Joe Goldberg faces his own demons by the end of You season 4 part two. Penn Badgley does a remarkable job as the cold-blooded psychopathic murderer, Joe Goldberg. By the beginning of this season, Joe has already moved to his new city of escape, London.
Similar to the end of this season, when Joe left Los Angeles, he also faked his own death. Only this time, he meant it. In London, he goes by the name Jonathan Moore who is also a professor.
Whilst in the UK, he meets his new obsession and love, Kate Galvin (Charlotte Ritchie). However, like always, things take an ugly turn for him when his obsession goes beyond control.
Who is really after the murders?
Although the season has been hinting at this from the very beginning, the show concludes this chapter by revealing how Rhys Montrose (Speleers) has only been a figment of Joe’s imagination. Joe, in fact, truly believes that Rhys is responsible for killing his friends. Following that, he also believes Rhys is the one pinning the murders on him.
However, the show reveals how Joe becomes aware of how he suffers from erotomania. Wherein he grows more and more obsessed with a celebrity and believes in sharing a deep bond with them over time. After reading Rhys’s autobiography, A Good Man in a Cruel World, he soon picks up on the similarities that they share. They both come from poor backgrounds filled with familial issues and a struggling past.
Around this time, Joe’s hallucinations start haunting him. He uses Rhys as a cushion to blame all his murders for. In a way, Rhys represented the darker side of Joe and encouraged him to bring it out. Rhys is the unreal personification of Joe’s attempts at making himself feel like a good person. However, when they meet and Rhys in fact refuses to know him or to have ever seen him, everything starts dawning upon Joe.
The newly created Jonathan Moore is now aware of his split personality disorder. As a response, he tortures and murders the real Rhys in his country home. Partially also because Kate’s multi-billionaire father was blackmailing him into doing so. At the same time, from Joe’s perspective, he was taking revenge for “love”.
What happens to Kate’s father in You season 4?
Kate’s father, a multi-billionaire was blackmailing Joe to get things he didn’t want to do done. When Joe realised how madly he was in love with Kate, the obvious choice for him to “protect” his partner was to kill her father. How ironic is that?
Regardless, Tom Lockwood (Greg Kinnear) was a man with many secrets. And many of them were dark ones. However, Joe took it upon himself to act against the man who birthed the woman he loved as an act of “love”. He suffocates Tom to death using a plastic bag around his head and then frames his bodyguard Hugo (who, in fact, he also killed) for it. Joe made it seem like this gruesome murder was done for his bodyguard to get to his money.
Did Joe kill himself in You season 4?
After killing Hugo to frame him for the death of Lockwood, Joe believes it is time to kill himself. Yet again, in his head, the man is acting out of love, or so he believes. He writes a goodbye note with certain readable phrases, one of which stands out “ for people I love”.
Joe truly believes that that is the only way to save Kate to not end up with the same fate as his exes. He jumps off of a bridge, and only when he drops into the water, he realises that he actually does not want to die.
Later in the episode, viewers catch a not-so-dead Joe waking up in the hospital with Kate by his side. The nurse mentions how he could call it his second birthday because he was in fact dead for a short while before he came back to life. During his conversation with Kate, she emphasises how she needs to know the truth about him. Joe confesses his true self and shares his real identity with her for the first time.
Funnily enough, not knowing about the truth behind her father’s death, Kate agrees to continue being with him if he kept a check on her. She claims she deep down believes he is in fact a good person. Circling back to what Joe actually wants to believe about himself. Not that he in fact is a cold-blooded psychopathic killer with deep-rooted psychological problems.
What happened to Marienne?
When Joe finds Marienne (Tati Gabrielle) dead, he believes what he sees. However, Marienne never died. She fakes committing suicide by overdosing and leaves a letter for Joe. In reality, she takes beta blockers that help lower her heartbeat drastically.
Throughout the season, Marienne has been stuck out in a cage that Joe put her in. He believed that he wanted to let her out. However, he was scared that she would spread the truth behind the antihero himself. She is the first victim who survived Joe. With the help of one of Joe’s increasingly curious students, Nadia Farran (Amy-Leigh Hickman), Marienne manages to escape to Paris, where she reunites with her child.
What happens with Nadia?
Joe kills Edward, Nadia’s partner in crime, pun intended. He frames Edward as the Eat the Rich Killer. Alongside, he pulls out a mega frame game from under his sleeves as he framed Nadia for the murder of Edward, to make it seem like she did so when she found out about his not-so-real truth.
Joe mentions how Nadia is incapacitated to do anything. Besides the fact that she did not have any evidence against him any longer, she knew that Joe just took over Lockwood’s empire with Kate. This meant that an enormous amount of money could be used to do anything.
Even kill her without a trace of any proof. Joe also used this money to clear out any evidence he ever had against himself within the last decade.
How did the season conclude?
In the final scenes of the season, the show skips a few months into the future. Kate and Joe are seen together in New York giving an interview. Kate has taken over her father’s company and is doing wonders with her newly established art foundation. Joe had bought an old bookstore, which is likely a huge throwback to the first season.
Although they are not married, Joe specifically mentions how Kate has been too busy. There is definitely more that can be read into those lines. Cynthia, Tom’s legal council, was also introduced, who could potentially be one of the bigger players for the coming seasons. Every character faces a loose yet present conclusion.
Watch the newest season of You currently streaming on Netflix here.
