Wolves (Beauty and the Beast)

The Wolves are minor antagonists in Disney's 1991 film Beauty and the Beast.

Beauty and the Beast
These meat-eating predators are shown to be inhabitants of The Black Forest surrounding the Beast's castle, presumably as a part of the Enchantress's spell.

After Maurice gets lost in the forest following his separation from his horse, Philippe, the wolves spot Maurice and immediately chase him all the way to the castle. Even when Maurice manages to get inside past the gate and close it, they still try to get him and manage to bite his foot, but he gets away safely. Later on, when Belle runs away from the castle after the Beast frightens her, she is ambushed by the wolves and attacked. One of the wolves inadvertently fell into the thin ice of the lake and was stranded, slowing him down from the rest of the pack. The wolves almost kill her, but the Beast turns up, possibly tipped off by Lumiere and Cogsworth (who saw Belle leave and alarmed the Beast to save her from the wolves), and fights an entire pack of the wolves. Although they manage to bite him several times, the Beast knocks one out cold and the rest run off in fright. This is the last they are seen in the film.

In a deleted scene, however, they were going to instead brutally attack the conceited hunter Gaston.

Beauty and the Beast: The Enchanted Christmas
The wolves make a cameo in the midquel. When Belle, Chip and Philippe go into the Black Forest to look for a Christmas tree, the wolves are seen watching them, but this time they don't attack them. This may possibly be due to the memory of their past experience with Belle and the Beast, and they know not to mess with them in order to not get hurt again.

Trivia

 * To call them villains is rather unfair, due to the long tragic history of wolves being associated with evil, yet it became a stereotype in fairy tales. These wolves, savage as they acted, were just predators looking for their next meal, which is harder during winter.
 * In real life, wolves are afraid of humans and tend to stay far away from them, and there has not been a report of a healthy wild wolf attacking and killing a human in North America. Their behavior in The Enchanted Christmas was closer to their actual behavior.
 * However, France, where Beauty and the Beast takes place, does have a large degree of wolf attacks, with 3,272 attacks having been documented from 1580–1830.
 * Their planned involvement in Gaston's death was eventually reused with Scar's death in The Lion King.