After over a year since it’s initial release, fans have been waiting in anticipation for the return of the Netflix original. Based on a book duology by Caroline Kepnes, the Netflix original was an immediate hit after the twisting drama of the first season, as Joe does whatever it takes to stay in Beck’s life. Finally, at the end of 2019, the second season dropped, but now that it is here, has it upheld the standards of the first season?
In this article, I will be discussing the various parts of this series that I thought were excellent and strong, as well as the sections I thought were a bit weaker. First, a reader disclaimer: there will be spoilers ahead, so proceed with caution.
- Candace’s Reappearance
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Season one left the audience on a cliff-hanger when Joe bumps into the assumed-dead Candace in the book store, leaving fans with many questions about what truly happened between them, and more importantly, what was about to go down.
Seeing Candace come back was definitely intriguing, but I wouldn’t be lying if part of me wasn’t hoping that she was just a figure of his imagination. I would have loved to see Joe struggling with the weight of his crimes, first with Candace and then Beck, and having it manifest in ghosts that would haunt him as he tries to move on. This could have still driven Joe to LA, as he seeks a change of scenery to try and clear his mind of the past, and this could continue to draw conflict between Joe and Love as she senses he’s holding secrets from her.
Since this didn’t happen, I wasn’t really satisfied with what ended up happening with Candace and her storyline. Her whole purpose was to get revenge on Joe and to protect Love and her family from him, but in the end, she is only ignored and killed by the girl she swore to protect. Her purpose just dwindled down to nothing and it just didn’t seem to fit her character and all of the threats she talked up in the beginning of the season.
Other than this, I did love seeing what happened between her and Joe, and how that shaped both of them as people moving forward. Though it was sad, I thought it was interesting to include how Candace was treated when she went to the police after surviving Joe’s murder attempt and how no one believed her. It parallels a lot of experiences women have when trying to reach out from toxic and abusive relationships in a heartbreakingly beautiful way that really highlights the issue.
- Joe’s Past
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While I have been curious about who Joe was before his entrance into obsession and murder with Candace, I am not really pleased with the troubled past trope the writers wrote for him. I liked learning about what lead to him working under Mr. Mooney in the book shop and why he would tolerate an abusive mentor who is under the guise of helping him, but I didn’t like how they made Joe a forgivable character. While the abuse he and his mother endured and the unintentional killing of his father was definitely traumatic, it doesn’t excuse his actions later in life. It doesn’t give him the right to choose who lives or dies because of his perceptions on someone’s life. After all of the unspeakable things that he has done in the name of love, he really doesn’t deserve that kind of humanization.
Regardless of how I feel about how this affects peoples’ perceptions of Joe in his present life, learning about his past did provide an explanation about how of his protective behavior, especially towards young kids. In the first season it was Paco, and in this season it was Ellie. Joe definitely sees himself in them and wants to give them the pure and happy childhood that he never got–to give them the protection from the evils of the world that he never got.
- Hendy and Ellie
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Speaking of Ellie, one thing that I really loved about this season was the emphasis on how wrong the relationship between Henderson and Ellie was. Even before Delilah comes out with her story about how Hendy took advantage of her, the people around Ellie, Joe included, see something wrong in this kind of relationship between a young girl and an older man. Then, as it continues, it shows how Hendy is grooming her, using her interest in film to get close to her and then using that to get her into a situation where he could take advantage of her.
This kind of subplot within a show like this helps to show the audience the warning signs of a groomed pedophilic relationship, whether it is an older audience of adults looking for this behavior in fellow adults, or kids looking out for these signs for their friends or in adults they thought should be trusting. This season’s setting in LA made this subplot even more powerful, since this is a city that is romanticized as one where people make something of their dreams and passions, but here it is showing how some people will use that for bad things.
- Love
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While I love Victoria Pedretti from her role as Nel in The Haunting of Hill House, I was not really a fan of Love in general. For someone with such a dark past and secrets, she seemed just a little too pious. She was always so focused on Joe telling her the truth and not hiding anything from her, while at the same time, she was keeping secrets from everyone in her life, especially her own twin brother, who her actions had such a detrimental effect on. She just put so much weight on her values and how everyone around her had to uphold those values for them to remain valuable in her own life.
Another thing that bothered me about Love’s storyline, though not really about Love herself, the trope of her revealing that she is pregnant in an attempt to make Joe stay with her and see her differently. In general, I think this is a manipulative tactic used to trap someone into a relationship and change their feelings about the relationship in general, and even though I think Joe is a bad person, that doesn’t give Love the right to control his feelings towards her. The timing of this is especially bad, since she could have told him as soon as she found out, but instead waits until he is in a vulnerable position and questioning how he feels about Love now that he knows the truth about her.
Despite this, I loved the twist of Love having as many psychotic tendencies as Joe, which lead to her trapping him inside his own glass. I loved hearing about the truth of her backstory and what really happened between Love, Forty and that au pair. Even more, while I hated the death of Delilah, I did like that it was Love who kills her, since it came out of nowhere and was a much more powerful plot twist than either Joe or Forty doing it on their acid trip, since that was the lead up from that whole episode.
Regardless of all these criticisms I have of Love, one thing I loved about her was how well she called out Joe with his relationships just being a fantasy of the girl he is with and how he doesn’t really see them for who they really are. Even with Beck, he was constantly trying to change and manipulate her life so that his life with her could be perfect. He wasn’t really interested in becoming apart of either her or Love’s lives, he was just using them to find purpose and happiness in his life.
- The Ending
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At first, I was very disappointed with the ending. As the end of the final episode came to a close, it felt very anticlimactic compared to the rest of the series, especially the show of Beck’s death in the last season. I didn’t think either Love or Joe deserved a nice life together where they weren’t punished for their crimes, despite Joe’s assurance that this boring new domestic life in suburbia was a prison for him. I was already settled in this unhappiness with the ending, when the writers pulled through in that final twist where Joe starts to show interest in his new next-door neighbor, hinting that he is about to start his cycle of obsession and stalking all over again.
Even though I had a lot of criticisms of this season, I still was just as hooked on it as I was the first season. With each episode, I was just as pulled into the plot and the characters, watching intently to see what happened next. It’s not perfect, but it’s still good.
Not long after the release of the season, Netflix released that You has been renewed for a third season, which fans are definitely excited for, especially after that loose ending that show Joe hasn’t really given up his ways for Love or his future. I can’t wait to see how Joe unfolds into this new fantasy, and what that means for season three.