We’re watching ‘You’

Netflix’s popular drama returns for season four

STELLA SCHNEIDER / ASST. A&C EDITOR / THE USD VISTA

This article contains spoilers from seasons 1-3 of “You.” Based on the book series written by Caroline Kepnes, “You” first came to life as a TV series in 2018. The first season quickly became a success, as many viewers became obsessed with the main character Joe Goldberg, played by Penn Badgely, and his psychotic approach to finding — and keeping — love. 

During the first season, Joe falls for a beautiful girl he meets in a bookstore, Guinevere Beck, played by Elizabeth Lail and begins stalking her. In his crazed journey to dating her, Joe did anything necessary, even killing, to date the woman of his dreams.  

As the series moved to its second season, Joe tries to escape his past (and crimes) in his search for love, when he meets a woman named Love, played by Victoria Pedretti, who may just be Joe’s match. 

As the series progresses, the show’s writers stray further from the book with each new season. Throughout the second and third season, Love and Joe’s relationship takes twists, as they fall in and out of love. Eventually, the audience learns that Love is just as deranged as Joe in her search for love, even willing to kill for him in return. However, Love was never a murderer in the book series; so much of season three came from the minds of the script writers and not the original author, Kepnes. This change in adaptation was likely an attempt to bring more viewers back for seasons and keep the journey of Joe interesting. 

Now across the seas, the fourth season follows Joe, this time without Love. As the show continues to adapt this idea of Joe stalking and killing others, a big twist changes the pace for the new season. 

After changing his name to Jonathan Moore and getting a job as a professor in London, Joe enters a new social group full of glamorous, rich socialites. ‘Jonathan’ finds himself being stalked by someone within this new group, completely inverting the dynamics of the show and allowing this twist to dictate the crimes that occur. 

USD junior Olivia Patterson has seen the first five episodes of season four and is looking forward to the second part coming out in March.

“I love the new twist and how the show keeps me on my feet. I could never have guessed that Joe would be a ‘victim’ to stalking himself. I can’t wait to see where they go with this in the second part of the season,” Patterson expressed. 

As this new season takes the inventive approach to the crimes, it also alters the intimacy prevalent in past seasons. Most of the first few seasons were based on Joe’s obsessions and resulted in racy love scenes either by himself or with a partner. 

Badgley has been vocal about how strange it is to portray intimacy in a show about stalking and other criminal behavior.

In a recent episode of his podcast, ‘Podcrushed,’ Badgley expressed his discomfort with the continuation of filming sexual content in the fourth season, saying he wanted to respect his real-life marriage, and that he is at a point in his career where he no longer wanted to do such scenes. 

As a result, the fourth season rescinds a lot of the sexual content from past seasons and evokes a more grim tone. 

Patterson reflected on the intimacy portrayed in “You.”

“I feel like all the sex scenes didn’t always progress the story, a lot of the time they just felt unnecessary,” Patterson said, “I hope if there are those kinds of scenes in the new season they have purpose.”

Many people have expressed concerns over how audiences glamorize fictitious characters and real-life killers in TV shows and movies over recent years. 

Every new season released is accompanied by fans obsessing over Joe Goldberg on Twitter. User @sammyspreenman tweeted, “what sort of deep rooted issues do I have if I’m attracted to Joe from ‘You.’” 

Tweets like this gained  popularity for characters like Joe over the years, even as Badgley speaks out against this behavior and attraction to this character. 

This has been a conversation for quite some time now, with people blaming streaming services like Netflix for casting attractive actors to play murderous roles. For example: Zac Efron playing Ted Bundy, Ross Lynch as Jeffrey Dahmer in 2017 and Evan Peters as Jeffrey Dahmer in 2022, Darren Criss as Andrew Cunanan, Penn Badgely as fictional Joe Goldberg and many others. 

Even with awareness over this new trope of casting attractive people as villainous people, audiences of “You” and other movies starring these men have taken to social media, calling attention to how attractive they all are. Some fans even empathize with Joe from “You” and post about how they think these real-life serial killers are popular and harmless. 

Fans believe Hollywood is perpetuating this obsession of awful people by continuing to make these sorts of TV shows and movies, and even rewarding people for their performance, like Peters receiving a Golden Globe for his role as real-life serial killer Jeffery Dahmer.

Badgley has disclosed his discomfort about people’s attraction to his character in “You.” He has spoken out against people having a crush on his character over the years, because he doesn’t view  it as healthy, or appropriate. 

In a video Badgley filmed for Netflix a year after the release of the first season he said, “Obviously, Joe is one of the worst people ever… Don’t defend him, ever. He doesn’t need it.” 

Despite Badgley’s attempts to wean people off his character, the framing of Joe has a lot of people romanticizing him and his criminal behavior. This romanticization is perpetuated by the sex and masturbation scenes, nudity and other sexual content in almost every episode of the first three seasons. 

USD senior Isaiah Robinson has been a fan of the show “You” since its initial release and believes the intimacy displayed in the show is too intense and does not add value to the show. 

“The relationships and desires of even the most messed up [people] can be displayed without being romanticized. I think intimacy in ‘You’ and other shows [is] too normalized,” Robinson expressed.

Upon the conversations around the romanticization of characters like Joe, many audiences feel like the intimacy doesn’t benefit the plot, but is more so for attracting and entertaining viewers.

The first five episodes of the fourth season of “You” were released Feb. 9, with the second half being released Mar. 9. 

The new season is already resurfacing important conversations around intimacy in TV and film, and the dangers of romanticizing characters and criminals like Joe.