Okay, okay, you’ve had a few days to binge all of season two of You on Netflix, so it’s time to talk about the freakin’ ending of it, because we did NOT see that one coming! Obviously, there are spoilers ahead, so if you haven’t seen it yet, carry on at your own risk, but don’t say we didn’t warn you.
In a new interview with Entertainment Weekly, Penn Badgley explained why the last minute reveal that his character Joe was obsessing over a new stranger, after seeming to find his perfect, equally murderous partner in crime, was so important.
“When I found out where it was headed, I was kind of crestfallen because, just selfishly, I wanted there to be a more positive resolution,” he admitted. “But just like Beck dying in the first season, I realised that this was the most accurate, the most reflective of reality, the most responsible to be like, ‘No, Joe doesn’t get to have that.’ ”
Explaining that “Joe is not actually looking for true love,” he continued.
“He’s not actually a person who just needs somebody who loves him. He’s a murderer! He’s a sociopath. He’s abusive. He’s delusional. And he’s self-obsessed. You can’t fool yourself into thinking that he just needs somebody who’s right for him. Nobody’s right for him!” Penn exclaimed. “So actually, the ending’s perfect. This is the way it has to be because he has an irrefutable problem and if it was just like, ‘They were made for each other, all he needed to find was somebody who kills people too,’ that’s not justice. I think it’s reflective of reality because I don’t think people who kill are like, ‘I just need somebody who can do the same.’ ”
Speaking to People magazine, Victoria Pedretti said that while her character Love Quinn has “learned that she can’t totally trust Joe”, she is still “accepting of him entirely”.
“She loves him to a fault,” she said.
As for how Victoria thinks her character will react to the realisation that Joe has a new obsession, she doesn’t think Love will “take too kindly to it”, but she’s not entirely convinced.
“Maybe she would handle it super well. She surprises me,” Victoria mused.
In an interview with Teen Vogue, Victoria added that one of the most interesting things about Joe’s reaction to Love’s murderous revelations was that it highlighted both the double standards between men and women, and showed us that Joe was still in love with a fictional person that he had created in his mind.
“A lot can be said about the way in which Joe responds,” she said. “His response to this kind of behaviour is, ‘who the f*ck is this person? They’re crazy.’ And yet we as an audience have watched this person and supposedly have continued to stay engaged and care about this protagonist that we’ve been given, who’s continuously killing people all the time. I think it speaks a lot… to the way men and women are treated differently and seen differently.”
She continued:
“The amount of tolerance we have for Joe’s less than ideal behaviour is so high because our expectations for men are extremely low, which is probably a good way to stay not constantly angry in the world. But it’s still not fair, right? We don’t live in a fair world, and I think that is what all of this is meant to emphasise.”
TL;DR?