Penn Badgley Talks You Season 4 Part 2 And Where Joe Goes Next

The following article features spoilers for Part 1 of You Season 4.

If you thought the twists and turns delivered in part one of the fourth season of Netflix’s hit show You were wild, well, you ain’t seen nothing yet!

Part two of season four is set to leave your jaw on the floor once again as Penn Badgley’s charming serial killer Joe Goldberg returns for the final batch of episodes.

We were left with quite the cliffhanger at the end of part one as Rhys Montrose (Ed Speleers) was revealed to be the Eat The Rich killer, before announcing his candidacy in the Mayor Of London election.

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This news wasn’t exactly welcomed by Joe, who vowed to bring Rhys down himself, setting the scene for the chaotic and thrilling events of part two.

As Badgley told Zavvi in an interview, Joe is now in attack mode, set on his mission to murder Rhys: “He now knows who he wants to kill. Keep in mind that he hasn’t killed anybody yet except for Vic, which was out of actual self-defence – RIP Vic.

“So, this is different, it’s Joe shifting into a place where he is trying to use his powers for good, so to speak, and that’s when Joe gets into that mode, which is usually the second half of every season.

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“That’s when it all starts to hit the fan and things get really crazy – but that’s what we are all watching for!”

It is indeed and so, when the ridiculous twists start unravelling, we lap them up as that is quite simply what You is all about.

In fact, the big one seen in part two might be the show’s most bonkers twist yet, but Badgley admits that wasn’t a concern for him at all:

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“I don’t worry that it’s ever a twist too far as somehow the writers always ensure not only that it makes sense, but it makes the only sense.

“Consider this: when Love is revealed to be a killer in season two, you might think as a viewer ‘that’s great, now they can be together like Bonnie and Clyde’.

“But no – the whole point is that Joe is who he is and will hate her for that. And so, what does he do? He immediately hates her and almost kills her.

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“That was a twist for me that I didn’t see coming, even though I knew that she was a killer because they pitch the big points to me before, so I never really get too much of a twist when I’m reading the script.

“But that to me is where the show manages to go so bananas but always remains a well-rounded smoothie. It always makes sense, it tastes good, and you are like ‘wow, this can keep going’. The second that stops happening is where the show ends.”

It really is the definition of addictive viewing, with audiences unable to get enough of Joe – despite the fact he is a violent and terrifying murderer, we can’t help but be drawn in by him, which is why we tune in season after season.

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When the show debuted in 2018 the internet was flooded with countless think pieces about our fascination with serial killers, looking at why viewers were being enchanted by Joe.

But as Badgley emphasises, the point of the show is that it’s not a realistic portrayal of a serial killer, instead it’s a fantasy that studies society’s ideas about love:

“He’s not a clinical portrayal of a serial killer and I don’t think we are ever trying to do that for a specific reason.

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“The show is an exploration of our most popular misconceptions about love, because if you follow their logic we realise we aren’t talking about love, we are talking about something that’s more like possession, abuse, and manipulation. That’s what Joe is, he’s an embodiment of those things, so he’s meant to be charming.

“I know that real serial killers can sometimes be very magnetic and charming, but I think that’s a misconception, I don’t think that’s it’s broadly true.

“I think serial killers are chilling individuals and a clinical portrayal of him day in, day out would be chilling and unwatchable – it would make the show a very different show and that’s not the one we are making.”

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Love is the main theme of the show as we see Joe repeatedly fall head over heels for a woman, becoming dangerously infatuated.

This season it’s with Charlotte Ritchie’s icy art gallery manager Kate, who Joe turns away at the end of part one, determined not to involve her in his violent world now that he’s on a mission to kill Rhys.

As Joe’s voiceover tells us, he wants to change, he wants to no longer hurt the people that he loves – we have learnt from previous seasons that anyone who gets close to Joe typically ends up in a grave.

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However, we have been here before, Joe tells us every season that he wants to dramatically change, which appears to be something that he is incapable of doing.

Badgley thinks this is because Joe doesn’t really understand himself and what he truly wants: “Deepest down he doesn’t want to change because if he really did he would, and that’s true for all of us.

“I think that truly growing emotionally is very hard for everybody but it’s what life is worth living for so, unfortunately I think Joe is such a traumatised individual, as many people are, that he doesn’t realise how cut off from his own heart he is.

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“So what he wants in his quote-unquote heart is not truly what he is doing at all as he doesn’t quite realise how disassociated he is from his own feelings.

“He thinks that he wants to change on his deepest level but really what he wants is to protect himself and make others suffer. So that’s where his suffering comes into play and that’s why the real life version of this is so terrifying.”

As Badgley stated earlier, the show will come to a conclusion one day as all good things must come to an end, so it will be interesting to see if Joe ever comes to terms with who he really is, which is the obstacle he is struggling to overcome.

That finale may arrive soon as Badgley hints in our interview that a fifth season could be the last, also teasing that the showrunners already know what Joe’s fate will be:

“Where I want him to go, should it continue, and what I want to happen is actually what I think the showrunners are planning, so I can’t tell you that unfortunately.

“But I can tell you that should there be a season five I think it will bring it all to a really satisfying and beautiful conclusion.”

Keep your eyes peeled then for a potential season five announcement…