The Netflix series You has been a rollercoaster from the beginning and season three is no different. What ultimately led many to fear social media and stalkers has turned into a family affair. When Love Quinn was introduced to the show, I couldn’t tell if I hated or loved her. Joe seemingly changes his ways for a moment, but ultimately reverts back to old patterns. The ending of season three was a whirlwind of emotions and sets up the fourth season (which was confirmed shortly before season 3 premiered!) Spoilers below…
While seasons one and two were wild, I think this season managed to be even crazier. Maybe it is so crazy because it focuses on Love and Joe’s relationship and how they handle raising a child, while both having serial killer tendencies? Love’s impulsiveness led to many deaths and would’ve led to many more if Joe hadn’t talked her down — which is not something I would’ve expected from him. Much of what Love did was to protect her family, which was what she also did for Forty when they were kids. Love is very much attracted to individuals that need fixing, as seen with Theo.
Joe reverted back to his voyeuristic behaviors in the last episode of season two and quickly became obsessed with their neighbor Natalie. Love took matters into her own hands after she found Joe’s box that contained some of Natalie’s possessions. I was honestly surprised at how fast they killed off her character. It was almost a punishment for falling for Joe as he has to help her get rid of the body, which feels impossible with the entire city under constant surveillance and monitoring, thanks to Natalie’s husband, Matthew. In the first few episodes, Joe struggles with fatherhood and connecting with their son, Henry, as he had wanted a daughter because he feared that his son might turn out like him. However, throughout the season we see Joe try to become the father he never had.
To the rest of Madre Linda, Joe and Love seem like a normal couple — they even go to marriage counseling to work out their “differences.” Plus, their son contracts measles from the unvaccinated neighbor’s children — yes, they managed to incorporate an anti-vax episode and they address COVID multiple times throughout the season. In the episode where their son contracts measles, their neighbor Gil comes into Love’s bakery and admits that his children gave Henry measles. Absolutely enraged by this, she knocks him out which a rolling pin, puts him in the glass box, and she and Joe try to find a way to blackmail him so they can release him without anyone finding out. They learn that his son had sexually assaulted a girl twice, but Gil was unaware of the second victim and ends up taking his own life, overcome by guilt that his son had harmed another innocent girl. In a surprise turn of events, Joe and Love end up pinning the murder of Natalie on Gil. Natalie’s husband doesn’t believe it to be true and ends up searching all of the town’s data and video recordings to find out who actually killed her. Meanwhile, his teenage step-son Theo falls for Love and they have an affair.
Joe begins resenting Love as he moved to Madre Linda for them to have a fresh start, only to be constantly cleaning up her messes. He ends up falling for the librarian, Marriene, who had a similar past. Joe ends up killing Marriene’s emotionally abusive ex so that she can have custody of her daughter. All of Joe’s dialogue and inner thoughts become fixated on becoming a better person not for Henry or for Love, but for Marienne. Sherry and Cary, two of Love and Joe’s friends end up overhearing a fight between them in which she admits to killing Natalie — they put up a fight but end up in the box where they almost die but make it out in time. Theo also almost dies as he believes Joe is abusive and tells Love that she should run away with him. He gathers information from his father and tells Love and he also finds Sherry and Cary in the box and tries to help them escape only to be caught by Love, who eventually hits him over the head, leaving him for dead and the bottom of the stairway. Joe takes pity on him when he finds he is not dead and takes him to a hospital.
Henry’s grandmother ends up taking Henry (AKA reincarnated Forty) for a trip to get fast food and light her vineyard on fire, so her ex-husband can’t take it from her in their messy divorce. Love cuts her out of her life for endangering their baby by driving drunk and blowing up the vineyard. In the car, her mother tells Joe to be careful as she believes Love killed her last husband, but in the last season Love had stated that he died of cancer.
In the very last episode, Love tells Joe she wants to have another baby, but shortly after this Love finds the bloody t-shirt Joe wore to kill Marienne’s ex-husband. Love cooks a dinner for herself and Joe and he then reveals he wants a divorce. When Love leaves to tend to Henry, Joe grabs a knife as he fears she will kill him for bringing up divorce. Little does he know that she had poisoned the knife with a paralytic, the same paralytic she had used on her previous husband. Love had put it on the knife so it would paralyze him but not kill him so that if he would not have grabbed the knife he wouldn’t have been paralyzed — so essentially it was all about trust. She invites Marienne over and almost kills her but after meeting Marienne’s daughter, she realizes she can’t take away the young girl’s mother. Joe lies paralyzed while Love delivers cupcakes and while she’s gone, Matthew comes over to find his step-son Theo and is able to find the hospital where Theo is, leaving Joe alone, paralyzed and gagged.
After Love returns, Joe stabs Love with a needle filled with the same paralytic she gave him; he is able to do so because he had taken an antidote before dinner because he knew she had been growing it in the garden. The last few minutes of the show are heartbreaking and an absolute whirlwind of events. First, as he knows he cannot be a proper father and Love is now dead, Joe leaves his infant son, Henry, on Dante and Lansing’s steps so that he wouldn’t end up in the system like he did (they foreshadowed this when Dante tells Joe that they’ve been turned down for adoption multiple times and all he and his husband want is a child — Joe knew they would be amazing parents so he left Henry with them.) Joe then writes a suicide-letter from Love to the Madre Linda HOA and burns their house down. The season ends with Joe **now known as Nick** living in Paris, hoping Marienne will return to her hometown.
All in all, I think this season was certainly wild, entertaining, and surprising. The writers did an exceptional job with character development and I’m excited to see what happens in the next season. All three seasons are streaming on Netflix, so start your binge!