Netflix’s hit thriller You has returned to screens, and fans are once again lapping up Penn Badgley’s own special brand of Deranged Murderer.
★★★✰✰
The first five episodes of You season four dropped on February 9th and introduced a new cast of characters, as well as a new backdrop for their subsequent murders. This backdrop? A little town called London, England. With this fresh setting, Netflix’s favourite serial killer also got a whole new identity as Joe Goldberg (Badgley) became Professor Jonathan Moore.
At the beginning of the series, a murderer, dubbed the ‘Eat the Rich Killer,’ is making his way through London’s elite. Joe, who is (as usual) trying to begin a new, ‘clean’ lifestyle, wakes up to find the first victim (Malcolm, played by Stephen Hagan) sprawled out on his dining room table. In a surprising twist for anyone who knows Joe Goldberg, and for Joe himself, he also finds a threatening anonymous message on his phone, making it clear he’s being set up to take the fall.
Part One of the season sees Joe tumble into an intense game of cat-and-mouse with the murderer, later revealed to be rags-to-riches politician Rhys Montrose (Ed Speelers), whose devilish charm makes him a genuinely fantastic villain. In the fifth episode’s conclusion, Rhys traps Joe in the dungeon of a countryside manor house (Cluedo, much?), sets the place on fire, and announces his candidacy for Mayor of London after Joe’s unlikely escape. It’s quite literally a blazing cliffhanger of an ending, leaving fans on tenterhooks anticipating the release of the second half of the season.
Be warned: the rest of this review contains spoilers for Part Two…
Elements of season four require such suspension of reality that at times it feels almost ridiculous. Claiming that a campus as sprawling and green as Darcy College, filmed on location at Royal Holloway University in Egham, could possibly exist in Central London is almost beyond belief. That said, the setting injects such newness into a show that was becoming stale that it can be forgiven. Similarly, the caricature-like presentation of London’s elite is so on the nose it is practically comedy, tapping into tired stereotypes throughout. There are much more nuanced ways in which these characters could have been presented if You’s objective was to highlight the immorality of the upper classes. But would this be expecting too much from a series which has presented a bog-standard average Joe (if you’ll pardon the pun) as a stalker-turned-serial-killer with the covert skills of an MI5 operative? Since we’ve collectively overlooked this glaring plot point, a somewhat basic presentation of the rich can also be ignored.
In truth, season four’s real downfall lies in the return of the glass box…
The glass box represents everything tired and stale about You. Yet another captive woman, subject to Joe’s unpredictable whims. A suspicious outsider determined to unmask the truth (side note: Nadia, and her Agatha Christie-like penchant for crime-solving, is easily one the best parts of season four). Even the brief return of Love and Guinevere Beck during Joe’s hallucinations are unable to breathe life into this hackneyed narrative. Despite the return of the glass box and everything that accompanies it, You makes some attempt to throw a few plot twists into the mix and it relies heavily on the unreliable narrator trope. Nadia (Amy-Leigh Hickman) and Marienne’s (Tati Gabrielle) storyline is easily the most engaging part of the season, and it’s clear there is more to come from them in future seasons.
Whilst the unreliable narrator allows room for this storyline to grow, it also leads to more disappointment. As Joe pieces together his patchy memories, it’s revealed that Joe himself is the ‘Eat the Rich Killer’. Rhys Monstrose is very real, but Joe’s friendship with him is entirely fabricated and he has projected the crimes onto Rhys to avoid facing the grim truth: that he remains just as twisted as he’s always been.
To have introduced Rhys as Joe’s equal, finally some real competition, only to snatch the entire storyline away is a truly awful move. It is predominantly the competition between these two equally unhinged characters which makes the first half of the season so wildly entertaining. To remove this narrative in the second half of the season does serious damage to the show, almost stopping all momentum in its tracks. The elements of You which lean into what fans adore about it – the tension of Joe’s internal battle between right and wrong, Nadia’s investigation unearthing the secrets he’s tried so desperately to cover, and the tiny, constant glimmer of hope that Joe’s prey might escape his clutches – sadly cannot surpass the issues which drown them out.
Disappointingly, Part Two fizzles out into nothing more than a few glowing embers rather than the crackling fire promised by the first five episodes. Make no mistake, there are certainly moments of deranged genius and more than a few startling plot twists. But, while the first half of the series offers a new and exciting perspective on Joe’s sordid antics, the second half fails to commit to this daring diversion and falls back into more comfortable territory which begins to feel formulaic to You.
Joe’s return to pure insanity in the closing moments of the final episode leaves the show open for another season, but do we really need more of the same? It seems at this point that You is incapable of escaping its own glass box.
You season four is available to stream on Netflix now.
Words by Kate Padley
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