Here’s why the Netflix thriller ‘You’ is worth all the Hype
Joe, aka Will, and Love are pictured in a scene from “You.” Photo By People.com
Credit: Beth Dubber/Netflix
By Lizabeth Rameriez
Staff writer
Unless you are living under a rock, you have probably come across the new Netflix series “You.” The series premiered in 2018 and has recently came out with its second season. It has since been called a “binge-worthy” show.
It has a rating of 92% percent on Rotten Tomatoes so people are probably wondering, “What is all the hype about, and should they stay up until 3 a.m. watching?” The series is based on the books “You” and “Hidden Bodies” by Caroline Kepnes.
The first season takes place in New York City. The main protagonist in this thriller is Joe Goldberg, a bookstore manager whose obsession is not just with making sure books stay in perfect shape. Now every Romeo needs their Juliet, which in this case is Guinevere Beck. Beck is a grad student who has a love for writing, but often finds herself prioritizing everything else but her actual work.
Throughout the season, viewers are introduced to Paco, a little boy who from an unstable home. He is Joe’s neighbor and often times Joe feels as if it is his job to protect him. There is also Beck’s friend group, which consist of Peach, Annika, Lynn and Blythe.
Peach is her best friend and is secretly in love with Beck. Beck also has a boyfriend whose name is Benji, a rich guy who only cares about himself.
In season 2, Joe takes on sunny Los Angeles, his “favorite place in the whole wide world.” Did you catch the sarcasm? Running from his past and a bloodthirsty ex, he now has a new love interest, Love Quinn, widowed chef who is overprotective of her twin brother, Forty. We also meet Delilah and Ellie Alves, sisters who live next door to Joe Goldberg.
In the series, Joe provides narration of everything he thinks and notices. Joe seems like a regular guy until he meets Beck in season 1. She comes into the store looking like a perfect little angel. He becomes so interested in Beck that he decides to find out her name and look her up on social media.
Joe does not even use social media for himself, being a very private person. He also steals her phone, finding out who she is close with, where she studies and where she lives. It also gets revealed that they have a more complicated history involving the death of Beck’s ex-boyfriend.
Throughout the story, Joe does questionable things that make the viewer ask themselves how good of a person he is. As these escalate, it becomes difficult to come to a conclusion on whether his actions are ethical. While he does help Beck for some time, he also harms others in the process.
But facades can’t be kept up forever. When Beck gets a glimpse of the dark side Joe has been hiding, it makes her rethink everything and fear for her life. The end of the season is a jaw-dropping heart stopping thrill that I won’t spoil…but will say that we don’t see very much of Beck in the second season.
Joe ends up releasing some of Becks writing, and the book becomes a best-seller. And what’s a good finale without a cliffhanger as a familiar face from his past (aka his presumed dead ex-girlfriend) makes a shocking appearance.
The second season picks up not too long after the end of the first, Joe is in California trying to get away from Candace. He goes by the name Will, which he stole from a guy who helps give people new identities. Joe keeps connections with him and even tells him some pretty heavy stuff towards the end of the show.
He falls quickly for Love Quinn, the polar opposite of Beck. Love is bold and quirky and has baggage. In my opinion, she is the better of the two love interests. She shows her feelings through cooking and is the daughter of the owner of The Anavrin, where Joe finds a job.
Joe is a changed man and wants to take things slow and not become obsessed with Love. He doesn’t want to make the same mistake he did with Beck (although it’s really hard to go cold turkey on the stalking, isn’t it?). We see him try to become a different person for Love, but is Love just as perfect as she seems? She would do anything to protect her brother. Doesn’t that sound like someone we know?
We also meet the Aviles sisters and are introduced to their troubled life. Delilah, the struggling journalist, and Ellie, the sassy 15 year old who wants to be successful in the film industry. But Ellie will go to dangerous lengths to get her name out there, and Joe feels a responsibility for her that follows him through the whole season.
Delilah takes some risks of her own towards the end of the season that get her in a dangerous situation. The resolution changes both Aviles sister lives drastically.
One aspect that I really enjoyed about the series was that Joe cared about the people around him. He felt as if he needed to protect both of his young neighbors from evil, even if it meant murdering. I also thought that incorporating the stereotypes of NYC and LA was very interesting and pretty funny because people act so different.
Some things that people from social media liked were Joe’s glass box, which was meant to store books, but ended up being Joe’s kidnapping spot. Another thing that Joe fans loved was his crazy, at times obsessive, feelings for the woman he loved, and how everything he did was because of a good reason.
Many Twitter fans made memes of Joe wearing his disguise, which was just a baseball cap, or redoing his voice over their videos to suit their current situations.
While “You” had me on the edge of my seat, there are so many unanswered questions which Twitter has also tried to investigate. Will Joe have a new love interest in season three? Did Love’s husband die from sickness or other nefarious causes? What happened to the detective in season 1?
All these questions will hopefully unfold in season three, which has already been confirmed.