Skip to main content

In You’s season 4, Joe Goldberg finally meets his match: himself

For three seasons of Netflix psychological thriller You, fans watched the eerily charming Joe Goldberg (Penn Badgley) rationalize his heinous actions through a twisted internal monologue. His killings were gruesome and obsessive behavior terrifying, made worse by his warped justifications for everything he did. He was merely stalking each woman to protect her; it’s how he shows he cares, after all. He’s truly sorry for every murder, but he really had no other option.

In season 4, however, the tables have turned on Joe. Streaming’s favorite hunter has now become the prey, with a new serial killer stalking Joe and seemingly getting away with murder. In the process, Joe encounters an embodiment of the thing that he most fears: himself.

Related Videos
Joe looking at a rope tie in a scene from You season 4 on Netflix.

Joe becomes the hunted

Despite trying to start anew, a killer like Joe can never shed their skin, and trouble tends to follow. What’s more, Joe, now going by the name Jonathan, has become the hunted, not the hunter. Someone is killing, framing, stalking, and taunting him. Joe’s line to the mysterious killer, “I refuse to fuel your sick and misguided fixation,” is filled with both irony and karmic, poetic justice. The killer is a kindred spirit, like looking at a reflection in the mirror, except with a British accent.

The story leading up to the big reveal of who the killer is puts Joe at the center of his own personal nightmare: a formulaic murder mystery like all those he considers an insult to true literary works.

What’s more, the victims are high society individuals, the very types of people he loathes. The “Eat the Rich killer,” as they have become known, is targeting spoiled, entitled people like the ones Joe previously killed, including his own wife. Oddly, Joe feels the need to protect them, if only for the purpose of protecting himself and the person he is desperately trying to be.

The new characters on You season 4 standing at a bar, dressed to the nines, looking at something.

You is now commentary on the socioeconomic divide

This is despite the realization that everything Joe stands for is the complete antithesis of the wealthy, entitled, talentless people he befriends. They are as flawed and soulless as he is. The billions they have in the bank mask their antisocial, psychopathic behavior. They aren’t disturbed, they’re just stereotypical spoiled rich kids.

It’s a socioeconomic, class disparity lesson in prejudice: all these individuals would easily kill someone and laugh about it later. Yet they are viewed as privileged and elite while Joe is merely a middle-class killer with an off-the-rack wardrobe.

Joe’s insistence on protecting them may be a projection of his guilt for killing his wife Love in the previous season, or at least betraying her. More likely, however, he is failing so miserably at suppressing his need to become fixated on a new potential romantic partner that he transfers all that obsessive energy onto hunting a killer. It doesn’t even matter that the people being killed mourn the deaths of their friends with laughter, booze, an abundance of drugs, and tasteless jokes.

When Joe finally discovers the killer’s identity, he so desperately needs something – someone – to fixate on that he doesn’t much care that hunting the person is all in the name of protecting these vile, disgraceful humans. One man’s watch collection, he comments to himself, could feed an entire third-world country, after all. Maybe the killer has a point, and he’s simply ridding the world of the sick and twisted individuals that don’t deserve to be in it.

Joe looks out of a window in You season 4.

A leopard never changes its spots

Season 4 of You is a departure from previous seasons, but it’s still a story of a psychopathic serial killer who rationalizes his behaviors and actions in the most narcissistic, disturbing ways. It remains a story about “you.” But now, the obsessive, manipulative, perverse fixation on “you” is directed at a person who, ironically, possesses all the same qualities, beliefs, and desires as Joe. Joe has become both the hunter and the hunted. His new “you” subject isn’t a stunning woman with a sordid past and great hair. “You” is the mirror image of Joe, the manifestation of his inner turmoil.

Even if they’re eliminated, Joe will convince himself the killer is the bad one and he is just doing what needs to be done. Joe will always be Joe. And “you” won’t know what’s coming.

The second half of season 4 of You will stream on Netflix March 9.

Editors' Recommendations

Topics
Ruth is out for revenge in Ozark season 4, part 2 teaser
Julia Garner in Ozark.

For most of its critically acclaimed run, Netflix's Ozark has focused on Marty (Jason Bateman) and Wendy Byrde (Laura Linney) as they found themselves pulled deeper and deeper into the criminal underworld. But in the first look at Ozark's final episodes, Julia Garner's Ruth Langmore takes the spotlight away from the Byrde family. In the first part of Ozark season 4, Ruth vowed to get her revenge on would-be drug lord Javier "Javi" Elizondro (Alfonso Herrera). She may get what she wants, but there's no guarantee that she will make it out alive.

Netflix has dropped the first teaser trailer for Ozark season 4, part 2, which is narrated by Ruth, who shares her belief that her family is cursed. The Langmores are a criminal family, and Ruth doesn't pretend that they're innocent, or even that she is. Ruth has actively taken part in the family business. But after Javier murdered her cousin, Wyatt Langmore (Charlie Tahan), and her business partner, Darlene Snell (Lisa Emery), Ruth told the Byrdes that they would have to kill her to stop her from avenging her loss.

Read more
New Ozark season 4 trailer promises no one gets out clean
Jason Bateman in Laura Linney in Ozark.

Marty (Jason Bateman) and Wendy Byrde (Laura Linney) got what they wanted in Ozark season 3: They survived. However, some juicy new footage from the new "official" trailer for Ozark season 4 suggests that the Byrde family's troubles are far from over.

Warning: Spoilers ahead! Marty and Wendy's icy rival, the ruthless lawyer Helen Pierce (Janet McTeer), wanted them dead. But Omar Navarro (Felix Solis) decided to kill Helen and stick with the Byrdes. The trailer does shed some light on Omar's choice. He believes that the Byrdes can help him negotiate a deal that will keep him out of prison and allow him to move to America. But that's much easier said than done.

Read more
Orange Is the New Black's season 4 trailer takes some dark turns
orange is the new black season 4 trailer oitnb

Litchfield Prison never lacks for excitement, whether developments be good or bad. That will hold true in Orange Is the New Black season 4, but this time around, expect more of the bad. Netflix unveiled the new trailer today, and it looks like this could very well be the most intense season yet.

While photos from season 4 have already revealed some of the tension to come, the trailer really cements it. Its two-minute-20-second run is full of loaded looks between characters, faces filled with agony and fear, and hints of danger to our favorite group of inmates. "I do not like where this is heading," we hear at one point.

Read more