Diksha Sundriyal
The fourth season of ‘You’ packs many mysteries, most pertinent of which is the identity of Eat the Rich Killer. Usually, Joe Goldberg knows who the killer in the room is. This time, however, he is in a bind. Someone has been stalking him while killing off the members of a group that Joe only recently got acquainted with. While Joe hates most of the people in the group, he befriends Rhys Montrose, a successful author and politician, on his way to becoming the mayor of London.
Joe believes that he and Rhys have many things in common, and they bond over it. Later, Joe discovers that their bond runs far deeper than that. He is shocked when he finds that the Rhys he knew wasn’t the Rhys that everyone else was familiar with. If this twist makes you wonder whether there are two Rhys and if Joe befriended the twin he didn’t know about, then here’s what you need to know. SPOILERS AHEAD
Joe’s Mind Creates Fictitious Rhys
No, Rhys has no twin in ‘You’ Season 4. At the end of Season 4 Part 1, Joe discovers that his stalker and Eat the Rich Killer is Rhys Montrose. Rhys reveals how he killed Malcolm to save his political campaign and tried to pin it on Joe. He is the one who killed Simon and Gemma as well, and he doesn’t intend to stop there. Now that he has Joe in his grip, he doesn’t want to dirty his hands anymore. He wants Joe to kill other people for him.
Joe wanted a fresh start in London, where his past won’t follow him, and he won’t end up obsessing over someone and killing people. But this is ruined by Rhys, who is hell-bent on pushing Joe back into the pattern he worked so hard to escape. Joe is further inflamed when Rhys threatens to kill Marienne. Joe believes she is back in Paris with her daughter, but Rhys reveals that he tracked her down and is holding her captive somewhere. He won’t let her go until Joe does as asked.
It is to save Marienne that Joe strikes back at Rhys. Backed by Tom Lockwood, he tracks down Rhys to his family home. Joe forces him to reveal where he has been keeping Marienne, but Rhys denies any knowledge of her and claims never to have met Joe. This further infuriates Joe, and, in his anger, he kills Rhys. While he is shocked that he might ruin his only chance to determine Marienne’s whereabouts, another shocker awaits him.
As Joe looks at Rhys’ dead body before him, another Rhys enters the scene. This Rhys is alive and shows no sign of torture. Joe believes that he is in trauma after having killed Rhys, and this other Rhys is a hallucination. He is partially correct. The second Rhys really is a hallucination, but this isn’t the first time Joe sees him. The real Rhys had been telling the truth. He never talked to Joe; they were never even introduced. All this time, the Rhys that Joe had been talking to was the hallucination.
Retracing his steps reveals that Joe developed a different personality when he kidnapped Marienne. His brain compartmentalized the two personalities so that Joe remained aware of the actions of the other. He wanted to be a good person, so his bad side hid from him. As time passed, his evil side ached to be accepted by Joe. It wanted to be accepted by Joe, so it manifested as someone Joe could befriend. Previously, Joe had obsessively followed Rhys Montrose on social media. He read his books and learned about his favorite haunts, his life, and what he wanted.
Joe immersed himself in researching Rhys so much that his other side presented itself to him as Rhys when the time came. All the times that Joe thought he was talking with Rhys he was talking to himself and his other side, which remained a secret until he killed the real Rhys, and the truth about his fractured state of mind came to light. He had never befriended the real Rhys; there was no twin. Joe had been hallucinating him.
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