“You” Season 1 introduced us to Joe Goldberg, the ever-swooning, always murdering nightmare boyfriend, who stalked the streets of NYC. In Season 2, we followed him to Los Angeles, where he briefly became Will Bettelheim, before falling for the equally murderous Love Quinn and absconding to their suburban hell in the picturesque (and fictional) town of Madre Linda for Season 3. For the fourth season, Joe once again picked up and started anew, this time overseas.
In Season 4, “You” follows Joe to London, England, where he becomes Jonathan Moore, meets a wholly different niche of the moneyed class and, of course, gets tangled up in a whole lot of lust and murder. From his relationship with Kate to his full-on “Fight Club” era, here’s a complete recap of everything to remember before he heads back home to New York in Season 5.
Meet Jonathan Moore, London Professor
After killing his wife, Love Quinn (Victoria Pedretti); leaving his son, Henry, in the care of Madre Linda couple Dante and Lansing, and burning down his life in the suburbs, Joe follows Marienne (Tati Gabrielle) all the way to Europe. But a quick intro shows he opts to leave her alone after she calls him a murderer, pretending he killed her to get a fixer sent by Love’s wealthy father off his back.
And thus, Joe Goldberg starts fresh again, in London. This time, he’s calling himself Jonathan Moore, posing as a professor and fawning over British literacy. He’s also trying his best to keep a low profile and leave the life of murder behind. However, he can’t stop himself from spying on and fantasizing about a new woman he’s developing a fixation on: Kate (Charlotte Ritchie), the girlfriend of his irritating and entitled colleague, Malcolm Harding (Stephen Hagan).
After Joe saves Kate from a mugger, Malcolm brings him into the fold of London’s elite and ultra-wealthy, inviting Joe to the exclusive Sundry House. There, he meets aspirational author and would-be politician (Rhys Montrose), as well as Kate’s rogue’s gallery of rich friends: tech-rich aspiring artist Simon (Aidan Cheng), his influencer sister Sophie (Niccy Lin), loud and rude socialite Gemma (Eve Austin), crypto investor and literal princess Blessing (Ozioma Whenu), Kate’s childhood friend Roald (Ben Wiggins), who has more than a childhood crush on her, and the kind Lady Phoebe (Tilly Keeper) and her social-climbing American boyfriend, Adam (Lukas Gage).
Joe gets too drunk at Sundry House and when he wakes up, Malcolm’s stabbed dead on his table, though he swears he didn’t do it. He disposes of the body all the same and starts receiving taunting text messages from someone who knows his secrets.
Joe’s Unlikely New Love Interest
Despite his instant fascination for her, Joe quickly finds Kate to be prickly, guarded and difficult to get to know — not at all his usual type. But, when Joe takes it upon himself to keep her safe from the mysterious new killer stalking the gilded halls where Kate and her elite crew frequent, the two ultimately do grow close and strike up a connection.
As Ritchie, who plays Kate, said in an interview with Netflix, “There’s something in her hatefulness that is so self-hating. It feels very much like it’s a reflection of how she feels about herself.” And that is something the pair certainly shares this season, as Joe seemingly does everything he can to move on from his murderous instincts and live a virtuous life.
There’s also more darkness that the duo shares, but we’ll get to that …
The “Eat the Rich” Killer
After Malcolm’s death, Joe starts receiving taunting text messages from an unknown person. Even though Joe is trying to leave the past behind, his crimes keep haunting him — and bodies keep piling up around him, too. First Malcolm, then Simon Soo, who’s exposed as a fraud and murdered on the same night. After Simon gets killed, Joe returns to his apartment and discovers it’s covered in newspaper articles about his previous crimes. Whoever the new killer is, they know Joe’s identity and they keep prodding him, using his old tricks against him as they stalk and manipulate his every move.
They also keep trophies, body parts of their victims, and after they send a finger to a paper, the press dubs them the “Eat-The-Rich” killer. When they demand that Joe kill Kate, it only brings the two closer together when Joe makes it his mission to keep her safe.
There is, as you would expect, much suspicion that Joe is the “Eat-The-Rich” killer, shared among several people. Most notably, bodyguard Vic (Sean Pertwee), who finds Malcolm’s ring in Joe’s pocket and winds up dead at Joe’s hands after they have a brutal confrontation. And then there’s Roald, who lays into Joe with his suspicions when they all travel to Phoebe’s sprawling family estate in the country.
It’s there that the final act of Season 4, Part 1 plays out. There’s a whodunnit in the country manor, where Gemma is murdered and Kate is temporarily framed, culminating in the reveal that it’s been charming Rhys Montrose all along. Rhys says he’s been studying Joe and demands that he kill Roald, but Joe refuses, so Rhys locks them in and lights the building on fire. Kate rescues Joe and Roald from the flames, and Joe makes a vow to bring down Rhys — who has just announced he’s running for Mayor of London.
Kate’s Bad Dad and Dark Past
Things really escalate when Kate’s cruel, calculating father, Tom Lockwood, makes a surprise visit to London. “Remember, he’s pure evil and you’re going to love him,” Kate warns when Joe meets him over dinner, revealing an impeccably cast surprise appearance from Greg Kinnear. It turns out Kate’s dad isn’t just rich; he’s one of the wealthiest and most powerful men in the world, an absolute cutthroat businessman who isn’t afraid to get his hands dirty to get whatever he wants.
His temperament rubbed off on his daughter, too. Kate confesses to Joe that when she was 19, she was his prized child, the second coming of the Lockwood fortune, who took after all her father’s worst qualities. That included brokering a pipeline deal that left a bunch of kids with cancer. Unlike her father, however, she’s haunted by her actions and eventually left him behind to build a life of her own.
In contrast, Tom is a cool-headed, cold-blooded killer — and he’s got Joe’s number. Shortly after they meet, Tom takes Joe aside and reveals that he knows his real identity and that he killed his wife, Love Quinn. Tom doesn’t mind, though. In fact, he’s using that as part of his plan to eliminate Rhys Montrose. First, he drives the mayoral hopeful into hiding with a well-timed exposé, and then he sends Joe in for the kill.
The Real Rhys Montrose? Joe’s Dark Half
There’s a bit more back and forth between Rhys and Joe in the first few episodes of Part 2 before we get to the big reveal, but the most crucial thing to know is the revelation that Rhys has Marienne captive in an undisclosed location, which he intends to hold over Joe’s head.
Spurred on by Joe Lockwood and in a desperate rage about Marienne’s abduction, Joe finds Rhys, binds him to a chair and tortures him for Marienne’s location — but despite “military grade ball torture” Rhys insists he has no idea what Joe is talking about … all the way up to the moment Joe strangles him to death. Right in front of Joe’s eyes, with Rhys’ dead body in full view, the Murder-Rhys that’s been talking to Joe all season walks into frame and continues to taunt him.
It’s all been in Joe’s mind. Every conversation he ever had with Rhys was a hallucination. He never met the man until the day he killed him. As so many suspected, the “Eat-The-Rich” killer was indeed Joe all along, he just didn’t know it. He’s been operating in a fugue state, torn between two severed identities, doing crimes of which he wasn’t even aware ever since he got to London, including keeping Marienne captive.
Even after Joe realizes that Murder-Rhys has always been in his head, he continues to have hallucinations of him. Rhys essentially becomes what Dexter would call the “Dark Passenger,” representing the killer instinct in Joe and becoming a mouthpiece for all his worst desires. He also keeps information from Joe, including where exactly they’ve been keeping Marienne. Fortunately, someone else is also untangling that mystery without even knowing it.
Nadia Cracks the Case
Joe’s best student also happens to have a penchant for mystery novels, and it doesn’t take her too long to get suspicious of Professor Moore. Once she starts digging and catches him in a lie, she gets even more determined, and with a little help and information from her friend and classmate Edward (Brad Alexander), she follows his footsteps back to where “Rhys” has been keeping Marienne captive. Together, they come up with a plan to let Marienne escape from Joe Goldberg for good.
Marienne’s Many Escapes
Poor Marienne has really been through it, and we realize just how much when an episode takes us through her captivity from her perspective. After Love confronted her, Marienne took her daughter and fled to Europe. Joe tried to track her down in Paris, but he just missed her. That’s when he followed her to London, where he finally found her at an art fair, and she tried to flee again. In Joe’s memory, that’s when he let her go. But that’s very far from what actually happened.
In reality, he kept her with him, tied up in his apartment, while his mental breakdown really started to unfold. While he was fixating on the hotshot author and political hopeful Rhys Montrose, he was actively deteriorating, staring off into space for long periods of time and becoming nonresponsive. When he seriously hurt Marienne, he snapped and that’s when Murder-Rhys was born in his mind.
It all happened when he built a new glass cage in London for her, and in the struggle to get her in the cage, he broke Marienne’s arm. Already in the throes of mental decline, he couldn’t process that he hurt her and his mind fractured, creating an alternate persona that was capable of such things. The whole time he was cavorting with the British upper class, Marienne was sitting in that cage, and once Joe realized that he had his own personal Tyler Durden, food stopped showing up because Joe’s “Rhys” persona was keeping her location secret.
Fortunately for Marienne, just as things were getting really dire, Nadia found her and the two concocted a plan for her escape. Two plans, actually. Option A was to kill Joe. Knowing that she’d never really be free as long as Joe is alive, Marienne agrees to work with Nadia to kill him. They’ll drug him with ketamine and then Marienne will finish the job with a knife. But Nadia gets arrested when she’s found with the drugs and weapon in the train station, leaving them with Option B: Marienne takes a dangerous amount of beta blockers to slow down her heart and fake her own death. When Joe finds her, he’s distraught, but he leaves her body on a park bench to look like an overdose. Nadia follows him, and once he leaves, she injects Marienne with adrenaline, saving her life and finally freeing her of Joe Goldberg.
Lady Phoebe’s Fresh Start
Marienne’s not the only one freed of a horrible man in Season 4, though it’s also a hard, sad journey for Lady Phoebe. The sweet heiress makes an easy mark for the scheming and duplicitous, which is how she winds up engaged to her sleazy boyfriend Adam despite his constant debauchery and her better judgment.
Phoebe gets attacked by an obsessed stalker (stalkers abound in the “You”-niverse), but fortunately, the ever-sharp Nadia sees them and, with Joe’s help, they get Phoebe out safely. Joe, naturally, also uses the opportunity to drop some evidence on Phoebe’s stalker, framing her as the “Eat-The-Rich” killer and putting a nice bow on that.
However, after her abduction, Phoebe is wracked by PTSD; manic and evidently barely hanging on. Kate almost gets her psychiatric help, but Adam swoops in like the leech that he is and asks Phoebe to marry him. They rush the ceremony, despite Kate and Joe’s attempts to stop it, and Phoebe winds up having a very public breakdown.
Ultimately, she gets admitted to receive the psychiatric care she needs, but her new husband is left to play with her fortune. Not for very long, though. After Kate complains about Adam to her father, Tom Lockwood hires hitmen, who disguise themselves as prostitutes and kill Adam in what is hinted to be a rather grisly manner.
Phoebe winds up happily teaching English in Thailand, where nobody knows about her family and wealth, they just love her for who she is.
What happens at the end?
So, with multiple personalities, a rash of deaths among the ultra-elite and one of the most powerful men in the world in play, how does all this wrap up? Mess, mess, mess.
As for Tom Lockwood, he plays his hand and realizes he didn’t quite have the full measure of Joe Goldberg after all. When Kate goes to confront him, he tells her that he hand-crafted the life she thought she built when she left him and the family business behind. He got her the internships, jobs, profiles – everything she needed, but it was all his doing, never her free will. She confides in Joe, who immediately takes it upon himself to kill Tom Lockwood.
Tom tries to talk his way out of it, offering Joe everything, including the chance to erase all evidence of his crimes and go home with his own identity. No dice. He even gives Joe a warning: if Joe does the dirty work for Kate, he’ll become the problem in her mind. Before Tom can say any more, Joe tapes a plastic bag around his head and suffocates him, framing Tom’s bodyguard, Hugo, who Joe also killed, for the crime.
But Joe still has his demons to reckon with. While taking pills to suppress his visions of Rhys, he instead has visions of his victims, including Beck (Elizabeth Lail) and Love (Victoria Pedretti), who convinces him the only solution is for him to die. After killing Lockwood, Joe goes to a bridge where he has a debate with Murder-Rhys about the two sides of himself. Murder-Rhys wants to be accepted as a part of Joe, but Joe insists he should feel shame for what he’s done. He throws himself and Murder-Rhys over the bridge — then, instantly regrets jumping when he thinks of Kate. He’s too far down below the surface, and seemingly drowns while he’s trying to swim back up.
But he doesn’t die, at least not for long. He did, technically, die briefly when he was in the water — or maybe just a part of him did. When he wakes up in the hospital, Joe no longer sees a second persona in his mind. But was he able to integrate the two, or did half of his bifurcated personality die down there? Inconclusive, but his next moves point to a pretty unrepentant version of Joe being unleashed.
Kate comes to Joe in the hospital for a heart-to-heart and he confesses that he’s killed people, but she accepts that and tells him “In my soul, I know you are good.” They make a promise to “keep each other good,” and he says that’s what he’s been waiting to hear.
Kate insists she means it, but it doesn’t seem to mean quite as much to Joe. When Nadia and Edward find his collection of kill trophies, he most unapologetically kills young Eddie and frames Nadia for his death. At the same time, he frames Eddie for Rhys Montrose’s murder. Rather nasty work, but Joe explains, “I got a second chance, and this time, I’m utilizing all of me.” When he sees his reflection, it’s Murder-Rhys smiling back.
Joe Joins the 1%
It’s only a few moments at the end of the season, but it’s major set up for Season 5 — Joe leaves Season 4 in an almost unfathomably powerful state. With Kate now at the helm of her father’s fortune, they are essentially untouchable, and Joe has completed his twisted version of the rags-to-riches story that he idolized in Rhys. That also means he can pretty much get away with anything, starting with but not limited to using those resources to kill Edward and frame poor, sweet Nadia for it.
Who was in the Season 4 cast?
- Penn Badgley as Joe Goldberg, aka Jonathan Moore
- Charlotte Ritchie as Kate Galvin, aka Kate Lockwood
- Tilly Keeper as Lady Phoebe Borehall-Blaxworth
- Lukas Gage as Adam Pratt
- Ed Speleers as Rhys Montrose
- Amy-Leigh Hickman as Nadia Farran
- Brad Alexander as Edward
- Greg Kinnear as Tom Lockwood
- Sean Pertwee as Vic
- Eve Austin as Gemma Graham-Greene
- Tati Gabrielle as Marienne Bellamy
- Ben Wiggins as Roald Walker-Burton
- Niccy Lin as Sophie Soo
- Aidan Cheng as Simon Soo
- Stephen Hagan as Malcolm Harding
- Ozioma Whenu as Blessing Bosede
- Dario Coates as Connie
Who died in Season 4?
If you’re just looking for a handy rundown of the body count, here’s everyone who dies in “You” Season 4.
- Malcolm Harding, killed by the “Eat the Rich” killer, aka Joe in a fugue state
- Simon Soo, killed by the “Eat the Rich” killer, aka Joe in a fugue state
- Vic, killed by Joe in a fight
- Gemma Grahame-Greene, killed by the “Eat the Rich” killer, aka Joe in a fugue state
- Rhys Montrose, tortured and killed by Joe
- Adam Pratt, killed by hitmen hired by Tom Lockwood
- Hugo (Joe Lockwood’s bodyguard), killed by Joe during an attempt to rescue Tom
- Tom Lockwood, killed by Joe
- Joe Goldberg (temporarily), drowns briefly when he throws himself and imaginary Rhys Montros off a bridge
- Edward, killed by Joe
All five seasons of “You” are now streaming on Netflix.
