‘You’ sets up a twisted relationship in Season 4 Return

Joe Goldberg can never do that Real change.

Despite being given the chance to do so for four seasons, you has clarified where it lands on those statements involving the serial killer in the lead, played by Penn Badgley.

And Badgley himself, along with the showrunner of the hit Netflix series Sera Gamble, each confirmed that in recent conversations with The Hollywood Reporter after the release of Part 1. “The reality of someone killing people is that it’s hard to change because what you have is a reaction to this deep-seated belief that must have started in early, early life,” Badgley said.

Gamble further explained, “There’s nothing he values ​​more than this feeling he calls love, and it’s incredibly hard for him. He’s tearing himself apart, trying to both be his version of a good man and then also get what he wants in terms of love and the kind of relationship he wants in his life.

In the first look (below) of part 2, Joe has a strong opinion about what he thinks he is not and how he differentiates himself from season four’s other stalker and serial killer, revealed to be Rhys Montrose (Ed Speleers). In a twist for the hit series, the main relationship in the largely London-set fourth season has emerged as one between the two killers. “You can’t tell me who I am. I’m not a cold-blooded psychopath,” Joe can be heard saying vehemently in the trailer, presumably talking to Rhys. “We all have something bad in us.”

The fourth season, Joe moved to London where he assumed a new identity as a professor named Jonathan Moore. After killing his wife Love (Victoria Pedretti), leaving their son behind and faking his own death, Joe set out to find his season three “love,” Marienne (Tati Gabrielle) in Paris. When she rejected his advances and called him a murderer, he let her go and fell into a new friend group of very wealthy socialites when he settled in London. (The season filmed in London, Paris and LA)

But the show flipped the script to turn the serial killer and stalker into the one being stalked, as he finds himself being framed and then blackmailed into a series of murders, dubbed the “Eat the Rich Murders” by Rhys. The author and direct friend of Joe revealed his true intentions in the Part 1 finale and set up a serial killer showdown of sorts for Part 2.

For the first time, you was split into two parts this season and the remaining five episodes came out on March 9. Badgley praised the writers for reinventing the wheel of the serial killer saga to keep viewers on their toes. Making Joe and Rhys the central relationship – as opposed to a new female love for Joe to stalk and kill (as he seems to have better intentions this season with Kate, played by Charlotte Ritchie) – probably also in line with Badgley’s request for fewer sex scenes This time.

“The season is very neatly divided for us,” explains Gamble THR. “The first half is the whodunnit. We’ll leave you with “Here’s the killer.” And so part 2 is about the relationship between Joe and Rhys. He solved the mysteries, and how does he actually solve the problem? Is the question. It’s really fun, and I can’t say enough about Ed Speleers’ performance. He obviously had the story for the entire season in his pocket when he started, but I think people who like to go back and rewatch will have so much fun watching his performance.

The biggest aha moment in the trailer, though, is the return of Pedretti’s Love – whether it’s in a fantasy vision remains to be seen, given the twisty nature of the series. Love was introduced in season two and elevated her status as more than just a Joe Goldberg romance in three, when she became a serial killer with her husband.

Amidst a voiceover of Joe talking about second chances, Love appears in the all-too-familiar basement cage where Joe (and Love) took their victims. Love sits quietly reading Rhys’s book: A good man in a cruel world. “Hi Joe,” she says with a smile.

In his part 1 chat with THR, Badgley’s take on his buzzy stalker serial killer (a description that Badgley has consistently acknowledged appeals to society by glorifying the wrong kinds of characters), helps explain why Joe seems to lack awareness of who he really is. Calling him “the most unreliable narrator, perhaps in all storytelling,” as Badgley described Joe, helps to understand how Joe keeps trying to move on with his life, even as his kill count increases exponentially each season.

This also applies to his season four romance with Kate, he says: “He’s drawn in because she seems like she wants to be a good girl. She is surrounded by bad people and wants to be good. And he feels the same. But, that’s what he says. I don’t know if that’s true.”

That may be why Kate, and the women before her, continue to find the problematic main character so desirable. Gamble, in her conversation with THR Top 5 podcast, helped put the public’s attraction to Joe into perspective in the post-#MeToo climate. “We made you right when the #MeToo movement exploded,” she said. “By the time the show was out, every woman was talking about #MeToo in such a way that everyone was optimistic about it. The conversation had changed. And here we are several years later making a season about an objectively awful man who is going to do whatever it takes to redeem himself. And every time I watch the news it’s like another man got a retinue, we’re now talking about what he needs to do to redeem himself.

The Warner Bros. television series is executive produced by Greg Berlanti, Gamble, Gina Girolamo, Leslie Morgenstein, Sarah Schechter and Michael Foley.

you returns with Part 2 on Netflix March 10. Read more from Penn Badgley and Sera Gamble in Part 1.