Breaking Down the Ending of You Season 4, Part 2

Warning: This post contains spoilers for part two of season four of You

Well, Joe Goldberg has done it again: killed a bunch of people, framed others for his wrongdoings, and gone on to live an affluent life with a rich white woman and no repercussions whatsoever. A month after the first part of Season 4 was released, Netflix finally released Part Two on March 9 and Goldberg’s story got wrapped up in a nice, neat(-ish) bow as it always does.

Fans of the show left off the first part of the season with Penn Badgley’s Joe finding out that the “Eat The Rich” killer was Rhys Montrose and becoming obsessed with taking him down. It seemed as though Goldberg had turned a corner and was ready to atone for his crimes, but that no longer appears to be the case by the end of the season. He falls right back into his old habits to secure his place right next to Kate’s side.
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This season started out differently from most: instead of centering around Joe’s murderous obsession with a woman he’d recently met, the story focuses on someone’s obsession with Joe as he navigates a close circle of elite friends in London. It’s a welcome departure from the show’s formula, at least at first. But by the end of the remaining five episodes, he ultimately remains a serial killer addicted to protecting the woman he loves and almost, but not quite, getting caught.

Here’s everything you need to know about the ending of Season 4, Part Two of Netflix’s You.

What happened in Part One of Season 4?

To give a brief summary of Part One’s events, the season picked up where Season 3 left off. Joe left Los Angeles—where he faked his own death, blamed it on Love (literally and figuratively), gave his son Henry to their neighbors, and fled to Paris in search of Marienne, his one true love (this time for real). He made his way over to London where he became a professor at a university teaching literature—fitting given his affinity for books.

Goldberg, now going by Jonathan Moore, befriends a group of socialites which includes his neighbors Malcolm and Kate, along with their friends, at a party. The group includes Lady Phoebe Borehall-Braxworth, Adam Pratt, Blessing Bosede, Simon and Sophie Soo, Roald Walker-Burton, Gemma Graham-Greene, Connie (never given a last name), and Rhys Montrose.

The morning after the party, Goldberg wakes up to Malcolm dead on his kitchen table with a knife right through his heart. His death sets things in motion for the events to follow, including the death of at least five more people. Goldberg receives an anonymous text message from someone who knows his real identity, and it’s revealed that he is the one being stalked. The identity of the killer is revealed to be Montrose, and Joe tries to figure out how to take him down to get him off his back.

What happens in Part Two?

Viewers find Goldberg looking up everything he can about Montrose, on the hunt to get him off his heels. In episode six, he uses a woman who is obsessed with Lady Phoebe as a fall for the “Eat The Rich” killer because he had been a main suspect among the elite friend group. Toward the end of the episode, Nadia, one of his literature students at the university, becomes suspicious of him.

The seventh episode sees Montrose telling Goldberg that he has to kill Kate’s father, Tom Lockwood (a Bill Gates/Elon Muskian figure who is described as being the most powerful person in the world). Montrose promises to leave Joe alone if he follows through with the plan. Montrose has also kidnapped Marienne and won’t tell him where she is. Goldberg attempts to kill Lockwood, but Lockwood then tells Joe where Montrose is hiding after being embroiled in a scandal. Joe goes there, finds Montrose, and strangles him to find out where he’s hiding Marienne. Joe strangles him while he’s tied to a chair, asking him, “Where is Marienne?” but Montrose says he doesn’t know. In a fit of rage, Goldberg continues choking Montrose until his body goes limp and he dies. Then, a second Montrose appears behind him in a suit, showing that the villainous Montrose in his head was a figment of his imagination.

Nadia begins to snoop around Joe’s apartment when he’s gone and discovers his real name when her boyfriend, Edward—the son of a newspaper publisher—sends her leaked candid photos of Joe walking around with a bag of Indian food in multiple different pictures. She goes to the restaurant and looks around to find an entrance to a basement, where she finds Marienne in the infamous glass box.

Episode eight reveals that Joe was actually the one who kidnapped Marienne, drugged her, and put her in the box. Nadia becomes obsessed with freeing Marienne, but she knows the escape will be impossible. Viewers then see Montrose break down how Joe imagined this all and is, in fact, the person who killed all of the people who have been murdered this season, thereby continuing to be exactly who he was trying not to be. Goldberg attempts to retrace his steps to figure out where he put Marienne, and at the end of the episode, he’s seen walking toward the entrance of the basement while Nadia tells Marienne her plan.

In episode nine, Lukas Gage’s character Adam Pratt is killed by Lockwood because he was causing too many problems for Lady Phoebe, which in turn bothered Kate. Then Joe finds Marienne, but he can’t let her out until he ties up a couple of loose ends first to cover himself. Nadia and Marienne devise an elaborate plan to get her out.

Why does Love come back in Season 4?

Love Quinn isn’t Goldberg’s only dead ex who returns for Season 4. In the ninth episode, Joe has a psychotic break and hallucinates different scenarios with the exes that he’s killed, including Season One’s Guinevere Beck (played by Elizabeth Lail) and Season 2 and 3’s Quinn (played by Victoria Pedretti). Love appears in the box that Marienne and all of his formerly alive flings were held in at one point or another, reading Rhys’ book. All of this leads him to the conclusion that he needs to die by suicide so as not to continue this vicious cycle of hurting women.

How does Part Two end?

After finding Marienne in the glass box, passed out with an empty pill bottle, Goldberg assumes she’s dead so he takes her out of the box and leaves her on a bench in a park. Viewers see Nadia and Edward work together and deepen their relationship (albeit under unconventional circumstances) as they work together to get Marienne free. Joe kills Lockwood and after an emotional conversation with the apparitional Montrose, he decides to die by suicide and jumps off a bridge, which he manages to survive because the police immediately rescue him. Nadia tells Edward about their plan(s), which ended with Nadia meeting Marienne in the park after Joe dropped her there and gave her a drug to reverse the effects of the pills she took to wake her up. She fled London, presumably to find her daughter.

Nadia is set on bringing Joe to justice but needs solid evidence to provide to the police, and in order to get it she must go back to his apartment. When Joe wakes up in the hospital, Kate meets him there and tells him she inherited her father’s wealth and therefore power but in order for them to be together, he has to tell her the truth. So he does, and thus begins Joe’s redemption tour.

Edward keeps watch while Nadia snoops through the apartment, but after they find solid evidence, Edward is not in the getaway car. Nadia turns around to see Joe, who shows her Edward’s dead body, which she is then framed and imprisoned for. He tells Nadia he’s been given a chance to “make up” for what he’s done and live out his life as “an honest man.” He and Kate are seen doing an interview with a journalist in New York, where the whole series started, thus concluding a full-circle moment for Joe and white men everywhere.

Will there be a Season 5?

There have not yet been any announcements from Netflix about a fifth season.