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Hey you! You came here because you probably Googled “You series explained” or “Is Joe the killer in Season 4?” at 2:17 a.m. – full respect if you were low-key, anxious, and wanting tea. Can I offer you a different kind of drink? Blood, perhaps?
As Season 5 of You approaches, like Joe Goldberg attacks hiding behind a bookshelf, now is as good a time as any to recap every histrionic turn, obsession, and murder he has committed till now.
Over the span of four seasons, Netflix’s favorite cardigan-wearing sociopath has done everything from becoming a terminally lovesick teenager to a glass-cage zoo enthusiast, a part-time instructor, and a full-time alter ego wind-up doll.
With the final season of the show set to release in a few days, fans and potential victims seem to be anxiously preparing for the latest installment of Joe’s never-ending saga.
We Need to Take a Step Back Before The Final Act Takes Place and Cover a Journey that is Best Watched, or rather stalked, in visions – from a New York bookseller now infamous in London as the Eat–the–Rich Killer, and the intertwining mind-bending Fight Club that transformed everything.
Season 1: A Bookstore, a Beck, and a Basement Full of Bad Ideas
The whole series began rather innocently, with Joe Goldberg, a New York bookstore manager and part-time Dostoevsky fanboy, meeting an aspiring writer, Guinevere Beck. Then, as expected, he falls in love with her. He becomes intensely curious, to the extent of watching her through her apartment window. To top it all, he goes ahead and steals her phone. What a sweet love story.
Some would say his philosophy isn’t quite right, but for him, if you love someone, you protect them. Even if that means kidnapping their ex (hi Benji), offing their best friend (bye Peach), and locking them in a soundproof box underneath his bookstore.
Beck slowly manages to figure things out, and we all sadly know how this will end: dead and monologued, like most of Joe’s romantic interests, and turned into a tragic backstory for the upcoming season.
The end of the series definitely could’ve used better writing, as somehow Joe was able to set himself free, only to have an old flame come visit him unexpectedly. Candace, the seemingly dead Flame (dead as in really buried 6 feet down), showing up does add a much-needed excitement towards the end that we thought we wouldn’t get. Surprise.
Season 2: Love, Lies, and a Side of Lasagna in LA
And now we're off to Season 2.
To escape the destruction he caused in New York City, Joe flees to Los Angeles and becomes a newly minted “spiritual minimalist” named Will, who does yoga and shames you for eating single-use plastics.
He comes across Love Quinn—a chaotic gluten-free chef grieving for her (now dead) twin. Initially, it’s the usual stalker routine: he spies, he obsessively follows, he murders, but this time, Love changes everything. She’s just like him, but more reckless when it comes to the violence with which she dispatches people (RIP Delilah, Forty, Candace, and all your expectations of a functional family).
Then, Love drops the bombshell: she’s expecting their baby.
Cue Joe enduring suburban barbecues and the early stages of fatherhood simmering in anger, already planning to cheat on his partner with someone at a literal picket fence. Nope. Not okay.
Season 3: Baby Makes Three… Plus a Few Corpses in the Basement
Suburban life in Madre Linda is hell for a couple of serial killers trying to pretend they’re normal. Love’s making sourdough and murdering the neighbor. Joe’s babysitting and falling for the local librarian, Marienne, because nothing says “responsible dad” like stalking a woman at story time.
The season is essentially a marital therapy session gone very, very wrong. Love is impulsive. Joe is emotionally detached and existentially tired. They both cheat. They both kill. But Love wants to fix things.
Joe wants to disappear. And so, in classic Joe fashion, he fakes his death, burns down the house, and abandons his baby on a doorstep like he’s auditioning for a twisted Hallmark movie.
Next stop? Paris. Because nothing screams reinvention like croissants and stalking your next obsession through the Louvre.
Season 4: The Eat-the-Rich Killer, a Fictional Rhys, and Joe’s Breakdown in British
Joe’s teaching English literature in London under the name Jonathan Moore now. As per the new plan, he intends to be good.
That lasts for four episodes.
Now, within this wealthy and unbearable friend group, there is a killer on the loose. Joe, who is just trying to mind his business, sort of, is getting eerie messages from a person who calls himself the Eat-the-Rich Killer, and the number one suspect seems to be a smug political author named Rhys Montrose.
Joe does the best Sherlock impression: he has to track Rhys through posh parties, bad journalism, and more. The biggest twist? Rhys isn’t real.
Yes, the real Rhys is, in fact, real. But the one Joe has been talking to, arguing with, and pinning murders on? He’s a figment of Joe's fractured psyche. Turns out Joe's head —bless it— is playing 4D chess with him. He blacks out, kills people, and imagines a British sociopath to hold accountable.
This is Gossip Girl with a body count.
The Marienne Incident: A Glass Cage and the Price of Denial
Joe came to London for Marienne. What’s the name of the librarian again? Oh yeah. The one whom he left everything for. Look, we all knew this was going south, but he quite literally kidnapped her, imprisoned her in a forsaken underground subway vault, and then BLANKED OUT.
I mean, come on, the guy desperately needs therapy. The degree of delusion he put himself through to justify that “he set her free” is comical at best. Watching her barely stay alive through the clutches of someone so twisted and captured in his very “shy-student” persona…heh, Claws is turning into a B-grade horror film.
For as long as Joe could hold up the facade, his mixed identity kept his delusions afloat. But the truth is, the moment he gathers the courage to free himself from the chains, his sanity shatters like glass.
“I’m the villain of my own twisted fairy tale?” he lets it all spill.
“Guess what? Turns out I’m not some wholesome guy who just needs a little more love. I’m rather a raging monster posing as a sociopathic caretaker.”
NO, he does not put the pieces together mid-rant as he finally accepts. Even Prison Image not-Good Man breaks in so he can go ‘buh-bye' to the world.
Actually, thinking about it, jumping off a bridge is bound to be a great start.
Turns out it’s even more liberating than he imagined.
The Monster Emerges: Power, Privilege, and a Very Public Image
Joe's tangled story begins when Kate Galvin-Lockwood, his rich love interest, pulls him from the Thames, and her connections help to clean… everything. Their love affair flourished because she accepted him for who he was.
Unfortunately, that version of him is now fused with Rhys—his warped dark side.
By the final episode, Joe is powerful, public, and free. No debts. No more illusion.
And he's fully embraced the shadows.
The last scene captures Joe's face in the glass reflection—a smirking Rhys is intimately staring at him. Not a mere imagination. A full-blown alter ego.
Joe 2.0: The Devil You Know
Let’s face it: Joe Goldberg isn’t a romantic who is lost in love. He’s a poorly written horror film with cheekbones. Season 4 was not just about a new obsession, it was about the collapse of identity. About what occurs when you run out of people to blame and are forced to confront yourself. Or, even worse, fuse with the most terrible version of you.
As Penn Badgley said, “This is Joe at his most honest.”
And, to be honest? That is frightening.
Where do we head next?
Joe now enjoys wealth and power, a new supportive girlfriend with Daddy’s credit card, and no conscience to back him up. There is no longer any self-hiding. No more narration attempting to justify everything away.
And most importantly. This time, we are the "You".
TL; DR: What We've Learned So Far
- Joe's love is a good reason to go into hiding.
- Joe’s enclosure is a wonderful glass cage.
- Your trauma isn’t real. But Rhys walks alongside you—and that’s the truth.
- Probably a Gemini, but the rest is still conjecture. Joe does happen to be the Eat-the-Rich Killer.
So hey, I’m just saying: relocating across the globe and faking your own death isn’t worth it. That’s just way cheaper with therapy.
Final Thought (Joe Voiceover Style)
Hey You!
You stayed. Read all of it. Enjoyed it thoroughly, maybe because you live for crime thrillers. Or. Maybe you see a part of your psyche in me.
Terrifying, isn't it?
But that’s okay.
I see you.
I understand you.
Trending
I love you.
Just... don’t look in the basement.
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