were both prolific criminals. They left their sons with legacies to either passionately reject or embrace. “We looked at the multigenerational father experience, and we kind of split it down the middle,” Marole says.
For both Wilder and Stiles, family too often takes a back seat to their own inner battles. Stiles, in particular, struggles with a deep-seated restlessness inspired by his father’s criminal dealings. “He despises an ugliness that he fears he carries within himself,” Law says. “If we have to pay for our fathers’ sins, he could have gone the other way. ‘Am I a good person? Am I a good man?’ ”
Wilder’s wife, Ebony (Cleopatra Coleman), isn’t quite on the same page as her husband when it comes to criminal ambitions. She used to be right next to him on the front lines, but after a tragic miscarriage, she feels herself pulled into the background. “After the loss of [their child], she completely changed,” Coleman tells Tudum. “When we meet her in Episode 1, they’ve actually taken months off from doing heists. Hence, his team is like, ‘We’re hungry. We need to do a couple jobs.’ ”
As the season continues, Ebony learns a shocking truth: Her half-sister and Wilder’s criminal sponsor, Charlie (Sophina Brown), interfered in her miscarriage while Ebony was unconscious. “They were placed in a position where a choice had to be made,” Coleman says. “Coltrane was not there, Ebony was not conscious. Charlie made the call to save her sister’s life, but she was never honest with Ebony about it.”
It shakes the sisters’ relationship, but their bond isn’t so easily broken. After Ebony is arrested, Charlie and Wilder make a tentative alliance. No matter what, they still share a love for Ebony. Charlie sends in a few of her employees to break Ebony out, and Wilder distracts the police. After the confrontation with Stiles and Noah goes south, he’s free to make a run for it and reunite with his bride. “Coltrane and Ebony are soulmates,” Coleman says. “Obviously, they’re going to go through their ups and downs, but I would be surprised if they don’t continue to find a way to be together.”
Only time will tell. Nemesis is streaming now.
