Netflix and Spill: You Season 2 sees Joe Goldberg with a new identity

Image: Netflix

Fans of the insatiable serial killer Joe Goldberg need not have worried about his welfare in season 2 of the Netflix Original series You. With Season One basely on the eponymous novel by Caroline Kepnes, the second installment loosely draws it source material with the book’s sequel Hidden Bodies.

He’s very much alive, and once again evades capture (albeit somewhat clumsily) as he chases his next object of desire. Poor Joe’s forced to relocate from dark, secretive New York to sunny, conceited LA. The change is scenery is accompanied by the change in identity from Joe Goldberg to stolen alias, Will Bettelheim, with the names used interchangeably throughout the series.

Knowing our lead, he finds company just as shady through the Quinn family. Neurotic, needy Forty (James Scully, 2018’s Heathers) is a recovering addict whose dreams of producing a Hollywood feature act as a smokescreen for his own inadequacy as the heir to his parents high end grocery story. Think of chic Erewhon Market, peppered with books. It’s here that Joe finds modest employment among potential movie stars but mostly fame-hungry wannabes all high on kombucha and kale.

Season 2 sees a more restrained, yet thirsty antagonist who at least seems to realise his addiction. It also digs deeper into the backstory of a near abandoned child, with a mother too distracted by abusive boyfriends to even notice him left at the beach or alone in the house. Tracing back to the first kill, we’re shown the spiral from innocent child to fractured adult.

Hot on his tail are the ghosts of girlfriends past. In actuality, the spirit of Beck (Elizabeth Lail) appears sporadically to haunt Joe for his misdemeanours, while thought to be dead but surprisingly alive Candace (Ambyr Childers) vows for vengeance. Beck’s posthumous novel tie both characters together, while Forty and Love read between the lines and see the parallels between Joe and the book’s boyfriend.

The hunted also becomes the hunter, with the new interest Love (Haunting of Hill House’s Victoria Pedretti), not entirely the wide eyed deer in the headlights. She seems so trustworthy to Joe/Will in fact, that he does not possess her phone or read her DMs, but it’s this lapse in judgement that proves to be his downfall by the end of the season finale.

There’s also plenty of MacGuffins to keep Joe distracted, acting as a side quest while he attempts to pull away from his dangerous obsession. In a nod to the #MeToo and #TimesUp movements, his pursuit of a older comedian with a penchant for younger girls feeds into the jury, judge and executioner mindset. Despite all the arbitrary killings, Joe consistently endeavours to play a paternal role in the children of the victims he’s claimed. Seeking approval, even validation for his damned choices, he attempts to be more patient, more determined to atone for his sins. Almost determined to believe that he’s a good person in the face of it all, he shows mercy in some instances.

Does Joe ever repent for his indiscretions, and will he reinforce the loop of needing to protect his prey from the cruel realities of the world? Meeting his match in like-minded Love pairs him with someone who’s a flawed fixer herself. She’s the perfect mirror that forces him to confront his own fatal desires, and her assurance that he was just as blind to the red flags as his previous targets really is harrowing. “You saw what you wanted to see, but I was always here the whole time. You just had to look.”

With Season 3 confirmed, it will be hard for us not to look past every girl that comes into Joe’s life from here on.

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Shahbaz Malik

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