You Season 3 Ending Explained- What It Means For Season 4?

Wedded bliss is anything but in You Season 3, which finds new parents Love and Joe up to no good, again. Poor sweet homicidal Joe and his romantic stalker tendencies is way over his head. Last season’s love interest and surprising killer Love is the perfect foil for his constant sardonic commentary. Where he is controlled and self-reflective, she is wildly emotional and impulsive. It’s the ideal setup for a darkly comedic You Season 3.

When Netflix saved the sudsy thriller from the scrap heap, it allowed the show to veer into lanes it never could. Since the move, there has been more sex, more f-bombs, and even more murder. All of it is narrated by the gravelly-toned perfection of Penn Badgley’s Joe Goldberg. Love him, hate him, love to hate him. Maybe even hate that you love him, there’s is something so appealing about Joe. How is it possible to be turned on by a serial killer? Similar to Michael C. Hall’s Dexter, Joe is the consummate bad boy with a moral code. The latter’s code is just a little more flexible than the former.

Badgley’s internal dialogue is easily the best thing about You Season 3 or any other. The fact that Gossip Girl’s Dan can run wild, mainly killing heinous people in the service of his obsessions, all while justifying his actions, is the most entertaining aspect of the series based on Caroline Kepnes’ books. His semi-warped wisdom is matched only by Victoria Pedretti’s(Love) fragile, brittle rage, which, more times than not, results in shocking beats of uncontrolled violence.

Joe and Love have moved to an exclusive California suburb with new baby Henry. You Season 3 picks up just a few months after the events of Season 2. Joe’s obsession turned wife Love managed to save herself by announcing her pregnancy, and now the two are locked in a hot and cold marriage of inconvenience. She is perhaps the perfect partner for him in every way if not for her insecurity, uncontrolled temper, and both of their inabilities to control their wandering eyes. Joe has found a new obsession in the girl literally next door, Natalie, while Love catches the eye of Theo, Natalie’s stepson.

What makes You Season 3 so enjoyable is the expansion of Joe’s world. I could listen to him wax on about his decisions all day. Still, the addition of Love and baby Henry complicates things in the best way possible and allows him to interact with a host of nightmarish suburban mainstays. It’s all comedic gold. Anti-vaxxers and Bro-ed up dad dudes jacked on protein shakes and not-so-legal pharmaceuticals beast out while Fight Clubbing it in the wild while catty counterparts side-eye and gossip about everyone all while pretending they care oh so much. Couples therapy for killers and mommy influencers who constantly belittle others with a smile so saccharine you get a toothache just standing near them are all fair game. Here’s what happens to Joe, Love, and all the rest at the end of You Season 3.

What happens to Marienne?

After Love killed Natalie early in the season, Joe was forced to find a new focus for his urges. That focus was librarian Marienne. Lovely Tati Gabrielle(Marienne) is divorced from her abusive rich husband, and he has full-time custody of their daughter. They were both drug addicts, and Marienne endangered her daughter by driving intoxicated. She got sober, and he got their child. Her ex-husband is a rich, white monster, though, and he never got sober. He pretends to be while manipulating his power and privilege to undermine Marienne for no reason other than a need to destroy her. In many ways, he is not that different from Joe, who has a nasty habit of killing his love interests when they don’t turn out to be exactly what he thought they would be.

When Love found out that Joe was planning on running away with Marienne and Henry, she drugged Joe and texted Marienne using his phone. She intended on killing Marienne in front of Joe, but Marienne’s daughter showed up needing to use the restroom, and Love let her go. Love cared less about Sherry as a mother, but because Marienne was now a single parent after Joe killed her ex, she didn’t want to leave the child an orphan. Marienne does not know Joe survived, and she has moved away with her daughter. Joe still thinks about her, though and vows to someday find her.

What happens to Sherry, Cary, and Theo in You Season 3?

As fantastic as Shalita Grant and Travis Van Winkle as married royalty of suburbia are(and they are scene stealingly great), they serve to further Joe’s story and define who he and Love are as people and killers. Unfortunately, they are a messed up kind of couple, and their near-constant Keto dieting, intermittent fasting, toxic parenting, and assaultive negging find a bizarre resolution in the end. After a disastrous evening of swinging takes a nasty turn, Love and Joe have to shoot them with arrows and hide them away in the proofing box. Love wants them dead, while Joe wants to figure out a less fatal solution.

In the end, they end up saving themselves by finding Love’s hidden key and falling further into love. It’s an absurd affirmation of commitment, but it somehow works for this bonkers couple. They end up profiting from the experience, and the takeaway is definitely to trust your spouse unless you can’t and then take steps to frame them.

Theo, who Love bonked over the head and threw down the stairs, was found by Joe alive. He drugged him enough so he wouldn’t attack Joe and loaded him into the car, and took him where he would be found and taken to the hospital. Even though Theo was sleeping with Love, Joe realized the kid shouldn’t have to die and saved him. He has a soft spot for kids who make bad decisions, and Love is a whopper. Theo’s Dad, Matthew(yummy Scott Speedman), realized his kid was most important and gave up his investigation into Natalie’s death. When Love’s suicide note was found, and Theo recovered, it all pointed to Love as the killer anyway.

What happens to Love?

Love is an absolute nightmare of hypocritical delusion and blind rage. She is everything Joe is not, and despite their murdery common ground, they are not a good match. Where he is coldly calculating, she is hotly impulsively. She often has wild plans to dig themselves out of trouble, but they often lead to more risk than they were already in. When her mother, Dottie, a brilliant Saffron Burrows, confides to Joe that she thinks Love killed her first husband, he listens because he already doubts Love. Joe is a planner and a long-term strategist, so he began taking steps to ensure Love couldn’t do to him what she did to her first husband James.

Love poisoned her first husband on accident, or so she says. She claims she was only trying to force him to listen to her so she could win him back but inadvertently gave him too much paralytic, stopping his heart. This is why she put the substance on the carving knife and why she used a dish towel to hold the knife when she carved it at the table. When Joe wised up to her tricks, he grabbed the knife and hid it under the table. This contact allowed the poison to be absorbed into his system, thus rendering him temporarily paralyzed.

Joe had seen all this coming, however, and had taken an anecdote for the paralytic. In Sherry and Cary’s sex drugs stash, Joe snagged adrenaline and took some before coming home. As a result, he overcame the paralysis earlier than Love anticipated, and he killed her. He next wrote a lengthy suicide email as Love admitting to all of the murders and chopped off two of his toes sticking one into a quiche. Lastly, he burned his house down. With his DNA found and the email detailing all the people she killed or hurt the police now think both of them are dead and will blame Love for all the other crimes. He left his son with Dante and Lansing and moved to Paris, using Peach’s name.

Joe just wants to find his person. That individual to have and to hold forever assuming they match his expectations, of course. His abandonment issues coupled with the childhood trauma he endured have formed him into the wackjob he is. I can’t get enough. He is one seriously damaged tasty little snack. He also is probably the only person in the world who could say the word moist and have it be sexy.

Will Joe ever find true love? I sincerely hope not. The best thing about You Season 3 is Joe’s story isn’t growing old. It is just getting started, and it’s a testament to the world You has built that we pray for this killer to stay alive longer to get more time with the hot dad with a psychotic streak. Color me obsessed. You Season 3 is currently on Netflix.