Hello “You,” it has been almost a month since season four part two came out and I can finally tell you everything about it. I have been watching “You” since the first season. I remember when Joe Goldberg was killing people for Beck and manipulating Love into their relationship. But this season was so different in a lot of ways compared to the ones before.
First of all, Joe escaped the suburbs and followed Marienne to Paris to confess his love but was rejected soon after. He hadn’t really planned what would happen if this scenario played out, but he ended up taking on the persona of Johnathan Moore, the American professor in a small university in London. Though he did stand out from others, Joe wanted to just live the rest of his life quietly and spend his holiday alone with his books. But, of course, that didn’t happen. Joe ends up falling into a new rich and privileged friend group like he always has and getting tied up in their daily drama. This season on “You,” it was probably one of the larger main character casts. In the season, new characters were introduced like Kate, Malcolm, Phoebe, Adam, Nadia and Rhys. Before I even watched the season I was a little skeptical because of how many people would be in this season; most of the time tv shows add a totally different cast, it’s a hit or miss.
Once the plot began taking off, after Joe saved Kate from a mugging, Malcom roped Joe into attending an underground party with all of his friends. After a wild and blurred night with everyone, Joe wakes up to Malcolm on his dining room table with a knife in his chest. Almost like a parallel of the ending of season two, Joe must find out who killed Malcolm the night before by playing in his very own whodunnit mystery. Shortly after Joe discovers that he has his own stalker, he begins receiving these very random but ominous text messages from someone threatening to reveal that he killed Malcolm and his friends and framing him for his murders. They called them the “Eat The Rich Killer.”
This classic mystery even had a scene almost like they were playing their own screwed up version of ‘Clue’ when they all were in the mansion. This part of the season was my favorite because it gave such a ‘Clue’ vibe. During this part, a lot of accusations were made towards Joe for being the murderer. One of the girls even pointed out that whenever Jonathan is around someone is murdered, and she was shortly murdered after. This was the ending of part one, with one of the biggest twists being that Rhys Montrose, a candidate for the mayor of London, had committed the murders throughout the season.
The beginning of part two has Joe trying to figure out a way that he can prove Rhys is committing the murders. Part one felt like a confusing cliff hanger with such chaotic build up from Rhys’ monologue and dramatic exit. Kate and Jonathan have begun a relationship, and if anyone knows Joe’s pattern with his girlfriends, he will do anything to protect their life together. Rhys begins popping up very often in part two and tells Joe that he needs to kill his girlfriend’s father, a very powerful man that can get away with anything; of course, he wants the same with Rhys.
I feel like this season took so many turns with so many characters that it became confusing so fast. Even though I love Penn Badgley and “You,” I was getting so confused the closer it got to the end of the season. It was almost like there had been too many plot holes and too many characters to keep up with to understand what was happening. Even after Joe had decided to kill Rhys before he could get to him, he was confused on who Joe was and claimed that the two had never met. He had been a hallucination and an attempt to create this fantasy that Jonathan Moore could have never committed these crimes. There were so many scenes in “You” that if you missed the main idea you would be so confused about what was happening. Joe was always crazy, but in this season he embodies the same feeling as Christian Bale in “American Psycho,” convincing himself that he would never do such a bad crime. But the most terrifying part was the ending: Joe had successfully framed Nadia for the murder of her boyfriend to send her away, and get rid of her snooping around. Just thinking about all of the people that have survived when they came across Joe Goldberg makes me curious what will happen in season five. What past characters will return in hopes of stopping Joe from escaping another investigation or another country? Joe can only get away with this for so long. The only problem is, when will he be caught for everything he’s done?
Lauren Flynn-Miller is a second-year Interdisciplinary Studies major with minors in Journalism and American Sign Language. LF954@wcupa.edu