Hello, you. Joe Goldberg is back! Our favorite delusional protagonist has just returned to our screens for Season 4: Part 1 of Netflix’s hit show You.
Before you start binge-watching the psychological thriller’s five brand-new episodes, it’s time for a quick recap of what happened in Season 3.
Season 3 of You picked up with the murderous newlyweds, Joe and Love, now living in the suburbs with their newborn baby boy, Henry. Despite the couple’s best attempts to put their violent past behind them, it wasn’t long before an innocent bystander found themselves entangled within the couple’s vicious tendencies.
Shortly after the couple’s big move, Joe was right back to his constant infatuations with other women, the first being his neighbor Natalie, and then his new boss Marienne.
When Love discovers Joe’s latest obsession with Natalie, she lures her into the basement of her newly leased bakery and murders her. Natalie’s husband, Matthew, quickly sends out a search party for his missing wife. The Goldbergs try to cover their tracks by creating a story that Natalie was having an affair with Gil, another neighbor, and that he killed Natalie– and then himself. Of course, Gil was killed by Love.
Unconvinced by the story, Matthew begins using extreme surveillance measures and technology to figure out what actually happened. Noticing something was “off ” with his new neighbors, Matthew follows his hunch that Love and Joe have a possible connection to his wife’s death.
Simultaneously, Joe then finds himself drawn to his new boss, Marienne, who is in her own nightmare – an ugly custody battle for her daughter, Juliette, with her wealthy ex-partner, Ryan. Despite the potential consequences, Joe begins an illicit affair with Marienne. To ensure a future with Marienne– and save her from her own demons, Joe kills Ryan. However, tension grows when Love begins having a secret romance of her own with Theo, Natalie and Matthew’s son.
Things go even more haywire when Joe and Love’s nosy neighbors, Sherry and Cary Conrad, overhear the Goldbergs having a heated argument in which they confess to Natalie’s murder. Joe and Love ultimately lock the couple in the glass cage they had hidden in the basement of Love’s bakery. Theo, visiting the bakery, mistakenly discovers the couple locked in the cage and also gets caught by Love, who throws him down the stairs, knocking him unconscious.
Now let’s talk about the explosive season finale! Literally!
After finding out about Joe’s affair with Marienne, Love confronts Joe. A heated argument leads Joe to suggest they should get a divorce. His request doesn’t go well, leading Love to poison Joe. As he collapses on the floor temporarily paralyzed and mute, Love decides that the only way to save their marriage is to confront Marienne and put an end to the affair.
Unknowingly to unconscious Joe, Love uses his cell phone to text Marienne (posing as Joe) inviting her over. When she arrives, Love confronts Marienne with every intention of doing harm. However, she has a change of heart after meeting Juliette, and realizes that Marienne is not the enemy – Joe is. Love warns Marienne about Joe’s dangerous and murderous nature and reveals that he killed Ryan. Then she lets her leave, unharmed.
With Marienne gone, Love pulls out a knife, ready to kill paralyzed Joe. However, Joe, who is always one step ahead of his victims– and enemies –took an adrenaline pill before his dinner with Love. He then injects her with the same drug she gave him, paralyzing her and leaving her unable to move. His next move was to write a note explaining why he is leaving his child, and goes to the home of his colleague Dante. He leaves Henry to be cared for by Dante and his partner.
Ending things in his signature elaborate manner, Joe creates a crime scene at his own home. He places the needle in Love’s lifeless hand, then cuts off two of his own toes. After setting his kitchen on fire, his toes are planted as “his remains” found inside their home during the investigation. Ultimately, the incident infers that Love killed Joe and then took her own life.
The ending scenes of the episode include Theo leaving the hospital in good health, thankfully surviving Love’s attack; Dante and his partner now raising Henry, and Sherry and Cary escaping the cage, and gaining fame and notoriety from their experience. The season’s last scene shows Joe roaming the streets of Paris in search of Marienne.
You Season 4 will air in two parts on Netflix. The first half landed on Netflix on Feb. 9, and the second part will be released on March 9.
The fourth season begins with Joe now a professor in London, England under a new alias, Jonathan Moore.
Now get to binging! As Joe Goldberg once said, “Goodbye, you.”