The TV show that everybody loves to hate is heading back to screens in just a few days.
Over the course of You, leading man Joe Goldberg has lied, schemed, stalked and murdered his way to several happy ever afters, narrowly avoided being killed himself, and evaded the law on several different (and far-fetched) occasions.
With season four on the horizon, and Joe making a fresh start in London, this rather charismatic serial killer is set to cause mayhem once more. We break down seasons one to three.
What has happened up to now?
The twists and turns of You seasons one to three could fill a novel at this point, but the basic plot is as follows: it all opens with Joe running a bookstore in New York. In the first few episodes, he meets and falls in love with Beck, played by Elizabeth Lail.
The pair get along famously, but Beck eventually twigs that Joe is actually a serial killer, who has offed several people in the past (including her boyfriend Benji and friend Peach). Naturally, she is horrified – even more so when Joe locks her up in his snazzy basement dungeon and finally kills her too.
Joe makes a fresh start in Los Angeles, and series two and three focus on his relationship with Love Quinn (Victoria Pedretti). Joe falls madly in love with her, but is horrified to discover that Love is actually a serial killer and obsessive romantic, just like him. He tries to kill her, but surprise – she tells him that she’s pregnant with his child.
The pair decide to stay together and make things work, but naturally things aren’t that simple. In season three, they move to the suburbs where they each have affairs (Joe falls in love with Marienne Bellamy, played by Tati Gabrielle, while Love has a tryst with a local teenager), several of their neighbours die and Love attempts to murder Joe – before he manages to kill her instead.
He then fakes his own death (by setting fire to their house and chopping off two of his toes, for some reason) leaves their baby son, Henry, with a neighbour and heads off to Paris to find Marienne, who has run away after learning the truth about Joe.
Who is Joe?
Serial killer Joe Goldberg (played by Gossip Girl’s Penn Badgley) has been many things over the past few seasons, but we meet him as a local bookstore owner with a dark past.
As it turns out, Joe also has a habit of obsessively falling in love with beautiful women, and a penchant for killing people that stand in the way of him and his imagined grand romance.
He’s a pretty mysterious character, but as the seasons have progressed, viewers have also found out a little more about Joe’s tragic backstory. His mother was abused by his father; as a child, Joe shot and killed his father to protect her, and was taken into care. At some point after that, he was taken in by Mr Mooney, who gave him a job at the bookstore he starts season one in.
However, Mr Mooney turned out to be a bad egg, too: in addition to abusing Joe, he also kept him inside the infamous glass jail inside the bookstore’s basement, which Joe returns to time and again over the course of the show.
Clearly, Joe is a damaged individual: can he change? Badgley doesn’t think so. "I think Joe will remain the same," the actor has told TVLine about season four.
"Someone this profoundly ill, disturbed, traumatised and violent has a serious hurdle before them if they’re ever going to heal and change. I don’t know if it’s possible for someone who’s that far gone."
What can we expect from season four?
Previously, each season of You has been based on a book by author Caroline Kepnes, but we’re finally out of material (series three was based on her latest 2021 novel, You Love Me), and so season four appears to be treading entirely new ground. Fortunately, there is a trailer to give us an idea of what might be happening.
This series sees the action move from America to London. Joe appears to have put the past behind him (or has he?) and is turning over a new leaf by starting life as an English professor Jonathan Moore.
Even better, he appears to have made friends in the form of a rather stereotypical group of English aristocrats, including Kate, played by Ghosts’ Charlotte Richie, who is described as being “smart, independent [and] suspicious”. She’s seemingly been set up as his love interest, but as we all know, the tables can turn very quickly on this show.
Also in this group of socialites is Lady Phoebe (played by EastEnders’ Tilly Keeper) "a sweet and trusting person whose extreme wealth and fame tend to attract opportunists” and arrogant literary professor Malcolm, whom Kate happens to be dating. There’s also the mysterious Rhys (played by Downton Abbey’s Ed Speelers) who is in the running for London mayor, but boasts a backstory almost as tragic as Joe’s.
And let’s not forget Marienne, whom Joe spent the end of season three chasing down. By the looks of the trailer, he might have found her, too. Let the chaos begin…
When is it out?
This season of You is longer than ever before and comprises two separate parts: there will be 10 episodes in season four, with five to be released on Netflix on February 9, and the second five to be released on March 9.
