Did you see it coming in the ‘You’ Season 4 finale?
Spoiler alert! The following contains details from Part 2 of “You” Season 4, including the season finale.
Of course, Joe Goldberg did it. Perhaps if you only watched the first five episodes of Netflix’s “You,” released last month, you could cling to the hope that the elusive “Eat the Rich” killer taking out members of London’s 1% was someone besides the murderer/stalker at the heart of the series.
But as the new episodes released Thursday reveal, it was Penn Badgley’s Joe all along. Well, at least Joe in a fugue state or multiple personalities or whatever you want to call it. But of course, he still got away with it. And then some.
The finale of “You” Season 4 answered a lot of questions, left some characters dead, some in prison and others on the run. Here’s what to know, and what to expect in a potential fifth season:
The big twist in ‘You’ Season 4 is ...
Although for much of Season 4, Joe appears to be in a battle of words and some actual violence with London mayoral hopeful Rhys (Ed Speleers), it turns out it was all a hallucination. Rhys is real, certainly, but Joe has never spoken to him. Without realizing it, Joe killed Malcolm (Stephen Hagen), Simon (Aidan Cheng) and Gemma (Eve Austin). But worse (from Joe’s perspective), he also kidnapped his obsession Marienne (Tati Gabrielle) and held her captive in a glass cage. Joe realizes this in Episode 7 when he kills the real Rhys.
Joe tries to fix all the problems his equally murderous other half made. One of those is Marienne, but she already has been found by Joe’s clever student Nadia (Amy-Leigh Hickman). Together, Nadia and Marienne hatched a plan to fake Marienne’s death and get* her out of Joe’s cross hairs forever.
After killing the father (Greg Kinnear) of his latest paramour Kate (Charlotte Ritchie), Joe tries to die by suicide, jumping off a bridge but is pulled from the water. Kate, who has just inherited a vast political and financial empire, finds him in the hospital and gets (at least some of) the truth of his past life out of him.
Instead of running away from a man who she knows committed murder, she decides to help rehabilitate him.
After some carefully curated media coverage, she does just that, and Joe is able to use his real name again, with Kate at his side.
What this all means for a potential ‘You’ Season 5
At the end of Season 4, Joe is now safely and securely back in his home city of New York for the first time since Season 1. He’s no longer running from his past and is seemingly happy in a relationship. Happily ever after for the murderer?
But there’s no way that can last for Joe Goldberg. While his wife Love Quinn (Victoria Pedretti) was rich, Kate is beyond wealthy and powerful. She brought Joe back from the dead, after all. If things go wrong between Joe and Kate, it won’t be pretty.
Back in his home city and with his most dangerous partner, it seems like a fifth season could also be a good final one for ‘You.’