The Fourth Season of Netflix’s “You”

The+Fourth+Season+of+Netflix%E2%80%99s+%E2%80%9CYou%E2%80%9D

The fourth season of the television series “You” hits Netflix. “You” is a television show following the life of an obsessive man named Joe Goldberg. Joe grows a toxic obsession with women and stalks them. He becomes so infatuated with the new girl he finds each season, which normally ends in each dying. In previous seasons, Joe is found changing his name to “Will” and “Jonathan.” Whilst changing names, he always changes locations to steer clear of any risk of getting caught. Joe is found in places like Los Angeles and Madre Linda. In season four the show takes place in London. At the end of season three Joe’s target, Marienne, runs away to London after discovering Joe and his wife’s disturbing hobbies/behavior. After Joe’s wife, Love, dies, Joe fakes his own death, leaves the United States, and follows Marienne around London without her knowledge. The first season of season four pans out to a student walking to class. Once she reaches class, we find out that her professor is none other than Joe Goldberg himself.  We learn from his voice-over that Joe still misses Marienne but he’s trying to live a normal life in London. He has also switched his name once again to “Jonathan Moore.”  We see a man approach Joe who Joe doesn’t seem the fondest of. His name is “Malcolm Harding” or in other words “Professor Harding.” We learn how Joe and Malcolm met after Joe’s job interview and Malcolm has been a little too insistent on getting drinks with Joe.

Additionally, we learn that Malcolm helped Joe get a flat and somehow Malcolm’s flat is coincidentally right across from Joe’s window.  Joe slowly finds himself stepping into old ways that he wanted to leave in the past. His neighbors Malcolm and his girlfriend, Kate, always have their windows open. The following day results in Joe watching Malcolm and Kate and researching everything that he can find on them. His searches lead him to find out that Kate is an art gallery director and Malcolm comes from a lot of money. Later on, we see Joe leaving his office. Somehow, he runs into Kate being robbed outside of the university. After he helps Kate, she tries to call the police. Yet if she does, the cops will figure out Joe is alive, when he is presumed to be dead. Nonetheless, Joe offers to drive Kate home without knowing if she had mentioned him to the police or not. Joe vows to himself to stay as far away from Malcolm and Kate as he can. Somehow this plan is interrupted by Malcolm showing up at Joe’s doorstep inviting him out for drinks at a friend’s club named Sundry House, as a thank-you for helping Kate. Once arriving at the Sundry House, Joe meets Malcolm and Kate’s extremely wealthy friend group. This group includes Rhys, Roald, Gemma, Connie, Phoebe, Adam, Sophie, and Blessing.

While Joe meets everyone in the group, this is not his first time knowing of them. Before attending the party, he had already looked up each member of the group to find out all he could. Joe clicks with one specific member of the group– Rhys who is an author. They share views on the rich and childhood trauma. Rhys then tells Joe he has a flight to catch and needs to leave. After Rhys leaves and Joe has no one to talk to, he attempts to leave quietly. He gets stopped by Phoebe, a member of the group, who forces him to take absinthe. Joe starts to become severely intoxicated and the screen cuts to a flashback about Marienne when Joe first came to London. They had seen each other, but Marianne runs away in fear, and the flashback ends. After a lot more absinthe, Joe wakes up in his flat confused. Joe stubbles to get ready and see Malcolm’s dead body stabbed on Joe’s table. His first thought was of course that he killed Malcolm, but he still cannot decide if he was set up. We also learn that in a flashback after drinking his sorrows away, Joe is approached by a man. He says that he works for Ray Quinn, who is his dead wife’s father. He explains to Joe that he was sent to kill him. They make an agreement that if Joe kills Marianne and returns the money he stole from Love Quinn’s account, he will spare his life and give him a new identity in London. Joe takes Marianne’s necklace instead to act like he did kill her when in reality he did not.

Rerouting back to the current time, Joe finds himself getting closer to Kate. This friendship starts to cause multiple problems. Joe could not exactly tell Kate what had happened to Malcolm because he did not truly know himself. Shortly after Malcolm dies, Joe starts receiving text messages from someone who seems to be following his every move. As Joe attempts to uncover this anonymous messenger within his group of rich “snobs” they start getting killed. The killer is known to the public as the “Eat the Rich Killer.” And while it does seem that Joe is some random suspicious man that came around when the murders started to occur, he is not the one responsible for all of these murders. As time goes on, the anonymous messenger continues to haunt Joe and continues to kill. Simon, a member of the group, is killed at the opening of Kate’s art gallery. As this is going on, Joe returns to his apartment to find stapled articles of every one of his victims from the first three seasons of “You.”  Due to all of the stress Joe falls back into his old habits. He ends up fighting Adam’s bodyguard and kills him. He buries the body and catches the police’s attention. But like always, he gets away with it. With the murderer still on the loose, Phoebe invites the surviving members of the group to her family’s country house. Joe takes this trip to dig up whatever dirt he can find to help him uncover the murderer. When on one of his searches, Roald finds Joe snooping and pushes him out of a window on the second floor. After waking up Joe returns back into the house to find a bloody Kate standing over dead Gemma on the floor. Roald accuses Joe of being the murderer and holds a gun to his head. Roald tries his hardest to convince the group that Joe is behind the deaths of Malcolm, Gemma, and Simon. Joe somehow escapes from Roald and runs into the woods with Roald chasing him.

As Joe and Roald are fighting, Rhys suddenly shows up, ends up kidnapping them, and has them in chains under Phoebe’s family home. They escape and the group finds out that Joe is not the killer, while Joe believes it to be Rhys. At the end of part 1, Rhys announces that he is running for mayor. Yet Joe is determined to take down Rhys once and for all. When part 2 opens up, Joe is still trying to figure out how Rhys is connected to the murders. As Joe is trying to clear up his name and set up Rhys, Rhys somehow has the upper hand. Rhys has kidnapped Marienne and Joe must kill Kate’s father in order to find out where Marienne is. As Joe meets with Tom, Tom then blackmails Joe and tells him to kill Rhys. Joe then goes to find Rhys. He ends up killing Rhys in a fit of rage. As the episodes progress, Joe comes to the realization that the Rhys he’s been speaking to has only been in his imagination. As time goes on, a student of Joe’s becomes more and more suspicious of him. Nadia, Joe’s student, is growing extremely suspicious of Joe and breaks into his apartment. She then finds a clue that leads her underground. She finds Marienne held captive in Joe’s famous glass box. Which he has used to keep other hostages. Marienne and Nadia plan Marienne’s escape. It’s revealed in a flashback that when we are shown Joe taking Marienne’s necklace and setting her “free” it was just in Joe’s imagination. He has actually drugged and kidnapped her. Joe is becoming more and more obsessed with Rhys. We learn that Joe had never met Rhys before, instead he just had an obsession with Rhys after listening to Rhys’ audiobook. In a fight with Marienne and Joe, Joe tries to put Marienne in a separate box. She fights back and he ends up badly hurting her. When he realizes what he had done to the woman he “loved” he slams his head into the glass of the box. He realizes that he has imagined the entire relationship he had with Rhys. This meant he had killed Malcolm, Simon, and Gemma.

In this realization, he once remembers Marianne in the glass box that he has not checked on in weeks. He had once again faced Marienne but this time she and Nadia had a plan to kill him. He had found her on the floor assuming she had killed herself. Joe takes her body and leaves her on a park bench. As Nadia is still going on with her plan to kill Joe, Marienne is seen free of Joe in Paris with her daughter. Joe, who is on a full downward spiral after believing he was the reason Marianne is dead, is preparing to end his life. Yet somehow, he decides to first kill Kate’s father in payback for the way he treated Kate. After killing Tom, Joe jumps off a bridge to clear himself of Rhys once and for all. We see Joe waking up in the hospital and next to him is no other than his current love interest- Kate herself. She explains how her father left everything in her name and that she knows Joe killed Rhys. Shockingly, Joe reveals who he really is to Kate, and she does not seem to be afraid. At the same time, Nadia decides to go with her boyfriend, Eddie, back to Joe’s apartment to find more evidence against Joe. As she is leaving, she runs into Joe, and he threatens her after having killed Eddie. Joe explains that he left a box of Rhys belongings in Nadia’s apartment. This connects her to the murder of Rhys and the rest of the group. Joe has also left a tip with the police to make it seem like Nadia had killed Eddie as well. Nadia ends up in prison without trying to defend herself as innocent. In the final scenes, Joe has returned back to New York along with Kate. Joe now has custody of his son and is in possession of Kate’s money. He is working on fixing his public image. Yet inside, Joe has fully embraced his murderous side. Instead of Rhys being in the back of Joe’s mind, Joe is now embodying Rhys. He believes that he is Rhys. Now, we do not know what’s next for Joe and Kate. While Kate knows some information about Joe’s past, she doesn’t know it all. Who knows how she will react when she finds out who Joe truly is…