The back half of You season 4 ups the body count and delivers a massive twist.
Say it ain’t so, Joe.
Let’s dive in.
Lukas Gage as Adam.Courtesy of Netflix
Roald (Ben Wiggins) isn’t in the running.
He absconded to St. Bart’s for a holiday, having failed to convince Kate to come with him.
And Kate (Charlotte Ritchie)?
Lukas Gage as Adam, Tilly Keeper as Lady Phoebe.Courtesy of Netflix
That’s a sore subject.
Said meal ticket is having trouble sleeping and insists to Kate that she’s being followed.
Joe tries to convince himself that framing Connie will help the man clean up his life.
Ed Speleers as Rhys, Penn Badgley as Joe Goldberg.Courtesy of Netflix
Nadia’s star-struck that Joe knows Phoebe, but he blows off her request for an introduction.
A spectacularly blue-eyeshadowed Kate isn’t pleased to see Joe there and calls him out for sending mixed messages.
Curse you, Rhys!
Charlotte Ritchie as Kate, Penn Badgley as Joe Goldberg.Courtesy of Netflix
Honestly, good for Kate.
Joe iced her out, and Niko’s hot.
Of course, Joe sees it all and now I’m worried about Niko.
Ed Speleers as Rhys, Penn Badgley as Joe Goldberg.Courtesy of Netflix
And Nadia too, just because she’s in the vicinity.
Enter Dawn, the blond photographer (Alison Pargeter).
Phoebe complies, sweetly blowing off Nadia’s request for a selfie.
What are you up to, blond photographer?
No good, as it turns out.
“You know me,” Dawn insists, bringing up their matching “soul sister” tattoos.
She tells Phoebe that Adam’s broke, unfaithful, and using her as a meal ticket.
I mean, yes, let’s absolutely do that!
But maybe with a different mayor.
Nadia, meanwhile, is starting to get suspicious about Joe.
What are the odds that he’s an outsider who’s coincidentally enmeshed in all this drama?
That’s not howshe’dwrite that story.
She tells him to get back to her once he’s gotten all his problems sorted.
Time for Kate’s rendezvous with Niko!
Joe watches from his flat as she kicks out Niko, then he heads straight to her place.
It’s enough for Joe, and they tumble onto the couch together.
Bookbindings
Episode 7: Good Man, Cruel World
Buckle up, friends.
This episode’s a doozy.
Joe and Kate are on their first real date!
They jokingly/not-jokingly talk about a future together, including kids, charitable contributions, and a rare bookstore.
“Classic rom-com set up.
Hopefully it doesn’t end in death,” he voice-overs.
Wouldn’t it be better to make it some average Joe?
She’s upset that he’d bring up something she told him in confidence and storms off.
Joe shuts her down by telling her he got lost on page 15.
God, I hope he doesn’t kill this sweet, smart girl.
Tom leans close to say that he’s looking forward to getting to know… Joe.
Tom says she can showcase his private collection alongside the smaller artists she’d like to highlight.
Kate’s overwhelmed and excuses herself from the table, leaving Joe alone with Tom.
He asks about Love Quinn (Victoria Pedretti).
While Kate considers Tom’s offer, Phoebe’s spiraling.
She’s self-medicating and convinced that everyone in her life is out to get her.
Against Kate’s wishes, Phoebe agrees.
Dammit, Adam, we were (mostly) rooting for you!
I’m starting to think these two aren’t actually the Sherry and Cary of the season.
Then he produces Marienne’s passport and says he’ll kill her if Joe doesn’t off Tom.
So uhhhhhh Marienne (Tati Gabrielle) didn’t get away after all?
After Rhys leaves, Kate arrives.
She tells Joe that she’ll never not be Katherine Lockwood.
Well that’s not suspicious at all!
He writes Rhys’s location in the Churchill book (viewer, I gasped) and leaves.
This is what we call foreshadowing!
This sends Nadia to the restaurant, then into the boarded-up building across the street.
Inside, she finds a door with a modern lock that opens with Joe’s key.
And standing next to Rhys' tortured body is… Rhys.
Episode 8: Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?
It’s time to find out exactly how unhinged Joe is.
Thanks to Marienne’s flashbacks, we see the extent of Joe’s fixation on Rhys.
As Rhys' audiobook drones in the background, Joe calmly says, “I’m not Joe.”
He’s pure monster.
The cage is full of empty take-out Indian containers, and Marienne dreams of being back with her daughter.
She’s in a homemade sling and refuses to look at Joe when he brings her food.
“He’s gonna break me.
He’s gonna win,” she tells dream-Juliette in despair.
Yeah, that’s another yikes from me, dawg.
Time speeds up as we watch Marienne pace and pace and pace.
Flex her broken arm.
Hold the unopened painkiller bottle.
Make origami with the takeout bags.
Her arm gets stronger.
Her food and water dwindle.
She can’t conjure dream Juliette anymore.
I am so scared for both of these women.
And Reese’s pieces are the very worst of him.
Wait, since he kidnapped her and tried to have a relationship chat.
Wait, since he killed Love and abandoned Henry.
Joe doesn’t have time to track his many missteps.
He’s got a body to bury.
But disposing of Rhys doesn’t get rid of Reese.
Who, as I’m thinking about it, never interacted with Joe around other people.
I’M SO DISAPPOINTED IN MYSELF.
I watched every g.d. season ofDexter.
We had a faux Rhys all along!
A few helpful flashbacks show us that the show never cheated.
The only time Joe was around Rhys was at Simon’s funeral, and that was from a distance.
This means Joe actually committed all the murders in the flashbacks that we thought were Rhys framing him.
Joe weeps as he admits to himself what he did.
Reese tells him this situation is unsustainable (uh, ya think?)
GIRL, YOU’RE IN DANGER.
Nadia slips into class late, looking distracted and scrolling through her phone behind her book.
Joe notices, and Reese tells him she’s trouble.
Phoebe’s not interested and confides that she and Adam are actually getting married at the engagement party.
She brushes off Kate’s suggestion of a prenup, and Adam shows up to shoo Kate away.
This might be the most unsettling visualYouhas ever shown.
So she’s inside when Joe spots the boarded-up building and unlocks the door.
We cut to credits, but this is Netflix, so let’s keep rolling, shall we?
Episode 9: She’s Not There.
Who’s ready for a wedding?
Not Phoebe, as it turns out.
But first, Joe finally found Marienne!
He’s horrified and apologizes, and she nervously steers him away from the tunnel where Nadia’s hiding.
I’m sure that’ll all work out juuuuuust fine.
Nadia agrees to drug him and bring him to her.
Ladies, I am begging you to just call the cops.
But is it too late for her to save Marienne?
Before the ceremony, Kate overhears Adam planning to aggressively franchise Sundry House with Phoebe’s money.
She asks Joe to talk sense into Phoebe while she distracts Adam, and it almost works.
But Adam catches Joe mid-heart-to-heart with Phoebe and has him and Kate escorted out.
As Joe walks Kate back to her flat, he prepares to say goodbye to her.
At Sundry House, Adam wearing a truly vile ringmaster coat marries Phoebe, who immediately regrets it.
Her darling husband has her committed and gleefully takes control of her assets.
Definitely not the Sherry and Cary!
We find all this out when Kate explains the situation to her father the next day.
Kate looks like she’s starting to waver.
When Kate reads the news, she realizes exactly what happened and confronts Tom.
Every internship, every job, every place she lived, every lawsuit that was dismissed… all Tom.
She’s his greatest investment, and it’s time for her to come back into the fold.
Kate’s staggered by the revelation.
Okay, back to Joe.
When he brings Marienne breakfast, she asks him to check her phone for news about Juliette.
(It’s outside the cage and is still powered on somehow.)
Her text history is full of weeks' worth of worried messages from Beatrice, who’s watching Juliette.
Marienne is devastated to lose her daughter and begs Joe to just kill her.
), but he can’t get into the cage to save her.
Next, Joe’s in a classroom with rows of women whispering, “He killed her.”
At the podium to readBluebeard’s Castleis Guenivere Beck (Elizabeth Lail).
“You,” she greets Joe before calling him pathetic and swallowing the key he’s looking for.
How delightful to see his OG stalkee!
Joe wakes up knowing what he has to do: free Marienne and kill himself.
It looks like Reese is going to get his wish.
Episode 10: The Death of Jonathan Moore
We’ve reached the final episode of the season.
Will Joe weasel out of consequences yet again?Let’s find out together.
She’s drunk and upset about Rhys' death.
At this, Reese sends Joe a meaningful glance.
Here, she fills Joe in on what growing up with her father was like.
And now he’s taking credit for all of her achievements.
“He owns me,” she sobs, even asking if her father sent Joe to her.
And for once, Joe and Reese are in agreement: Tom’s got to die.
Joe ignores Reese’s suggestion that the two of them reintegrate, choosing to remain separate and in charge.
How do you kill a near Illuminati-level billionaire?
Tom’s perfectly calm when he spots Joe, even turning his back on him at one point.
(Seriously, how have Joe’s shopping habits not gotten him into trouble?)
He’s so persuasive, so reasonable, telling Joe that he wants only the best for Kate.
Joe hides the guard’s body and leaves Tom to be found dead.
Now all that’s left is for Joe to unalive himself, and the killings will stop.
No amount of love makes a difference.
He’s too damaged, and it all ends the same.
Joe cries as he hugs Reese before throwing him off the bridge and following him into the water.
“I should have fought harder.
I was born to give you that.
That’s all that matters.
And it all goes dark.
Back on land, Nadia’s still trying to catch Joe.
They pull an all-nighter, during which her eyeliner remains perfect.
Also, the person Joe was texting with was Nadia, not Beatrice.
Marienne hasn’t lost custody of Juliette after all.
Then he tells hereverything, starting with his real name.
At Joe’s flat, Edward keeps watch outside while Nadia searches his bookshelves.
They’re cutely bickering about who’s the better student when she finds his Rhys trophy box.
She takes pictures and hustles out to meet Edward at the car.
But he’s not there.
Joe is, out of the hospital and ready to terrify Nadia.
Roald shot a friend on a German hunting trip but his family helped him get away with it.
Connie lasted nine days in rehab.
Phoebe moved to Thailand to be the best dang English teacher to children there.
It was easy for a clean-shaven Joe to move back home.
(Joe brushes aside the issue of aDNA mix-up involving some toes).
But we have one more flashback before Joe can move into his virtuous future.
She chose not to speak in her own defense and has remained silent from prison.
Then he rejoins Kate.
“She’s here to change the world,” he tells the journalist with a satisfied smile.
“I’m just here to help.”
