Season three of You is here to entertain in a hilarious and, yet again, disturbing way. We get more backstory on Joe’s character, watch dramatic irony surrounding Joe and Love’s marriage unfold and even receive a Taylor Swift song as an underscore for the season finale. If you can’t decide if this season is worth the watch, take a look at the three reasons why the show is unique and thrilling.
warning: contains spoilers
Dramatic Irony
The dramatic irony in this season is to die for—literally. Joe and Love both end up wanting out of their marriage to be with other people but put on the façade of being dedicated to their marriage. Add the You twist: They use this reverse psychology on one another to keep their partner from killing them. This is slightly hilarious because the audience sees them both wanting to separate but thinking that their partner is into the marriage because of their pretending.
One scene that particularly intrigues me is when Joe pretends that watching Love flirt with the neighbor’s son, the person Love wants to be with, makes him jealous in order to keep Love from figuring out he wants to be with his boss.
Knowing how badly the two want the same thing but thinking they know that the other wants something different is a beautiful commentary of how marriage often works. Lack of communication leads to frustration because people think they are giving their partner what they want, but, in reality, they are giving them the opposite.
Music Supervisor’s Sense of Humor
Whoever was putting the music together for this season’s episodes was having way too much fun with the last episode. In an effort to not give too much away, I will just say that Taylor Swift’s song “Exile,” featuring Bon Iver, hits a little too close to home as you listen to it play in the scene while Joe covers up yet another killing in his pattern of murders.
Rather than using the instrumental aspect of the song, the music supervisor clearly made a point to put the lyrics “I think I’ve seen this film before, and I didn’t like the ending” in the middle of Love reading a letter in this scene. It is almost as if the show makers were commenting on the ending they chose for the season. They admit to the audience that they realize this ending is a pattern that their audience, of course, dislikes, but they decide to go through with it anyway.
Personally, I think the inclusion of this song was just a little too much because I could not stop laughing at the lyrics that perfectly fit the situation it was underscoring in the movie. In addition, I’ve noticed that many people on my For You Page on TikTok this week did not like the fact that this song was included in the show. However, this song certainly adds to the entertaining comedy that surrounds this dark humor of a show and though irking, I think it is incredibly effective in making the audience uncomfortable, which is certainly a goal of the show in its entirety.
Emotional Deep Dive into Protagonist Joe Goldberg’s Past
Another reason why the show is worth a watch is we get to see more into Joe’s past. One of the most intriguing aspects of the show is psychoanalyzing Joe’s character as we watch him kill while still empathizing with him.
In the flashbacks to Joe’s childhood, we get to see how he felt about his mother leaving him at a group home and how the counselor there became a mother figure for him. We get to see, as he realizes his new mother figure was killed by her abusive boyfriend, why Joe is so adamant about needing to save women. He was never able to save the one woman he knew truly cared about him, and it has stayed with him throughout his life.
We also watch Joe confront his mother as a child about why she abandoned him, and she said she did still love him but gave him up because she knew she was bad for him. It is interesting to see how Joe takes this idea of leaving someone bad for him, as he consistently tries to escape his marriage to Love throughout the entire season.