Gaston LeGume/Synopsis

Beauty and the Beast (1991 original)
Gaston is the local hero of a small French village at an unknown point in French history. He owns a large tavern where he and the villagers drink and talk. Inside, there is a large portrait of himself along with "trophies" from his hunt consisting mostly of animal antlers. He also says he eats five dozen eggs every morning to help make him "roughly the size of a barge".

He first appears in the film shooting down a waterfowl headed south with perfect accuracy (implying that he had just returned from a hunting trip) and declaring his intent to marry Belle after acknowledging from LeFou of his popularity with all of the women in the village. He then started pursuing Belle throughout the village as she returns home after buying a book from the local bookstore. Their meeting starts off well, but Gaston's sexist remarks about women reading and thinking drive Belle away from him and she goes home, leaving him disappointed. In addition, after learning that Belle was going to aid her father Maurice, Gaston scolded LeFou for mocking Maurice (although it was implied that he mostly did that in an attempt to impress Belle rather than out of any genuine concern for Maurice). However, after an explosion occurs inside Belle's house, Gaston and Lefou both begin to laugh as Belle rushes to check on her father.

The next day, Gaston organizes a wedding outside Belle's cottage in an attempt to "surprise" her, complete with various decorations, a priest, and a wedding cake. He forces his way into the cottage and attempts to strong-arm her into marrying him, again making sexist remarks about women and housewives (he even envisions the home they would live in as a "rustic" hunting lodge, with his latest kill roasting over the fire and Belle massaging his feet while their children — six or seven boys — play on the floor with their dogs). While he attempts to corner Belle in an attempt to kiss her, she manages to open the door that he has pinned her against, rejecting his proposal. This causes him to lose his balance and fly headfirst into a large mud puddle (complete with cattail plants) in front of Belle's cottage. When asked by Lefou how it went, Gaston is humiliated and furiously storms off, but not before vowing to make Belle his wife regardless of her refusal and throwing LeFou into the mud.

Later, during a snowstorm, LeFou leads the villagers in the tavern to sing a song about Gaston's greatness to cheer him up after his failed proposal. Maurice suddenly interrupts and warns the villagers about a "monstrous" Beast who has locked up Belle as a prisoner in the tower of his castle. Thinking that Maurice is talking nonsense, the villagers throw him out of the tavern, which made Gaston realize that he can use Maurice's outrageous claim to his advantage. In a surprising display of animalistic cunning, he bribes Monsieur D'Arque (the owner of the local asylum) to throw Maurice into the asylum in order to pressure Belle into marrying him. Though D'Arque states that Maurice's claims and his odd inventions do not make him very dangerous, he is willing to accept the bribe because he liked the despicable aspect of the plot. However, just before Gaston and LeFou barge into Belle and Maurice's cottage, Maurice left for the castle on his own. Gaston orders LeFou to stay outside the cottage and wait for their return.

When Belle and Maurice eventually return to the cottage, LeFou immediately informs Gaston, and he sets his plan into motion. With the villagers gathered outside the house, D'Arque has his men drag Maurice towards their carriage, while Gaston makes Belle his offer, he will clear up the "misunderstanding" if she marries him. Horrified and disgusted, Belle refuses and instead proves her father's claims of the Beast's existence by using a magic mirror that the Beast had given her, causing all of the villagers (including Gaston) to realize that Maurice was telling the truth. Following Maurice's release, Gaston grows more frustrated and shocked that his plan has failed, and becomes increasingly jealous when Belle begins referring to the Beast as kind and gentle (since he let her go to help Maurice and gave her the magic mirror to remember him by). Realizing that she prefers a "monster" over himself, Gaston refers to the Beast with this insult, to which Belle furiously retorts back by saying that Gaston is the real monster for his despicable plot.

In his jealousy and pride, Gaston angrily snaps out by snatching the mirror from Belle and convincing the villagers that the Beast is a threat to the village that must be brought down immediately by playing off their fear of monsters. Belle furiously tries to stop this, but Gaston has her and Maurice locked in the basement to keep them from warning the Beast. He then leads a lynch mob to attack the Beast's castle and leave no one alive while declaring that he himself is to take down the Beast. However, the castle servants formed a defensive attack, leaving the rioters to fight back. Rather than helping out his fellow rioters, Gaston instead betrays them by leaving them to their fate and manages to get past the servants as they were too busy fighting the villagers that they didn't notice him making his way up the stairs and proceeding to kill the beast. The battle ends with the violent rioters fleeing away in defeat thanks to the castle servants' enchanted forms. Despite the loss of the villagers, Gaston confronts the Beast alone in the West Wing, where he fires an arrow into him, tosses him out of the window onto a lower section of the roof and taunts him. The Beast doesn't respond back as he lost his will to live since Belle's departure, so Gaston uses a castle statue as a makeshift club to try to kill the Beast. However, the Beast regains his will when he witnessed Belle returning to the castle with her father (as they had escaped from the basement with help from Chip, who stowed away with them). A terrified Belle begs Gaston to spare the Beast, but Gaston ignores her, though the Beast defends himself by viciously fighting back against Gaston with all of his strength and ferocity.

Though roughly even with his adversary, Gaston soon learns that he cannot rely on brute strength alone to kill the Beast, and instead begins taunting him over his ugly and grotesque exterior and love for Belle. Gaston even pushed the final button by claiming that Belle is his to take and no one else's, but this immediately backfires as the Beast snaps out and head-butts Gaston in the chest. The furious Beast then gets Gaston at his mercy by holding him above the castle roof by the throat, threatening to drop him into the deep castle moat for the trouble he caused. With his life at stake, Gaston pathetically begs the Beast not to hurt him by claiming that he will do anything for him. At first, the Beast initially attempts to ignore Gaston's pleas, but realizes that he ought to be better due to his genuine love for Belle. Seeing that Gaston is nothing more than a reflection of what he would've become as a cruel and aggressive monster, the Beast reluctantly spares Gaston by ordering him to leave the castle and never return. However, when Gaston sees the Beast embracing Belle on the castle balcony, his hatred and jealousy arises again. Rather than leaving the castle, Gaston instead climbs onto the balcony and stabs the Beast in the back with a knife. The Beast swings his arm backwards at Gaston as he roars in pain, which causes Gaston to gleefully dodge, but unfortunately he loses his balance and drops his knife below the castle. As both he and the Beast are on the verge of falling, Belle saves the Beast by grabbing onto his collar and helping him up to safety, whereas Gaston plunges into the deep moat below as he fearfully screams to his death.

Despite laying a fatal stab on the Beast, Gaston would permanently die alone that night; just as the Beast nearly succumbed to his wounds, Belle confessed her love for him just before the last petal of the enchanted rose that kept him bound to his beast form fell, breaking the spell and reviving the Beast. This also allows the Beast and the castle servants to transform back to their human forms, much to their joyful delight.

Beauty and the Beast (2017 remake)
Gaston appeared in the 2017 remake, portrayed by Luke Evans. However, in this film, Gaston is portrayed as a former army captain prior to his career as a hunter due to a portrait of him standing over fallen soldiers in the tavern. It is also implied that this incarnation of Gaston is a much darker portrayal than in the original, as he is far more manipulative and sociopathic in nature.

Just like his animated counterpart, Gaston is authoritative, well-liked, and respected in the village — this time for his previous war heroics against the Portuguese. He still aims to have Belle as his wife. At first, he attempts to woo her to get her approval for marriage many times, but she respectfully turns him down due to his inappropriate and offensive behavior. Gaston then warns Belle that she will end up being in the streets as a beggar if she doesn't marry him, but she still refuses by saying that she's not that simple to hang out with, much to his dismay.

Eventually, in the tavern, Gaston gets cheered up by LeFou and the villagers following his failed attempts to woo Belle, right before Belle's father Maurice arrives and exclaims that Belle has been taken prisoner by the Beast (the son of a wicked king) in his castle. The villagers instantly laugh at this as they find Maurice to be downright insane (due to a spell cast by an enchantress that erases all of the townsfolk's memories of the castle), but Gaston decides to tag along, in hopes of getting Maurice's approval for Belle's hand in marriage. However, as they stroke into the woods with LeFou, Gaston tires himself of Maurice's story and reveals his true intentions, which incited a furious Maurice to refuse Gaston's proposal. In retaliation, Gaston punches Maurice before tying him up in a tree, intending to leave him to die of winter exposure and be fed by hungry wolves (despite LeFou's objections), so that Belle would be alone for Gaston himself to grasp on. However, Maurice ends up being saved and nursed back to health by the local hermit named Agathe before returning back to the village.

As Gaston returns to his tavern, he is shocked to see that Maurice has returned alive and is now accusing him for his attempted murder. However, Gaston uses his charisma to convince the villagers that Maurice is insane and must be locked up in the local asylum (even secretly silencing an uneasy LeFou from testifying against him and convincing everyone that Agathe is untrustworthy). To that end, Gaston gets the villagers to torment Maurice before having the local asylum owner Monsieur D'Arque to take Maurice away, in hopes of blackmailing Belle into marrying him. However, Belle arrives back to the village and foils this by revealing the Beast's existence with the magic mirror that he given to her, making the townsfolk realize that Maurice was telling the truth. Realizing now that he would be exposed of his true colors and that Belle has feelings for the Beast (as the latter saved her from the wolves and let her go to help Maurice), Gaston angrily lashes out by stealing the magic mirror and using the villagers' fear of monsters and sorcery to manipulate them into helping him kill the Beast, much to Belle and Maurice's horror.

After having Monsieur D'Arque to lock up Belle and Maurice in the asylum carriage and keep them on watch, Gaston leads the villagers to assault the Beast's castle, which forced the castle servants to fight back against the villagers. During the battle, Maurice frees himself and Belle before allowing the latter to head to the castle while Gaston betrays the villagers by leaving them to their fates, such as leaving his lackies Tom, Dick and Stanley dressed up in ball gowns by Garderobe, and even using LeFou as a human shield before leaving him for dead and escaping from the fight unharmed and unnoticed, which incited an outraged LeFou to side up with the servants. As the villagers flee away in humiliation and defeat, Gaston heads over to the West Wing, where he finally finds the Beast sulking (as the latter lost his will to live after letting Belle go). Taking the opportunity, Gaston shoots the Beast before he taunts him by claiming that Belle sent him over to kill him. However, Belle arrives to the rescue by breaking Gaston's arrows, throwing away his gun and briefly shoving him off the balcony into the roof, demanding him to stop. Undeterred by Belle's intervention, Gaston angrily refuses and instead swears to mount the Beast's head in his tavern wall and force Belle to marry him. However, the Beast regains his will after witnessing Belle's return, realizing that Gaston had deceived him. As such, the Beast proceeds to attack Gaston, instigating a hostile confrontation between the two.

After a brief fight, the Beast finally overpowers Gaston and grabs him by the neck, preparing to drop him into the castle floor for the trouble he caused. With his life at stake, Gaston abandons his pride and tries to placate the Beast long enough to grant him mercy. Initially ignoring his opponent, the Beast reluctantly obliges by coldly telling Gaston that he is not a monster. Shoving Gaston away from his sight, the Beast furiously orders him to leave the castle before climbing back on the castle balcony to reunite with Belle. In that moment, however, Gaston finds his gun and fatally shoots the Beast twice from a footbridge, much to Belle's distraught. However, Gaston's victory is short-lived when the footbridge breaks apart (due to the curse slowly crumbling the castle as the Beast succumbs to his wounds), leaving Gaston to fall screaming to his death in the castle floor below.

Despite putting fatal shots onto the Beast, Gaston's death proved to be in vain as Belle's expression of her love for the deceased Beast inspired an arriving Agathe (who is revealed to be the enchantress responsible for placing the curse) to revive the Beast before transforming him and his servants back to normal, much to their delight. This also allows the castle and the townsfolk's memories to be restored as several villagers recognize some of the servants as their long-lost relatives before reuniting with them.