“You” Season 2 Recap and Review

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Francesca Simi, Writer

What would you do for love? For Joe Goldberg, the possibilities are limitless. As we go through what happened on season 2 of ‘You’, we see how Joe continues to make the same mistakes while falling for another girl. In the last season of ‘You’, the main character, Joe (played by Penn Badgley), meets Guinevere Beck (portrayed by Elixabeth Lail) and becomes instantly infatuated with her. Aspiring to be with Beck, he uses his stalker skills and deceitfulness to learn everything he can about her. Additionally, Joe did everything he could to do what he believed was protecting Beck and strengthening their  relationship. Although, things started to get messy for him once those actions went from lying and stalking to kidnapping and killing. Benji, Peach, Ron, and eventually Beck were killed in the span of season one. When Beck started figuring things out, Joe started keeping Beck in his notorious glass box and eventually killed the woman he once believed to be the love of his life. 

 

After this unfortunate set back in New York, Joe makes a fresh start for himself in Los Angeles while taking the identity of a Will Bettelheim. Of course, that meant that he had to hold captive the real Will. Although, to regress from his psychotic ways, Joe was able to control himself and the situation by letting Will go rather than killing him. After all, he was starting over. At least that is what he told himself before he met Love. Joe knew it was too dangerous to love again, but he couldn’t help falling in love with, Love. Joe proceeded to deceive more suspicious friends and try to stay out of trouble and tolerate his boss/Love’s high maintenance twin brother, Forty. Outside of the situations directly related to Love, Joe faces other challenges which makes it more difficult for him to stay. One problem he felt needed to be dealt with was protecting his teenage neighbor from a celebrity predator, which unfortunately led to Joe accidentally killing him. So not only has Joe reverted to his ways of obsessing and stalking, he also killed celebrity Henderson as well as a man named Jasper who threatened Joe because he thought he was the real Will Bettelheim, who owes Jasper a substantial amount of money.

 Between watching as Joe further complicates his situation, we get a look into Joe’s childhood where we see a history of a violent household which was likely a reason why Joe is how he is in present day. Things continued to escalate for Joe when Forty showed up with a new girlfriend who turned out to actually be Joe’s ex-girlfriend, Candace, who he had tried to kill and bury after finding out she had cheated. She was also going by a different name, trying to infiltrate Joe’s life without others knowing her hidden agenda.  It wasn’t until later that Candace tried to tell Love about everything Joe has done. Hoping it wasn’t true, Love confronted Joe about what she was told and left upset, not knowing what to believe. In response to his plan going awry, Joe gave into Deliliah when she came onto him, and Joe decided to stay in Los Angeles once he realized he had become an Angelino. Joe witnesses that Love has a new lover soon after they fought. While trying to find more about this new guy, Joe runs into Love’s friend, Ben, who can clearly see what Joe was doing. The only way to shake him off was to participate in a type of spiritual healing done by Ben and to be truthful, which actually led to genuine healing and realization from Joe.

Later, Deliliah and Joe get arrested for, irrelevant reasons, and catch the attention of officer Finch, who saw Joe   onthe night of Henderson’s murder. After releasing the two, Finch investigated Joe and shared some concerning information to Delilah, who got herself stuck in, you guessed it, the box. Finding himself in another difficult situation, Joe decides to come up with a plan to set a time release handcuffs on Delilah so she can survive and be free after Joe has left the city for good. Just when his scheme was coming into fruition, Joe hit a roadblock when Forty laced his drink with a heavy dose of LSD and kidnapped him, only planning to release him after Forty’s book was finished. While tripping on acid, Joe used his phone to make a call to Love, which she used to tell Joe that she forgives him and wants to run away with him.  Still not in his right mind, Joe used his one pass to leave for a break but returned not knowing what he had done with his time, and possible hallucinations of seeing blood on his hands. Worried he may have killed Deliliah, he visited the cage only to find her dead, then obsessed over finding out what he had done with his lost time. 

As he was sickened at the thought of what he likely had done, he discovered that Love had actually been the one to kill Deliliah and then Candace soon after, because she has a darkness inside of her as well which is why she appreciated  Joe so much and wanted to run away with him. Even Joe could see the craziness of the situation, but eventually realized that he would be happy running away with Love. Even with the deaths of Candace, Delilah, and Forty, who had been shot by Finch when threatening to kill Joe after realizing what he had done. At the end we see Love and Joe seemingly starting a new happy life together. 

All was good at the end and things were finally starting to calm down until Joe, a creature of habit, started becoming infatuated with yet another woman. All there was to see was a partial image of a woman reading and relaxing outside as Joe peeked through the fence of his new home. Really Joe? Really? Now we can only wonder how Joe’s new obsession will progress and what new interesting situations he will get himself stuck in. Why does Joe continue to follow the same chaotic routine of obsessive stalking and ‘falling in love’? Is it a result of his unfortunate childhood circumstances? Could he truly be falling in love, or is he continuing this cycle out of boredom and or pure psychological disturbances? Even while in a relationship with someone he was in love with and accepts him for who he truly is, Joe will now choose to occupy the majority of his time finding out as much as he can about this stranger. 

Season three of You is set to be released in 2021. We will see how much Joe increases his kill count in the new season, with it currently being at 8. In the next season our possible theories of Joe and Love having a baby may be correct, and we can see how good two psychopaths are at parenting.