Diksha Sundriyal
The fourth season of Netflix’s ‘You’ brings back Joe Goldberg, putting him in a different country with a completely new slate. He seems intent on turning over a new leaf, but somehow, blood and mayhem follow him, and this time, someone else is fixated on him. In just five episodes, the story reveals such intense twists and turns that one can’t help but wonder what lies ahead for Joe and what the arrival of a new nemesis could mean for his future. Here we break down the first half of ‘You’ Season 4 and analyze what it might mean for the protagonist going further. SPOILERS AHEAD
You Season 4 Part 1 Recap
At the end of Season 3, after having killed Love and faking his death, Joe arrived in Paris, looking for Marienne. By the beginning of Season 4, he has given up on his obsession with finding his lost love and has built a new life for himself under a new name. Now, he is Jonathan Moore, a professor at a university in London. He has kept himself clean, trying not to obsess over anything and anyone new. But nothing is ever simple with him.
Joe is invited by his colleague Malcolm, who belongs to the upper-class English society, to join his group of friends. After a night of partying and drinking at an elite and exclusive club, Joe wakes up the next day at his apartment with Malcolm’s dead body on his table. At first, Joe believes that he committed this murder in a drunken stupor, but when he gets a cryptic text, he realizes that it is someone else trying to pin their crime on him. Joe realizes that it must be someone in Malcolm’s group, considering how close they needed to be to the victim.
You Season 4 Part 1 Ending: Who is the Eat the Rich Killer?
When Joe finds Malcolm’s dead body inside his apartment, he relies on his tried and tested method to get rid of the body. He succeeds in keeping Malcolm’s death a secret for a while, but when Simon, one of Malcolm’s friends, dies, the media picks up the story and spins it as an attack on the rich people of London. To the outsiders, it looks like the work of someone who is enacting their hatred of the upper class by picking them off one by one. Malcolm’s friend circle believes the same, but Joe knows that this is someone with a far different motive.
Malcolm’s group includes Kate, Phoebe, Adam, Simon, Gemma, Sophie, Blessing, Connie, Roald, and Rhys. It’s a tight-knit group with connections running deep and Joe has no idea of the complications in their relationships. Still, he figures that one of them is the killer and starts rounding out his suspects. His first suspicion falls on Simon, who is a comparatively more aloof member of the group, and also seems shadier. However, before Joe can get into his motivation behind killing Malcolm, Simon is killed, making Joe reconsider his entire theory.
With things getting more complicated after the second murder, Joe suspects everyone, from Malcolm’s girlfriend Kate to Roald, Kate’s friend who is also romantically interested in her. With time, Joe starts to believe that Kate doesn’t have anything to do with the murders, especially after the killer threatens her as the next target. In trying to keep her safe, Joe ends up falling for her, and things further heat up between them when Gemma is murdered and Joe finds Kate next to the dead body with the murder weapon.
Kate explains that Gemma was already dead before she walked into the room, but she knows how the whole thing might make her look. Joe relates this to his own situation and confides in Kate about the mysterious killer who has been blackmailing her. Together, they decide to hide Gemma’s body until they can figure out how to deal with it as well as the killer. But before that can happen, Roald figures out that Gemma is dead and blames Joe for it.
For the entire group, no matter what the differences between them, things never got so bad that they would end up killing each other. As Gemma points out during dinner, the murders started to happen shortly after Joe showed up. For them, Joe is the outsider and the only one they don’t know and trust enough. Joe, however, discovers that there is another person who feels like an outsider in the group. Rhys came from humble beginnings and came into wealth comparatively later. He also expresses his discontent with his friends and seems less interested and involved in their activities and meetings.
At Hampsbridge House, after Gemma’s death, Roald chases after Joe, accusing him of being the killer. Joe succeeds in knocking out Roald, but before he can get himself to safety, he is attacked by Rhys. Joe wakes up in an underground cellar. Both he and Roald are tied up and Rhys reveals that it has been him all along. He tells Joe to kill Roald and pin the murders on him. When Joe refuses to do it, Rhys sets the place aflame. Joe and Roald make it out of there in the nick of time. Meanwhile, Rhys makes his exit, with none the wiser about his role in the murders.
Why Did Rhys Kill Malcolm, Simon, and Gemma?
When Joe discovered that someone else killed Malcolm, he knew that the killer had to be someone inside the group. He realizes that if he could find the motive behind the killer’s actions, he could identify them too. A little peek inside Malcolm’s life reveals that he had been looking into the lives of his friends and had been blackmailing them, or at least, was planning to. He knew about Adam’s fetish and was going to hold it against him. Similarly, he found out that Simon had been stealing the work of other artists, ruining their careers while establishing himself as a genius to the whole world. Malcolm planned to expose Simon, which meant that Simon had a great motive to kill Malcolm.
It is after Simon’s death that Joe is forced to look through the entire group again, but it isn’t until he discovers that Rhys is the killer that the truth about the motive comes out. Previously, Joe’d found that Rhys was going to run for mayor. To run for a position of power required a person to have a clean record so that the voters could trust them. Rhys maintained a good image in front of the public. In his book, he wrote about the fact that he didn’t come from a rich background, which made him relatable to the public. He also gained popularity due to his beliefs and policies.
For all his hard work, Rhys knew that one bad stain on his reputation could undo everything for him. He could not be seen with the wrong crowd or associated with the wrong people. Unfortunately, the people in his own group held the power to ruin everything for him. So, he decided to get them out of the picture. He killed Malcolm because he had found out about Rhys’ secret and had been blackmailing him about it.
The next person with the power to derail Rhys’s political ambitions was Simon. Rhys knew that Simon was stealing the art of the people he hired as his assistants. He would make them paint something and then show it off as his own. To make sure that none of those people ever spoke out against him, he got them hooked on drugs. He did the same thing with Blue, who broke into his exhibition and claimed that he was a fraud.
Due to his reputation, his money, and his connections, Simon succeeded in suppressing the voices of people like Blue and ruined their lives. Rhys knew that Simon was on the verge of getting exposed, so he decided to get rid of him before he could cause any problems. The death of his close friends also gave Rhys sympathy points with the audience, as he turned the narrative to his favor and enjoyed the love and concern of the people from both the working class as well as the upper class of which he was already a part.
Like Malcolm and Simon, Gemma too posed a threat to Rhys’ reputation. She was known for making outrageously offensive statements. She could be racist, sexist, and anti-Semitic all at once, and she never bothered giving a second thought to her words. To be associated with such a person was like waiting for a bomb to go off. One wrong tweet from her and Rhys’ rivals would use her association with him to paint him in a bad light too. He simply couldn’t afford that, so he found it best to kill Gemma too. From the way things have been progressing, it looks like Rhys’ list of victims is much longer, which means more problems for Joe because Rhys seems intent on using him for the murders that he has planned.
Read More: Where Was You Season 4 Filmed?
