Warning: This post contains spoilers for season 2 ofYOU.
), a new name (Will Bettelheim!
), and a new love (named Love!).
Beth Dubber/Netflix
We watched every episode to keep track of Joe’s latest obsessionsandbody count.
Let’s dive in!
Episode 1: “A Fresh Start”
Once upon a time, Joe believed in love.
Beth Dubber/Netflix
He was brave, he was vulnerable, and so he won her the old-fashioned way.
He did whatever he had to, whatever it took, for her.
But he picked the wrong woman.
So he made mistakes because love had made him blind.
Love became poison and eventually died.
And now Joe has to heal from his broken heart and learn how to love again.
But Joe can’t risk everything for love againhe tries too hard and it’s too dangerous.
And so it’s time for him to make a fresh startwithout love.
At least, that’s how Joe sees everything that happened back in season 1 of the Lifetime-turned-Netflix dramaYOU.
The last two times resulted in one confirmed murder (Beck) and one attempted murder (Candace).
His “addiction management” plans?
Only 10 minutes of stalking a day.
Because that will totally go well.
That’s just too perfect!
Love says she sees that same kind of real love and loss in his eyes.
If only she knew the real story…
He’s back to his old tricks.
Will Love end up suffering the same fate as Beck because of it?
Joe immediately met up with the real Will Bettelheim to buy a forged identification.
That brings us back to the present.
But it’s fine!
At least Joe isn’t having problems with Lovethey share their first real kiss.
He is, however, having problems with seeing visions of Beck while on dates with Love.
And he lies about it on top of it all.
That hole Joe keeps digging?
It keeps getting deeper.
I really like Will!
She keeps pushing Joe to open up to her and he freaks out and yells until she leaves.
He sees Beck again and has a full conversation with the hallucination.
He breaks down crying after, apologizing to the phantom Beck before she disappears.
I legit almost barfed.
It was so disgusting!
But so artfully done!
But I also can’t hate how well done it was!
The meat grinder moment alone deserves an Emmy.
“I hurt her.
I really hurt her,” he says.
Love just won’t take no for an answer though.
It’s just … way too perfect.
I can’t quite put my finger on what’s so off about it all.
His note reads: “Goodbye, you.”
Episode 3: “What Are Friends For?”
The real Will certainly wants them to do so.
The answer is a place that starts with an M, but Joe hasn’t figured it out yet.
The next item on his agenda to win her heart is to win over her pompous twin brother Forty.
Fortywouldbe one to frequent improv shows just as Joe of coursewouldbe one to needlessly be a dick about them.
After assuming Joe is in recovery (Murderers Anonymous maybe?
), Forty gives Joe the idea to be the one that bakes for the baker.
the laptop he keeps his porn on).
The password is DICKS.
Joe can’t kill him fast enough.
Joe can’t preoccupy himself with Ellie’s phone activity either after he learns that she’s onto him.
Joe visits his storage unit prisoner for help and poses a hypothetical about how he could let Will escape.
her three best friends.
He promises her that he’ll find out what she can do with Hendy’s lewd photos.
If that wasn’t enough, Ellie is now set to hang out with Hendy.
Now she has to go retrieve him.
A fight between them ensues.
Episode 5: “Have a Good Wellkend, Joe!”
It’s time for Joe to meet the parents.
Meanwhile, Ellie discovers the stash of kiddie porn her sister’s been hiding.
In flashbacks, we start to learn more about what exactly Joe did to Candace.
Present-day Joe gets her alone to ask how she found him.
She tells him she is there to protect the Quinn twins from him.
by her exthe one currently embracing her.
She runs away to her yurt and pulls a knife on Joe.
But he’s in full gaslighting mode.
But she’s not like him.
And we are remindedasPenn Badgley so often insists himselfthat Joe is not the good guy here.
Later, Love tells Joe she has some suspicions about Candace.
“I agree she’s the worst.
Get rid of her now,” he replies.
“That’s aggressive,” Love scoffs.
But Love was right.
Soon we learn the reason Forty is such a mess and Love is so protective.
The au pair, Sophia, was fired and killed herself, and Forty found the body.
Joe reveals his dad hit him a lot as a kid.
Delilah tracks down the teen who says she now believes Henderson was a creep.
The sisters flush the polaroidsincluding the one of Delilahdown the toilet.
(If only Merritt Wever and Toni Collette were on every case.)
Forty announces he’s now in A.A. and keeping himself busy adapting a book Candace found.
That’s right, Beck’s posthumous book!
Oh, and the police now think Henderson was murdered.
And Candace assures the group that whoever did it won’t get away.
“Murder has a way of following you.”
Love tells Joe this totem No.
3 sighting counts for him too.
Then Joe sees what he assumes to be a plainclothes cop looking for him and ditches his stalking mission.
Joe decides to spend time with Ellie after observing that she needs some attention.
While lurking outside Candace’s Airbnb later, Joe sees the cop again.
As he hurries away, he spots a police chopper (totem No.
- and hears the howls of a pack of coyotes (totem No.
He heads back to Anavrin, where a woman in booty shorts rollerblades past him (totem No.
- and sees Love talking to that same cop.
Now Joe can go after Candace himself.
He takes a bite and gags.
She reveals she used salt instead of sugar.
“Sucks being lied to, huh?”
she says, equating a surprisingly salty treat to telling a lover you’re an entirely different person.
Love seems to believe him, but still breaks things off.
Joe is heartbroken but also taking this breakup well in that he hasn’t killed anyone.
Walking home, he passes a dog in a stroller (totem No.
- and decides to go back to loving Love from a distance.
Joe comforts her and they make out.
Spying on Love, he discovers she is hooking up with someone new already.
Back at Anavrin, the new guy and Love are getting cozy while Joe watches from afar.
Turns out, Forty isn’t a fan.
Joe breaks down in tears.
This catches the attention of the police, though, and the two wind up in jail.
Joe panics, and he calls Forty to get him out.
Delilah and Joe agree it was fun but they should just be friends.
Later, Forty and Hemsworth Lite get into it over Love, and Forty gets punched.
Joe breaks things up.
Just as she’s leaving, Joe walks in.
He won’t get in the car to disappear with his mom and some new guy.
He asks her, “Can you trust me?”
Who wants to bet this doesn’t go according to plan?!
At Anavrin, Love is with her friends.
She confesses that she was just using Milo/Hemsworth Lite and she misses Joe.
They convince her to go after him, just as he’s slipping a goodbye letter into her locker.
As a “parting gift” to Love, Joe agrees to help Forty.
With 14 hours left, Joe and Forty get kidnapped by two guys in suits.
and reveals he laced Joe’s drink with a heavy dose of LSD.
Then things get… trippy.
While high, Joe hallucinates that he sees his younger self, Candace, and his mom.
At one point, Forty convinces him to roleplay as Beck to understand her perspective more in the script.
Things end with Joe choking Forty/Beck, but Forty gets him to stop before it’s too late.
Forty killed the au pair out of jealousy when she fell for another guy.
The two hug it out, and at some point fall asleep.
Joe wakes up with 1 hour and 20 minutes left on the clock.
He races to Delilah, only to find her dead in the cage in a pool of her blood.
Welp, guess we know where that blood on his hands came from.
Episode 9: “P.I.
Thankfully, she’s brought that flexibility over toYOU, which helps keeps things interesting.
Picking up immediately after episode 8, “P.I.
Joe” finds our homicidal romantic spiraling as he stares at Delilah’s bloody corpse.
Basically, “P.I.
In his mind, he runs through a list of suspects.
From there, he briefly considers Delilah’s patrol cop suitor but rules him out, too.
Apparently, while Joe was doing that, Forty FaceTimed Candace and met up with her for sex.
She blames herself, which is heartbreaking since both we and Joe know she’s definitely not responsible.
Yet again, Joe is forced to confront the destruction his pursuit of love has wrought.
Meanwhile, Candace pays Forty a visit and congratulates him on finishing his script.
“What is it about Joe f—ing Goldberg?
Why is it that no one can see him for what he is?”
The answer is obvious: the patriarchy.YOUgets at how we’ve all been conditioned to dismiss women like Candace.
When Love finally shows up, Joe has his come to Jesus moment (kind of).
He confesses to murdering Delilah and Henderson and trying to kill Candace.
“I thought I was doing it for the best reasons, for love,” he says.
“But it was never really love.
I never knew love until I met you.”
Meanwhile, Candace chases after Love and winds up getting stabbed in the neck by Love!
With that,YOUpulls off quite the last-minute twist and confirms my suspicions about Love.
That’s the only way it could’ve ended if the show wanted to make its point.
Unlike Beck, she seemed so intent on being in a relationship with Joe.
In other words, she was basically Joe-ing Joe.
And the finale actually reveals the true extent of this.
The episode begins with Love basically recapping the entire season from her perspective.
From there, she did everything she could to make this work.
Joe is stunned and disgusted by this revelation because it shatters what he thought he knew about Love.
The thing is, he didn’t actually know that much about her.
Joe got exactly what he wantedthe perfect woman who would accept every part of himand he hates it.
YOUloves to play with perspective.
Joe’s limited view of the world also partially hid this twist from the audience, too.
In hindsight, though, the show dropped many breadcrumbs for us along the way.
First, there was the fact that Love is a baker.
Her preferred method of killing is slicing people’s throats, which is verySweeney Todd.
A wolf is a predatory animal, and these two are definitely very predatory when it comes to romance.
Love eventually frees him from his cell, and both of them attend her friends' wedding.
Forty returns to L.A. determined to protect his sister from Joe.
After being barred from the wedding, Forty summons Joe to Anavrin.
Love tags along and actually goes inside first, hoping that she can calm her brother down.
Either way, learning she’s pregnant with Joe’s baby doesn’t decrease his desire to kill Joe.
Thankfully, Officer Fincher arrives and shoots Forty before he can shoot Joe.
Anyway, he’s prepping for her to give birth and to be the father he never had.
That being said, though, Joe is already looking forward to his freedom.
As he heads out into the backyard to read,he catches a glimpse oftheir next-door neighbor.
“But that’s not how destiny works is it?
This is just the beginning.
“I will figure out a way to get to you.
See you soon…neighbor.”
Nothing ever ends and the cycle continues because Joe still hasn’t found what he’s looking for.
