Knowing when to end a show is a tricky thing. I think the ideal ending wraps up all loose ends while leaving viewers on a high note — leaving the desire for a new season still there, while having a feeling of finality with these characters.
Netflix’s “You” might have missed this boat in its fourth season.
Season 4 follows Joe Goldberg (Penn Badgely), who is now living in England as a professor under the name Jonathan Moore after he framed his now-dead ex-wife, Love Quinn (Victoria Pedretti), for his murder last season. After three seasons of carnage, Joe has finally looked inward and noticed that, while he didn’t explicitly seek out murder in the past, his obsessive nature and character flaws directly put him into situations where he felt the need to kill. As such, he’s cut himself off from love and loving for fear of killing his next partner, like he’s done to all the others, except Marianne Bellamy (Tati Gabrielle), who plays an important role this season.
However, the show’s plot doesn’t let him stay isolated for long, as he gets drawn into the eccentric and wealthy friend group of his fellow professor, Malcolm Harding (Stephen Hagan). Malcolm is an awful person who soon gets himself killed under mysterious circumstances in which someone appears to be setting Joe up. As more of Malcolm’s friends die, Joe finds himself in the middle of a whodunnit.
Joe has an interesting relationship with Malcolm’s ex, Kate Galvin (Charlotte Ritchie), who is secretly from money and at first has an adversarial relationship with Joe. The two eventually fall for each other, and Kate serves as a more stable version of Love.
Lady Phoebe (Tilly Keeper) and her boyfriend, Adam Pratt (Lukas Gage) also play a large role. Phoebe is a wealthy heiress, while Adam is an American expatriate who is on a short leash from his father after a series of bad investments. He is the owner of the Sundry House, a bar for the elites in town that serves as a central location for this season. Phoebe is kind to a fault, known for taking in “strays” like Joe, whereas Adam exploits her kindness pretty brashly.
Nadia Farran (Amy-Leigh Hickman), Joe’s brightest student, also provides a welcome layer to the show, as she is slowly onto Joe’s lies and his current mental state, which is heavy spoiler territory. You’ve been warned!
The big twist this season is that Joe has rejected his darkest urges which have manifested into their own being in his psyche, whom he has to contend with. It makes Joe question himself and his own sanity for seriously for the first time since the show began, adding a dimension to the show of him being an unreliable narrator (a good portion of the show has always been his internal monologues and we view the story from his point of view).
The writing this season has been as compelling as its ever been and I don’t share the same complaints about the whodunnit story as many of my peers on the internet. For me, it changed up the show’s formula and made it fresh in ways I wasn’t aware the show needed; you can’t expect the show to do its whole accidental-deaths-that-come-as-a-result-of-Joe’s-stalking thing forever.
Badgley remains to be a competent leading man, outside of a few scenes that could have benefited from a few more takes. The show’s performances are all-around convincing, but are nothing special; none stand out either positively or negatively.
My one major complaint comes from the season’s ending, and that is that this show should’ve ended here. Without delving too much into spoilers, Joe realizes that he is in fact the problem and it doesn’t matter where he runs to, he will keep killing and hurting people unless he takes matters into his own hands. He has this brilliant moment of self-realization where he’s almost ready to take full responsibility for what he’s done and face the music … and then the show doubles down on all that for a Season 5.
Maybe Season 5 will be brilliant and I will eat my words. But I still think the show had its perfect ending in this season’s finale and the show is in danger of overstaying its welcome.
“You” Season 4 gets an 8/10
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