When You Season 4 came out, fans were expecting the return of Penn Badgley’s snarky serial killer, Joe Goldberg. And while they definitely got to enjoy a new series of plot twists and turns, eagle-eyed fans of Gossip Girl also had a litany of references to Badgley’s character of Dan “Lonely Boy” Humphrey.
Since You first premiered back in 2018, fans were quick to point out the similarities between Joe and Dan across the two shows. Both characters are New York City natives, have a general disdain for the rich, and fall in love with rich, upper-class girls. While Dan Humphrey never graduated to Joe’s murderous level of obsession over women, they both are expert stalkers and manipulators of social media.
With all these theories speculating the two are one and the same, or Joe is Dan, just ten years older, it seems the writers for the fourth season decided to lean into these ideas and leave easter eggs for fans to pick up on. It could also be a way for Penn Badgley, who is a producer for You and directed an episode of the newest season, to pay homage to the show that catapulted him into fame.
The first reference comes at the end of the first episode. Joe asks himself, “Who am I?”, which could be a callback to the infamous line from every Gossip Girl episode: “And who am I? That’s one secret I’ll never tell.”
In episode two, in an interesting turning of the tables, Joe’s stalker texts him, calling him a “loner by nature.” Sounds familiar to the nickname Gossip Girl gave Dan: Lonely Boy. (Or is it the nickname he gave himself?)
Later in the same episode, while at an art show, Joe is called a “gossip” by another character. If the fan theories claiming Joe is Dan 10 years older are right, then that line carries a ton of weight. Even if it isn’t, though, it’s still a cute callback to Badgley’s prior show.
In episode three, in order to cover up his stalking, Joe uses the excuse that he’s “a writer” doing research for a book “about the rich.” Fans of Gossip Girl will remember Dan’s dislike of the rich kids he went to school with, even going to the lengths of writing a scathing book about them.
Lastly, the biggest reference to Gossip Girl in season four is, well, the whole plot. Without giving too much away about either show, the plotlines of season four so far seem like a grittier version of the events that happen across the Gossip Girl show. Rather than focusing on the young, socialite teens of the Upper East Side, You season four instead peers into the lives of England’s adult elite. Dan and Joe are both outsiders of the upper class who are brought into an obscenely rich friend group, which is being stalked by someone on the inside that knows their every move and secret. To me, this season is like if Gossip Girl graduated from the teen network of The CW and the characters of Serena, Blaire, Dan, and Chuck had a real murderer on their hands, not just a gossiper.
Whether accidental or done on purpose, the first half of season four of You is rife with enough references to stoke the fan theory fire. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to rewatch Gossip Girl while I wait for the second half of season four, which comes out March 9!