Diksha Sundriyal
In the first episode of this season, Joe tries to get a job at Anavrin by sliding Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment into the conversation. The book tells the story of a man who commits a crime and then struggles with the moral dilemma that haunts him until the end of his days. Though ‘You’ is not exactly Dostoyevsky’s classic brought on the screen, it does use the karmic arc of the protagonist’s life to land him in a prison of his own making.
For all the people that he killed, Joe always had a justification. He would tell himself that he was doing it for love, that he would never hurt a soul if the conditions weren’t imposed on him; if he wasn’t cornered by the circumstances. If that logic allows him to clear his conscience, if it allows him to see himself as a good person and not some crazy serial killer, then it should apply to everyone else around him, too. Right?
You Season 2 Episode 10 Recap
Joe thought he was the only one who would do anything for love, but when he comes to know about Love, he is taken aback. He is mortified by her thought-process and is horrified when he sees himself in her. Now that he is caged inside his own prison, with Delilah’s body by his side, he re-assesses his life and starts thinking about ways to get out of there. He remembers what Beck did in this situation, and uses the same trick to lure Love into letting him out. But before he can move against her, he comes to know about the truth that stops him in his tracks. This is to be the most difficult decision of his life.
You Season 2 Episode 10 Review
What goes around comes around and Joe has come to understand the meaning of this phrase with the revelation of Love’s truth. Now, he is faced with a difficult choice. Should he just accept her as his soulmate and walk into the sunset with her, or should he kill her because she is a murderer and a danger to him and everyone else around them?
The finale pits Joe against Love. It asks the audience, who is the lesser evil? Joe definitely has a higher body count. He has killed a lot of people; Love has the blood of only two on her hands. In fact, the first one shouldn’t even count when it comes to Joe’s logic. She killed that au pair to protect her brother from sexual abuse. If she killed Delilah just because she wanted her and Joe to be together, hasn’t he been doing the same all along? Why should Joe, and the audience, consider her worse than him? Is it because she saw the darkness early on, and still embraced it?
Psychopaths work on a twisted logic of their own, and the same goes for Joe. He came close to accepting his true self, he could see who and what he truly was. And yet, when he saw Love, who is just like him, if not worse, he recoiled in horror. He had always been a hypocrite; his voice-overs had made it pretty clear. So, it’s no surprise that the same reasons that he used to tell himself that he was a good person could not justify Love’s actions. He wanted Beck to see him and accept him, in spite of all that he had done. But when Love does the same, without even having asked for it, he doesn’t want it!
It is a good way to end the season, to turn the tables around for Joe. To pose the same question for him, to ask the same thing of him that he had been asking of everyone else. This season ends on a note much higher than the level on which the rest of the season had operated. But it does not make things any better. Had it been a shorter season, this twist in love and the turn of fate would have had a better impact.
Read More: You Season 2 Ending, Explained
