For two seasons, the hit Netflix show YOU has been good at convincing me to root for a dude who's beyond just your average, run-of-the-mill stalker.
But to think that the show can convince me that someone as creepy as Joe could have a perfect soulmate? And that they would live the "happily ever after" type of life? And that I would obsess over their day-to-day lives of murdering, starting a business, and taking care of their infant son in upper middle-class suburban America? That would take an absolutely fascinating piece of writing.
They pulled it off in spades.
YOU Season 3 took the show to levels I didn't think were possible, and it remains one of my absolute favorites that Netflix has ever produced. And like the ending of the previous seasons, the cliffhanger in the finale has me clamoring for more.
Throwing Love into the frenzy and basically giving us not one, but two, murderers to follow was a much-needed, yet somehow sensical, evolution of the story. Sure, we saw she had a crazy side in Season 2, but watching her and Joe fight the challenges of blending into a neighborhood full of pretentious, self-centric, wannabe-woke social-media-lite morons instead of murdering every last one of them on the spot induced an incredibly comedic tension every episode. The cringe struggle was real, especially for Love when dealing with blog-mom superhero Sherry, the quintessential fake person who plagues our society with their condescending, self-promotional acts of charity and their willingness to share every pearl of wisdom they glean from some unknown writer who secretly knows everything about eating healthy (seriously, those kind of people need to rethink their life choices).
Letting the audience know what we know about Love and Joe and peering into their minds as they process their new lifestyle is brilliant. I think my favorite scenes of the entire season were in Joe and Love's therapy sessions as they're trying to hash out their marital problems - and, unbeknownst to the therapist, their problems with their tendency to murder or capture people - which leads to clever dual-layered conversations. Surely they were bound to have trust issues after each of them secretly hid an escape key in their newly built prison, right? Yet what proved to be the topper for me was watching them heal when they started working together to hide their crimes. Couples that kill together stay together, huh? Even that is better than Sherry's ridiculous suggestion of swinging to solve marriage problems.
I was a bit disappointed in the end of the first episode. In the Season 2 finale, we saw Joe starting to stalk their neighbor, who turned out to be a real estate agent named Natalie. But Natalie becomes their first victim of the season at the end of the premiere episode, which seemed anti-climactic. Thankfully, it doesn't take long for Joe to fixate his attention on someone else: Marienne. Other than, you know, the whole murderer quality, Marienne would be the perfect woman for Joe. She loves books (Joe works for her in the library), she's calm, she's intelligent. And best of all, she's into Joe. But of course, Love picks up on this scent, which escalates the drama. Cue the lover's quarrel! Joe and Love realized their marriage is dying, and in the finale we get the showdown between killers we didn't know we were dying to see. Love seemingly got the better of Joe, but sticking to the character quite nicely, Joe proves studied up for the situation and pulls an ace out of his sleeve to get the last laugh.
So once again Joe is freely in the wild, and seemingly still pining over Marienne. Love convinced Marienne to run and hide after exposing some of Joe's evil side, but will she be able to stay hidden? Does she even want to? The writers hint that Joe wants to find her again, but I'm guessing he'll just find someone new to stalk in Season 4 much like he did with Marienne in this season.
At first I thought it was pretty crazy how many people who know about Joe's ugly side made it through the season alive. But when looking closer, Joe's cover story for Love's murder was good enough to throw everyone off his scent. Sherry and her husband Cary, whom Love imprisoned at one point, believed that Joe was involved in Love's murder cover-up, but they apparently aren't any wiser to Joe's true dealings. And why should they be when they can just make a profit instead? They write about their experience in the glass cage and turn it into a couple's therapy technique that leads to books and TV show appearances.
Aside from the ridiculous swingers scene, my least favorite moments of the season include the ridiculous commentary on COVID, which was blatantly shoved into the show for no real reason. I also didn't like Joe's decision to abandon his child and leave him in the care of a gay couple, but sure, he probably doesn't want the "extra baggage" of dragging a baby everywhere he goes (even though his reasoning is he's doing what's best for his son). What aggravates me the most about that is how he does exactly what his mom did to him. Throughout the season, we get a glimpse of Joe's childhood (including a storyline about a weird crush he had on the school nurse). We see the shocking moment when his mother just leaves him on the street and abandons him forever. I guess Joe is doing his son a favor by abandoning him while he's still an infant, huh? It was crazy to see that Joe had a brother whom the mother took with her. It'll be interesting to see if we see the brothers cross paths in the future.
I also didn't love the backstory to Love's ex-husband. Apparently she killed him, too, and once Joe finds out about that (from Love's mother, of all people), he now thinks she's crazy and dangerous. Uh, hello? You're a murderer, too, Joe!
Joe's framing of Love seemed skiddish, but I can't prove it, which is probably why the police investigating the murder scene didn't bother considering anything other than Love's murder-suicide. There were other little nitpicky things, but overall, the show once again proved to be incredibly witty, compelling, and constantly tense, much like the tension I like in this show's spiritual predecessor, Dexter, which I can't wait to watch later this year!