Gastelle

Belle x Gaston is the HET ship between Belle and Gaston from the Beauty and the Beast and Once Upon a Time fandom.

Canon
Beauty and the Beast (1991)

He starts off 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 his popularity with the females 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 throwing Belle's book into a puddle and making remarks about women like Belle reading drive her away from him, and she continues her way home, leaving Gaston a little disappointed. In addition, after LeFou, learning Belle was going to aid her father, mocks her father, Gaston scolds LeFou for mocking Maurice (although it is implied that he mostly does that in an attempt to impress Belle rather than out of any genuine concern for Maurice).

The next day, however, 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. He dirties her book for the second time and again makes sexist remarks about women and housewifery (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 strapping boys—play on the floor with their dogs). While he attempts to corner Belle, her using her wiles to keep him at bay, she manages to open the door that he has pinned her against. This causes him to lose his balance and fly headfirst into a large mud puddle (complete with cat-tail plants) in front of Belle's cottage, where we find out that a pig (Pierre) is there too. Furious and humiliated, Gaston storms off but not before vowing to make Belle his wife regardless of of her refusals and throwing LeFou into the mud.

Later, during a snowstorm, Gaston is in the tavern sulking after being rejected and humiliated by Belle, so the villagers along with LeFou, sing a song about Gaston's greatness to cheer him up. 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 he is talking nonsense, the villagers, amid Gaston ambiguously affirming that they'll "help [Maurice] out", throw him out of the tavern into the snow. Gaston then realizes that he can use Maurice's outrageous claim to his advantage. In a surprising display of animalistic cunning, he bribes the owner of the local asylum, Monsieur D'Arque, to threaten to throw Maurice into the asylum in order to pressure Belle into marrying him. While D'Arque realizes that even Maurice's nonsense about a beast and his odd inventions do not make him dangerous, he is willing to accept the bribe, mostly because he liked the despicability of the plot. Considering the management of asylums of the 18th century (the time that the film takes place), this is an extremely harsh threat. 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 slinks out of the shadows and slyly makes Belle his offer - he will clear up the "misunderstanding" if she marries him. Horrified and disgusted, Belle refuses, and a smug Gaston allows Maurice to be dragged away. Belle, however, manages to prove her father's apparently insane claims about a beast inhabiting a huge castle in the woods to be true by using a magic mirror that the Beast had given her, showing him to Gaston and the entire village. Gaston grows even more frustrated after his plan fails and is shocked that Maurice was indeed telling the truth, but becomes increasingly jealous when Belle begins referring to the Beast as "kind and gentle," realizing that she prefers a "monster" over himself. The final straw is when he refers to the Beast with this insult and Belle angrily retorts back that he is the real monster.

In his jealousy and pride, Gaston furiously snaps out and snatches the mirror from Belle, spitefully declaring that she is just as crazy as her father. He then successfully convinces the villagers that the Beast is a threat to the village and therefore must be brought down immediately for if he couldn't have Belle then no one could. Shocked, Belle tries to stop him, but perceiving that Belle is against him, Gaston has her and Maurice locked in the basement to keep them from warning the Beast. Mounting his horse, he 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. They even carve a battering ram from a tree in the woods to use for breaking in. As they enter, the rioters are attacked by the castle servants. Gaston bypasses the ensuing battle and confronts the Beast alone in the West Wing. He fires an arrow into him, tosses him out of the window onto a lower section of the roof and taunts him. When the Beast doesn't respond, having lost his will to live since Belle's departure (to rescue her lost ill father, who was searching for her), Gaston breaks off a nearby castle statue and uses it as a makeshift club to try to kill the Beast. Just as he is about to deliver the first blow, Belle arrives outside the castle (she had escaped from the basement with help from Chip, who stowed away with her) and calls up to Gaston, urging him not do this terrible thing, but the hunter ignores her. Seeing Belle regains the Beast's strength and he grabs the club, viciously fighting back with strength and animal ferocity, much to Gaston's sudden surprise.

Though roughly even with his adversary, Gaston soon realizes that he cannot rely on brute strength alone to kill the Beast, and instead begins taunting him in order to infuriate him enough to let his guard down, pushing the final button by claiming that Belle could never love a monster and that she would always be his. The plan works but immediately backfires with the Beast lunging forth, overcome by animalistic urges and emotion, head-butting him in the chest, grabbing him and then holding the terrified hunter at his mercy by the throat above the castle moat. With his life at stake, Gaston abandons his pride and pathetically begs for mercy; the Beast accepts, ordering Gaston to leave immediately and never return. In spite of this, when Gaston recovers his strength, he looks up to see the Beast climbing up a balcony to embrace Belle which makes him more jealous than ever. Determined to kill his rival once and for all, an ungrateful Gaston follows and stabs the Beast in the back with a knife while dangling somewhat precariously from the balcony. He tries to stab the Beast a second time; however, this final cruel deed proves to be his ultimate undoing when the Beast swings his arm backward at him in pain, causing Gaston to lose his balance when he tries to dodge it, fall off the castle, and plunge into the deep moat below, to his death.

Despite laying a deep stab on the Beast, Gaston would die alone that night; just as the Beast nearly succumbed to his own 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 healing the Beast's injuries. All in all, Gaston had learned the hard way that pride literally comes before a fall.

Once Upon A Time

Gaston is featured in the ABC series in a very minor role played by Sage Brocklebank (skin deep). Here, he was engaged to Belle through an arranged marriage, and as in the film, she did not love him because she found him "shallow." He attempted to reclaim her from Rumplestiltskin regardless but was transformed into a rose and given as a gift to Belle. A nobleman, Gaston was the eldest son of Lord LeGume, a reference to the original surname planned for his Disney counterpart.

Gaston returns in the fifth season episode "Her Handsome Hero", now portrayed by Wes Brown. In this episode, Gaston's backstory is more fleshed out. Lord LeGume has agreed to ally his kingdom with Sir Maurice's if Maurice's daughter Belle were to marry his son Gaston. In the beginning, Gaston is portrayed as nobler and focused than his Disney counterpart, but he is later proven to be just as villainous. After he and Belle discovered a captive Ogre, Gaston tortured the youngling for information, an act Belle considered to be unconscionable. It is hinted that Gaston's aggression might have provoked the Ogres into war. In order to protect the kingdoms, Belle finally agrees reluctantly to marry Gaston. As stated above, he is later killed by Rumplestiltskin when he tried to rescue Belle from the Dark Castle.

After his death, Gaston grew further villainous, as the circumstances of his death caused him to blame Belle for his death. Rather than following Belle's idea of forgiveness and redemption, Gaston now believed that it was wisest to defeat an enemy by being strong and that he should have brought an army before he confronted Rumplestiltskin. After Belle and Rumplestiltskin turn up in the Underworld, Hades offers Gaston the chance to redeem himself by killing the Dark One. The god makes a further deal to Belle, that if either Gaston or Rumplestiltskin push the other one in the River of Lost Souls, then Belle could keep her unborn son. However, when the time came, Belle tried to convince Rumplestiltskin not to harm Gaston, as she was not prepared to protect Gideon in this way. However, when Gaston tried to fire at the Dark One, Belle accidentally knocked her ex-fiancé into the river, damning him for eternity. Unfortunately, Belle darkened her soul just to save Rumplestiltskin, as Hades found a loophole in their deal; the deal was for either Rumplestiltskin or Gaston to push the other one in the river, not Belle.

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 psychopathic and violent in nature.

Just like his animated counterpart, Gaston is well-liked and respected in the village for his previous war heroics against the Portuguese and 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 rude behavior. It is for this reason Gaston wants to marry Belle, for he's used to girls swooning over him. Gaston 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 insane (due to a spell cast by an enchantress that erases all the townsfolk's memories of the castle), but Gaston decides to tag along, seeing an opportunity to get Maurice's approval for Belle's hand in marriage. However, as they stroke into the woods with LeFou, Gaston tires himself of Maurice's apparently groundless story and begins to lose his temper with the old man. LeFou intervenes, calming Gaston down with memories of the war. Even as Gaston apologies for his outburst and proceeds to ask for Maurice's blessing, an indignant Maurice refuses. Outraged, Gaston knocks Maurice out in a fit of rage, then ties him up in a tree and leaves him to be fed by hungry wolves (despite LeFou's objections), though Maurice ends up being saved and nursed back to health by a hermit, Agathe.

As Gaston returns to his tavern, he is shocked to see that Maurice has returned alive and is now accusing him of 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. However, Belle arrives back to the village and foils this by revealing the Beast's existence with the magic mirror that he has given to her, making the townsfolk realize that Maurice was telling the truth. Overcome by this revelation of "sorcery," and believing that this Beast has put Belle under some sort of love trance, an angry Gaston snaps out by stealing the magic mirror and rallies the villagers 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 attack 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, even using LeFou as a human shield before leaving him for dead, which incited an outraged LeFou to side up with the servants, finally turning against the man he admired for years. As the villagers flee away in humiliation and defeat, Gaston heads over to the West Wing, where he finds the Beast sulking (as the latter lost his will to live after letting Belle go). Taking the opportunity, Gaston shoots the Beast, arrogantly 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 pushing him off the balcony into the roof, demanding him to stop. Undeterred by Belle's intervention, Gaston sadistically vows that he will mount the Beast's head in his tavern wall and marry Belle by force before climbing through the roof to kill the Beast. However, the Beast regains his will after witnessing Belle's return and realizing what Gaston said is a lie, so he fights back against Gaston for good.

After a brief fight, the Beast finally overpowers Gaston and grabs him by the neck, preparing to drop him off the tower for the trouble he caused. With his life at stake, Gaston begs for mercy, to which the Beast grudgingly obliges by coldly telling Gaston that he is not a beast. 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. However, Gaston retrieves his gun and shoots the Beast fatally twice from a footbridge, much to Belle's horror. 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 to the castle floor below, similar to that of the original.

Trivia

 * Belle and Gaston are only Engaged on Once Upon a Time.

Prequel series
Luke Evans will reprise his role as Gaston in the prequel TV series on Disney+.