The Netflix thriller, “You” follows Joe Goldberg, a hopeless romantic with the tendency to be obsessive, and murderous. Make no mistake, the show does not try to redeem or endear the audience to Joe; they are well aware that he is an awful person. Seasons 1 and 2 follow Joe as he tries to find his one true love and murder anyone who gets in his way. Season 2 ends with him falling for a woman named Love, who he later finds also has murderous tendencies. When he prepares to break things off with her, she reveals that she is pregnant.
Season 3 starts with a cut to the future with Love and Joe’s characters as newlyweds and parents to their son Henry. They are living in the fictional suburbs of Madre Linda, just outside of San Francisco. This season explores their characters in new ways and allows for total immersion.
The show flexes its creative muscles this season. Season 3 compares Love and Joe in a character study. While Joe is calculated and always has a plan, Love is messy and filled with passion. Love makes her decisions in the heat of the moment, which is a key point of conflict this entire season. Love is responsible for most of the problems this entire season due to her rage. In one noteworthy scene, Joe snaps at Love for her inability to think ahead and for her tendency to kill to get rid of a problem. Love responds by being disgusted with his ability to kill and feel no remorse. His ability to think ahead and still kill makes him a monster in her eyes.
When you analyze the main characters of this season, you notice that Love’s character is meant to be similar to Joe, to show his cognitive dissonance. When he sees what she does, he is disgusted and wants to leave her as quickly as possible. The irony is that he’s done far worse through this entire show, but he can’t bear to look at her. His inability to see the similarities between them shows just how deluded Joe is. He is constantly telling himself that what he’s doing is right because it is the only way he can avoid hating himself. Love, on the other hand, is always telling herself that what she does is an accident, and so it shouldn’t count as murder. This furthers the difference between these two characters and how they handle their guilt. They both lie to themselves; they just tell different lies.
This season makes a lot of literary parallels, with the most interesting being the parallel to Sisyphus of Greek mythology. Joe is very similar to Sisyphus, who was cursed to roll a boulder up a hill and to have it roll down when he was nearly done. This season is filled with Joe promising to get away from his awful actions and not act on them again. But every time you see him do it again and again. He cannot escape his ways, just as Sisyphus cannot roll the boulder to the top of the hill.
This season provides stellar performances from everyone in the cast and is a masterclass in creating tension within seconds. “You” is able to create tension with no words, just from the angle of the camera, the cast’s facial expressions, and a haunting score. Penn Badley does a phenomenal job at making Joe seem creepy and truly deranged. Victoria Pedretti makes Love seem like she’s perpetually on the edge of a breakdown, almost effortlessly. And that goes without mentioning all the remarkable secondary cast.
This season is not without its faults, however. It has an odd story structure that ultimately pays off but can potentially lose viewers in the middle of the season. The middle of the season focuses on developing the characters and understanding them rather than sprinkling these moments throughout. While I was entertained, others may not feel the same and decide to drop the show.
The season also has social commentary that at times feels hollow due to the nature of the show and the characters themselves. It feels odd to watch a serial killer agree that there are structural issues with the legal system. This show was never set up to have that political commentary or to have that conversation, but it tries to anyway, and it comes off as awkward. In addition, it also teases things to be revealed and then never reveals them. While it’s fine to foreshadow for other seasons, it seems strange to tease things in the first episode and do nothing more.
Overall, I immensely enjoyed the show and cannot wait for the fourth season. “You” may just be the right show for you if you enjoy shows that can be a bit gory and have a delusional, immoral main character that is willing to take risks.