Penn Badgley shares his thoughts on 'You' Season 4's big twist and what it all actually means
Season 4 of You felt like an episode of Riverdale.
Joe (Penn Badgley) moved to London, assumed a new identity, briefly got stalked, befriended a billionaire Brady bunch, was almost burned alive, and yet none of the aforementioned are actually this season's wildest moment.
While You's always been partial to plot twists, Part 2 of Season 4 saw the show employ its most ambitious twist yet, transforming its story from a thriller to a psychological slasher, and positioning Joe in his very own Fight Club fanfic.
It turns out that Part 1's big bad wolf, Rhys Montrose (Ed Speleers), is actually a figment of Joe's imagination. He's a personification of Joe's murderous side, allowing our protagonist to stuff all his secret skeletons into a "living," walking closet. Joe's actually been the one doing all the killing this season — but he has no memory of it. He's fully sinking into his double persona, akin to Edward Norton in Fight Club, where he's attached to Rhys by the hip (or the brain?). And by the looks of Season 4's final shot, it seems that Rhys is here to stay.
While it may feel that You keeps raising its stakes in a constant pursuit of sensational storytelling and nabbing Twitter's top trending topic, Penn Badgley weighed in on this season's big twist and it's a lot more grounded than we might think. From his process this season to what Rhys actually symbolizes, Badgley shared his thoughts on You's biggest reverse card yet — and what it all ultimately means for Joe's future.
Badgley's Season 4 preparation process looked similar to past seasons.
First of all: did the Rhys reveal influence Badgley's approach to Joe this season? "It actually didn't. I always approach him the same," he says.
"I just keep believing what I have to say and do, because on one level, [Joe] believes it," he explains. "On another, he's a completely unreliable narrator and he's killing people without realizing it, but I don't have to play that schism. In fact, if I did, you would have seen it coming and it wouldn't be as interesting." Instead, Badgley leaves it to You's writers to tackle Joe's complexity and figure out the best inner-workings to crack Joe's poorly polished facade.
A big factor in why this season's twist was so shocking in the first place was because Joe didn't seem all that different. Sure, Part 1 didn't see his usual wave of debauchery at its fullest, but we still ticked off many things on Joe's typical, twisted to-do list including: falling in love with his neighbor, social media stalking, attempted adultery, and y'know, dismembering a body (again). The only hint that the Rhys talking to Joe wasn't real were his sudden, often nonsensical, appearances, like him randomly chilling in Joe's living room or emerging from the corner of a wall.
Despite maintaining the same approach, Badgley's performance of Joe this season was unlike anything we've seen of him before. He managed to portray Joe at a low we never thought was possible — and while Badgley is a big fan of the twist, he also believes there's a lot more to it besides watching Joe mentally car crash at 90 miles per hour.
What does the Rhys twist actually reveal about Joe?
From You's beginning Badgley's always been adamant on reminding us that Joe is a serial killer, but even he admits that Joe can be emotional. "There's parts of [Joe] that do genuinely want to be held and to be loved," he says. "Which is mostly human, it's just a matter of how you're doing it that makes it humane or inhumane."
Through the Rhys reveal, Badgley thinks we're listening to those parts of Joe speaking in real time.
The majority of Joe's conversations with Rhys involve Rhys sharing that he wants a friend and someone he can trust wholeheartedly. If you keep in mind that Rhys is Joe, then we're actually listening to a forlorn side of Joe's internal monologue and learning what he really wants from life.
"When Rhys tells Joe 'I love you, why can't you love me', or something to that effect, it's something like [Joe's] inner child, which we all have," Badgley says. "It's the part of you that wasn't hurt enough yet to withhold love. It's that part. That part of Joe is asking himself 'Why can't you love me? Why can't you love yourself?'"
Sure, the double persona twist is fun, but according to Badgley, its more important function is raising a mirror to Joe's insecurities. While Joe goes about dealing with the latter in a way we all (hopefully) can't relate to, his inability to love himself or find someone that loves him is something we can all empathize with, because we've all been there. Joe is a hyperbolic, not to mention dangerous, poster boy for self-hatred at its absolute extreme — but when you dial everything down, you're left with a universal experience grounded in trying to love yourself. It's a hidden takeaway that You is trying to evoke — you just have to sift through all of Joe's mayhem.
Joe's evolution may have a more poignant takeaway than you think.
As for where Joe is on that journey of self-love, Badgley suggests the character is, well, in his year of realizing stuff.
"[Joe's] finally realizing that all of his problems don't originate from something outside of him," he explains. "It's not another person or another place that will solve his problems. [Realizing that] is actually the hallmark of growth or emotional maturity, and usually people who are realizing these things are not serial killers. So then there's the part of [Joe] that doesn't grow and may never grow."
Joe's caught between self-realization and self-deflection. Through the Rhys twist, we all thought Joe was on the precipice of change because he was so adamant on trying to correct his wrongs and restore all the literal fragmented parts of himself. But by the season finale, we not only get another glimpse of Rhys after his supposed "death," we also get another ominous Joe voice-over more or less declaring he's ready to kill again for love. His back and forth may be a constant we need to accept because he is a serial killer, and he cannot shake the baggage that comes with it. Joe isn't a redeemable character and I can't imagine a future in You where he would be, but perhaps within his character arc are nuggets of relatability we can all pay more attention to.
"[The show is] doing all of this crazy stuff to land certain, really improbable, moments that are surprisingly powerful, resonant, and grounded," Badgley says. "If you can watch the show and just have these fleeting moments of powerful poignancy where you're brought to tears or thinking 'Why is it so hard to love myself?', if the show can somehow create one of those moments for you, then we're doing our job."