The fifth and final season ofYouhits Netflix on Thursday, with Joe Goldberg (Penn Badgley) returning to New York City, where the hit psychological thriller series began. Just when Joe seemed to have met his match with Love Quinn (Victoria Pedretti) in Season 3, living a cushy life in California with their son, he just couldn’t leave his stalking and serial-killing ways behind him, starting an affair with Marienne (Tati Gabrielle), their local librarian. After the shocking ending of Season 3, in which Joe fakes his death, burns down their house, and frames Love for murder-suicide, he ventures across the pond to start a new life as a professor in London in Season 4, with his sights set on yet another new woman. Somehow,Season 4showed us an even darker sideto Joe, racking up more murders than ever before and falling for a woman willing to accept him regardless. Here’s what you need to remember fromYou’s chaotic season abroad ahead of Season 5.
Joe Moves to London After Faking His Death in the Season 3 Finale
The Season 3 finale ofYousees Joe Goldberg reach his breaking point with Love, killing her, faking his own death, and leaving their son, Henry, with a trusted friend beforetaking off to London. Initially, Joe flies to Europe to find Marienne, who moves to Paris with her daughter to get away from him. When he does finally track her down while she visits an art festival in London, Marienne wants nothing to do with him, so he allows her to leave. In the first episode, a man named Elliot (Adam James) introduces himself to Joe as a fixer hired by Love’s father to kill Marienne to tie up all loose ends pertaining to their deaths. He provides Joe with a new identity – a university professor named Jonathan Moore – and says he’ll tell Love’s dad he’s dead if Joe agrees to kill Marienne for him. Joe accepts his new identity and latersends him a photo of Marienne’s necklace as proof that he killed her, but lets her go (or so we think).
Shortly after Joe (now Jonathan) begins his job as a literature professor at a local university, he meets Malcolm (Stephen Hagan), a fellow professor, who quickly introduces him. After a wild night of partying during which Joe blacks out from drinking too much absinthe, he wakes up to find Malcolm’s dead body on his kitchen counter, totally unaware of how he got there and with no memory of killing him. This kicks off a string of murders of different members of Malcolm’s friend group, including artist Simon (Aidan Cheng) and socialite Gemma (Eve Austin), andthe perpetrator is soon dubbed theEat The Rich killer.
Joe Is Revealed To Be the Eat-The-Rich Killer
As Joe ingratiates himself into Malcolm’s friend group, he meets renowned author and London mayoral candidate Rhys Montrose (Ed Speelers) and quickly takes a liking to him as they had similarly rough childhoods. He’s the most down-to-earth among this new cast of extremely wealthy, out-of-touch characters, but in Episode 7, we find outJoe’s friendship with Rhys wasnever real in the first place.Throughout Season 4, Joe receives ominous text messages that appear to be from a stalker who knows about his past and tracks his every move. After Gemma’s murder, Joe begins to suspect that Rhys is both the Eat The Rich killer and the person sending him messages, butYouthenhits us with aFight Club-style twist, revealing that the Rhys Joe “befriends” is actually a hallucination of Joe’s second, even more sinister personality.
Joe and Rhys did meet once, but never really became friends, and Joe’s parasocial relationship with Rhys via social media resulted in this alternate personality taking on his image.Joe was the Eat the Rich killer all along, with this other personality taking over when he killed Malcolm, Simon, and Gemma, leaving Joe with no memory of doing so. It was also this alternate personality thatkidnapped Marienne once again, trapping her in his infamous glass cage in the basement of an abandoned building.
‘You’ Season 4 Part 2 Completely Changes How We Watch Part 1
A major twist makes it a must to go back and rewatch Part 1 all over again.
Joe Finds Yet Another New Love Interest in Season 4
Joe finds a new woman to pursue and obsess over in every season ofYou, and Season 4’s love interest is none other than Malcolm’s girlfriend, Kate (Charlotte Ritchie). Initially cold towards him, after Malcom’s murder, Joe wears her down by claiming to want to protect her from the Eat The Rich killer. Though Kate isn’t as pompous or flashy with her wealth compared to her friends, we later find out she’s one of the richest of them all, as thedaughter of billionaire activist investor Tom Lockwood(Greg Kinnear). Kate hates her father for all the terrible things he’s done with his immense wealth and cut ties with him years prior, using a different last name to avoid being associated with him.
In Episode 7, per Joe’s encouragement, she agrees to have lunch with Tom and introduces him to Joe. Tom, with his infinite resources, already knows all about Joe’s past, and after their meeting, Rhys (Joe’s other personality) insists that he kill Tom. Once Kate finds out that her father has controlled her life from afar despite thinking she’s built a career on her own,Joe finally finds the motivation he needs to murder Tom.
Marienne Escapes Joe Once Again
Early on in the season, we’re led to believe Joe has experienced a change of heart by leaving Marienne alone, but after Joe’s alternate personality is revealed, we find out Joe has had her locked away in his glass cage the whole time. Until Joe finds out the truth about Rhys, his memories of killing three people and kidnapping Marienne were totally blocked out, meaning Marienne was left without food for days at a time.
After a while, one of Joe’s university students, Nadia (Amy-Leigh Hickman), beginssuspecting him of being the Eat The Rich killer, and finds the key to the cage when she breaks into Joe’s apartment. She finds Marienne, andthey work together to orchestrate an escape plan without involving the police, as Marienne is convinced Joe would be able to talk himself out of trouble. To help Marienne escape, Nadia provides her with beta blockers that slow down her heartbeat to the point where she appears to be dead, so Joe leaves her on a park bench, believing she’d overdosed on a bottle of pills he had previously left for her.Nadia follows Joe and revives Marienne after he leaves, and she returns to Paris.
Joe Attempts Suicide and Starts a New Life With Kate
In the Season 4 finale, after killing Tom Lockwood, Joe realizes he hasn’t changed and that continuing his relationship with Kate would only result in him killing her, so he attempts suicide by jumping off a bridge. He later wakes up in the hospital after a police boat rescued him, and when Kate shows up,they agree to be honest with each other to “keep each other good,”so Joe tells Kate all about his past. Kate, now with all of her deceased father’s wealth at her disposal, helps cover up his crimes, and they move to New York City to start a new life together.
But before they leave, Joe finds out about Nadia helping Marienne and confronts her, killing her boyfriend andframing Nadia for his murder. Both Tati Gabrielle and Amy-Leigh Hickman areset to return for the final season, and theSeason 5 trailersuggests Joe’s past may finally catch up with him.
YouSeason 5 streams on April 24 on Netflix in the U.S.
