Dhruv Trivedi
‘You’ follows hopelessly romantic serial killer Joe Goldberg as he falls in and out of love while leaving a trail of dead bodies in his wake. Season 3 finds him grudgingly moving to an idyllic California suburb with his wife and newborn child, only to become obsessed with the cheeky next-door neighbor. This time around, however, Joe is not the only one doing the killing. His wife has an equal penchant for brutal slayings in the name of love, and this season is possibly the most violent one yet.
A breathless climactic faceoff makes things even more chaotic, and things end with many lives hanging in the balance. So who survives and who dies a ghastly death? Does Joe end up with his latest muse? Let’s take a closer look at ‘You’ season 3 and find out. SPOILERS AHEAD.
You Season 3 Recap
Season 3 opens with Joe and Love moving into the posh neighborhood of Linda Madre with their newborn son Henry. Soon, the next-door neighbor Natalie catches Joe’s attention, and the two begin to lightly flirt. Love eventually catches on and, thinking that the two are having an affair, kills Natalie. To his horror, Joe then realizes that any woman he might become interested in will be in danger of getting killed by his wife. In an attempt to fix their marriage, Joe and Love attend couple’s therapy and briefly gain some stability in their relationship. Natalie’s murder, meanwhile, is pinned on a local man.
Six months on, however, trouble begins to brew as Joe gets infatuated with his boss Merienne. Working together at the library, the two begin to get close even though Joe desperately tries to resist his feelings, lest Love finds out and murders Merienne. Meanwhile, it is revealed that Natalie’s husband Matthew is still investigating her murder and suspects Love of being involved in it. In order to spy on Matthew and ascertain how much he knows, Love then seduces his teenage son Theo.
With counseling not really working, the “killer” couple then agrees to join their neighbors Sherry and Cary in a group-lovemaking session. However, Love cannot stand watching Joe be intimate with another woman and, in the ensuing argument, reveals that she killed Natalie. Fearful of their secret coming out, Joe and Love then imprison their neighbors in the basement of Love’s bakery. To make things worse, a gun is left with Sherry and Cary, with the promise to release the one that kills the other.
You Season 3 Ending: Is Joe Dead or Alive?
Joe frantically tries to make things work with Merienne, and the two decide to run away together. Thinking Love doesn’t know, he goes back home to have dinner with his wife one last time. However, halfway through the meal, he realizes Love knows that he plans to leave her and grabs a knife from the table in case she decides to attack him. It is then revealed that Love has coated the knife with a sedative, and to his horror, Joe falls to the ground, paralyzed.
When Love bends down to finish Joe off, he stabs her in the leg with a needle containing a deadly toxin. As his wife slips into a coma, our hero retrieves their child and sets the house on fire. Season 3 finally closes with Joe, considered to have died in the fire, starting life afresh in Paris.
Hence, against all odds, Joe is able to outsmart his murderous wife and escape with his life. The twist comes when he surprises Love by suddenly stabbing her with a needle even when she thinks he is paralyzed. Joe then reveals that he expected Love to try and poison him as he had seen her tending to a toxic plant called wolf’s bane in the garden. He, therefore, ingests an adrenaline pill beforehand to counter the effects of the poison. Ironically, the poison Joe injects into his wife is the same one she used to murder her former husband, James.
In the end, Joe survives, and Love dies. To make doubly sure, Joe reiterates how he carefully measured out a lethal dose of the poison. He also sets the house on fire with Love’s unconscious body inside, and her remains are subsequently found in the wreckage. To clear his tracks, Joe severs two of his toes and leaves them in the house. Therefore, he is considered to have died in the fire as well, and we last see him starting a new life in Paris.
Do Joe and Merienne End Up Together?
Joe’s latest muse is Merienne, who is a charming single mother with a troublesome ex-husband. Try as he might, Joe cannot stop himself and begins to do all he can to end up with Merienne. As expected, he quickly puts an end to Ryan, the ex-husband, and then plans to run away with her.
Unfortunately for Joe, Love finds out about the plan and decides to reveal his true nature to Merienne and then kill her. After paralyzing Joe, she calls the unsuspecting single mother over and tells her about his murderous antics. The ex-husband’s mysterious murder then begins to make sense to Merienne. When her young daughter Juliette enters the room, Love has a change of heart and decides against killing Joe’s latest muse.
Though Merienne survives in the end, she and Joe certainly don’t end up together. Still convinced in his twisted mind of a deep connection with her, the romantic serial killer tries to track down Merienne but is unsuccessful. In an attempt to hide from him, Merienne seemingly changes all her contact information, and season 3 closes with Joe hoping to someday be reunited with her.
Do Sherry and Cary Die?
Sherry and Cary find themselves in a particularly sticky situation— locked in a vault with a gun between them. Tensions run high when Cary mistakenly grazes his wife’s ear with a bullet, and she shoots him in the leg as a rebuttal. However, the two eventually reconnect when they realize that their relationship is based on mutual respect.
It then dawns on Sherry that, in contrast, Love and Joe have a deep mistrust of one another, and one of them has likely hidden a key to the vault inside the room. The tense season finale finds Sherry frantically looking for the key, which she eventually finds, and the couple escapes. The last we see of the Conrads, they’ve turned their traumatizing experience of being locked in a vault into a metaphor for strong relationships and build a self-help empire on it.
Is Nurse Fiona Joe’s Mother?
As seen through flashbacks, nurse Fiona is a kindly woman from Joe’s foster home who becomes a secondary mother to him. In the absence of his birth mother, Sandy, Joe finds solace in Fiona. Despite the two women being different, their stories are remarkably similar. Fiona, like Sandy, is in an abusive relationship. As Joe watches helplessly, the nurse repeatedly turns up to work with injuries. He even considers harming her abusive partner at one point but doesn’t because he fears Fiona’s disapproval.
In the end, Fiona mysteriously disappears, and Joe tracks down his birth mother, who has taken on another family. In their brief conversation, Sandy confesses that she needs to start afresh and essentially abandons Joe. Season 3, therefore, closes with Joe being left behind by both his real mother and the woman who replaced her, instilling a deep fear of abandonment in him.
Read More: Best Love Making Scenes in Netflix’s You
