Stalker-turned-serial killer Joe Golberg (Penn Badgley) is back again in the fourth season of Netflix thriller showYou even as his past is catching up on him. After murdering his wife and assuming a new identity at the end of the last season, Joe is now keen to find redemption and yet gets mixed up in a series of murders in London. Here is what’ll keep you hooked to the first volume of You Season 4, which arrived on Netflix on February 9.
Joe is a changed man or is he?
The last season saw Joe setting up his life in Los Angeles with his wife Love (Victoria Pedretti) — another psychotic killer — and their baby. Things take a turn when he meets Marienne (Tati Gabrielle) at Madre Linda’s Library. Jealous of Joe’s attention to the new woman, Love threatens to kill Marieanne, prompting Joe to murder her and flee to London with a new identity. With two toes and maybe his sanity missing, Joe goes from being a bookstore manager to a literature professor trying to look for Marienne in London. While his obsessive stalking habit does seem to be a little less at the beginning, Joe does fall back into his old habits. He helps out a woman while she is getting mugged, only to be thrown into a group of friends who are too privileged to handle. The five-part-episode is dedicated to Joe trying to redeem himself in his eyes only to get pulled back into his habits as a murder takes place.
The whodunnit plot
It is certainly not a new thing for bodies to pile up whenever Joe is around. Unlike the first two seasons, Joe is once again pulled into murders he is not a part of. While the second and third seasons were mainly based around Love’s murder victims, this time a new killer is at play — one of Joe’s friends ends up dead with a finger missing. An anonymous killer is at large now, texting Joe and taking out one rich friend after the other, soon gaining the title of ‘Eat-the-rich killer’. Being an outcast in his new group of friends, Joe is the most likely murderer but things are never that easy. The serial killer now finds himself turning into a detective to find out the real identity of the killer so as to keep his past in the past.
Lots of new characters
One of the most interesting things about You has been its flawed but memorable characters and the fourth season is no different. Most of these characters are rich and privileged people with enough money to keep them out of trouble till death. Charlotte Ritchie’s Kate does stand out as the most strong female character of the show since the introduction of Love. Kate is empathetic and smart, which is in stark contrast to her friends Malcolm (Stephen Hagan), Lady Phoebe (Tilly Keeper), Adam (Lukas Gage), Rhys (Ed Speleers), Roald (Ben Wiggins), Simon (Aidan Cheng), Sophie (Niccy Lin), Blessing (Ozima Whenu) and Connie (Dario Coates). Joe is an accidental addition to this friend group of the rich and elite, something that they never fail to mention at every opportunity. Phoebe, however, is quite nice to Joe, which should be a relief, but for the ones who have watched the previous seasons, it’s reason enough for her to be the next one to turn up dead.
Subtle social commentary
Showing the selfishness and pomposity of rich and privileged people is the underlying theme of quite a number of web series like Elite, Farzi and Lockwood & Co. You takes the same route, showing a reality where funeral outfits are given more attention than the dead. The group of rich friends shown in the series are constantly drunk and high, something which doesn’t even come as a surprise to the police when they investigate the murder. Joe finds himself sinking just as quickly while trying to stay away from climbing the social ladder. Sexual harassment and racist jokes are brushed under the carpet because the one doing it has enough hush-up money to stay clean their entire lives. An influential artist takes advantage of young artists and prevents them from revealing the truth by supplying drugs to them. Such incidents show a current of social commentary that runs beneath the surface of this riveting tale of murder, mayhem and mystery.
