🤐 SPOILER ALERT 🤐

“And They Lived Happily Ever After”

Welcome to fatherhood, Joe! Given his, um, attachment issues, Joe Goldberg (Penn Badgley) as a parent is going to be interesting. At first, though, it’s pretty standard stuff: Baby Henry takes over Joe and Love’s (Victoria Pedretti) whole lives, exhausts them, drives them nuts, destroys all romance... Worse, Love’s overbearing mom Dottie (Saffron Burrows) is over all the time.

But Joe has managed to hold onto a shred of his old self: He’s become obsessed with his gorgeous, bookish next-door neighbor Natalie Engler (Michaela McManus). And now Joe can pop Henry into the car seat, stroller, or Baby Björn and head out on his stalking expeditions. Call it father-son bonding. 

Natalie invites Joe over for wine while her husband, tech bigwig Matthew (Scott Speedman), is out; they connect over their mutual dissatisfaction with domestic life (the only difference is that Joe’s been tied down for, like, two seconds). They’re about to get it on, but Joe’s conscience (huh) kicks in, and he leaves. Turned on by Natalie, he initiates sex with Love for the first time in ages… turns out, these two serial killers still have that spark after all!

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You make new friends when you become a parent, which Joe and Love struggle with, especially when they meet popular mommy blogger Sherry Conrad (Shalita Grant)—we all know how Joe feels about influencers, and Love “jokes” about wanting to stab her in the eye. At a party at Sherry’s place, they talk smack amongst themselves about all the insufferable Madre Linda parents, and Sherry and the other moms return the favor, gossiping about Love’s brother Forty’s highly suspicious death. Natalie arrives with Matthew to rescue Love from the awful neighborhood moms — she seems like a potential friend, and as a real estate agent she has leads on spaces for the bakery Love wants to open.

But Love is onto Natalie. She found Joe’s hidden box of purloined Natalie paraphernalia, and she’s not having it. While Natalie’s showing her a commercial property, Love hacks her to death with an ax, which is certainly one way to stop another of Joe’s slow-burn obsessions. With Love, all bets are off.

“So I Married an Axe Murderer”

Fresh off the murder of Natalie, Joe and Love are in couples therapy.

One of Joe’s least favorite things in the world is having to dispose of a body, which is ironic, but he nevertheless buries Natalie in the woods near the Englers’ weekend cabin, because marriage is a partnership.

At the market buying bakery supplies, Love meets a college student, Theo (Dylan Arnold), who macks on her hard. Later, we’ll learn that he’s Matthew’s stepson. At the same time, Joe gets to flex his book-repairing skills for Marienne (Tati Gabrielle), a librarian and part-time illustrator, who has much better taste in books than Natalie ever did. 

So those are the new neighborhood crushes for Love and Joe, which, given everything we know about how they both handle feelings of jealousy, should be fine. 

Trying to be good neighbors, Joe and Love show their faces at the Conrad’s kids’ party. It’s a yuppie nightmare, but not a total waste of time: They learn from Cary Conrad (Travis Van Winkle) that everyone in the neighborhood wears bio-tracking rings, which means Natalie has one on her decomposing finger. The killer couple have to trudge back into the woods to exhume her, take the ring, and rebury her in a construction site. This highly unpleasant task brings their true feelings to the surface, with the unexpected consequence of bringing them closer together — perfect “homework” to supplement their therapy.

They’re reinvigorated. The therapy is working. Each of them is motivated to get back to their roots. Love opens up her bakery: A Fresh Tart. And they make sure Joe can have his own thing, too: They build a plexiglass cage in the bakery’s basement. Together. Look at this couple, doing the work!

“Missing White Woman Syndrome”

The gossipy neighbors of Madre Linda are having a field day with Natalie’s disappearance — a delicious Missing White Woman scandal. Of course, as everyone knows, “it’s always the husband” — convenient enough for Joe and Love, though suspicion falls on them nevertheless when it becomes clear they were among the last people to see Natalie alive.

Both are spiraling with paranoia, and now Henry is spiraling with measles. Joe and Love have to call all the other Madre Linda parents to tell them that their kids might have contracted measles, too, which does not exactly endear them to their neighbors. Amid the parenting chaos, Joe and Love decide to frame Matthew for Natalie’s murder by planting a bloody scarf in their house. Alas, Joe has caught Henry’s measles — and it’s a bad case, leading to hallucinations. We all know all bets are off when Joe has hallucinations.

Joe passes out while breaking into the Engler house, but surprisingly experiences the first bit of neighborly kindness since moving to Madre Linda when he comes to. Matthew swaddles Joe up like a sick child and gets vulnerable about his struggles stepfathering Theo. Could Matthew, a tech mogul, possibly be a nice dude? Joe’s overcome by a crisis of conscience, so instead of framing him, he advises Matthew on how to shake the whole town’s suspicions. At a vigil for Natalie, Matthew gives a speech that’s so heartfelt that he wins the public’s sympathy.

Love is getting a little feverish, too: She might be cracking under the stress of her parents’ impending divorce and her rich-kid gravy train running dry. Gil (Mackenzie Astin) the dorky neighbor drops by the bakery to confess that his unvaccinated kids gave Henry measles… and instead of giving him a piece of her mind, Love clubs him over the head, knocking him out.

To the basement cage we go!

“Hands Across Madre Linda”

Gil, the bumbling, vaccine-skeptical neighbor, is the latest prisoner in Joe’s plexiglass cage. Joe and Love can’t let him go — he’d run to the police. Joe proposes using his old “mutually assured destruction” strategy to ensure Gil will stay quiet, but Gil’s squeaky clean image stands up to Joe’s expert internet stalking and yields no blackmail material. Love calls on the Quinn family private investigator to do a deeper dive, and they hit pay dirt — Gil’s son, Alan, sexually assaulted a girl at college. When Gil finds out, he’s so crushed that he commits suicide right there in the cage. Joe is shell-shocked, while Love shifts into damage control mode a little too quickly.

Meanwhile, Sherry spearheads a neighborhood search party for Natalie — #NatalieComeHome — which Love hears about from Theo, who’s still flirting with her, hard. Love sees an opportunity to kill two birds with one stone — or rather, “two bodies.” She puts Gil’s fingerprints all over the ax that killed Natalie and plants it for the search party to find. Joe does what he does best and forges a suicide note by Gil that implicates him in Natalie’s murder.

The whole scheme works without a hitch… at least for the time being. But fast-forward six months: Joe’s been spending more and more time with Marienne the librarienne, refurbishing old books (the sales of which he puts toward supporting Ellie while she’s on the run). We know the warning signs by now. Joe’s getting restless, so Marienne — and Love — better watch out. 

“Into the Woods”

Joe and Love are not very convincing in the role of a complacent suburban couple, and they’re both bored out of their minds. After a couples counseling session, they decide that the problem is that Joe doesn’t have any friends. Sure, that could be a problem. Not sure it’s the problem.

No, there’s another problem (again: not the problem): Joe finds out that Love has been paying for Theo’s Uber rides to and from college. Love admits things have gone too far: She and Theo kissed at the bakery. Joe flies into a jealous rage, which Theo overhears from next door. 

To fix his problems — the no friends problem and the jealousy problem, that is, not the problem — Joe takes a break from his home life and steps way out of his comfort zone to join Cary and the other neighborhood bros on a hunting and hiking weekend. Cary turns out to be a complete caveman, a Fight Club-wannabe maniac hell-bent on reconnecting these domesticated dads with their “manhood.” Cary tries to pull Joe into a shirtless fight, and in frustration, Joe shoves him off a cliff, knocking him out. Has Joe Goldberg killed again?!? Thankfully not: Joe revives Cary, who now respects Joe, actually, for almost killing him. They have a touching, testosterone-fueled bonding moment, and Joe experiences a psychological breakthrough.

Back in civilization, Love is playing a dangerous game of her own. Theo calls her after getting arrested for drunk driving (on a scooter), and, yadda yadda yadda, they end up having passionate sex outdoors. Dottie knows what Love is up to and persuades her to cut off this potentially explosive affair.

Joe comes back a new and very smelly man, back in touch with his true desires — which can never be met, not even by Love, his true equal. Joe goes out stalking again; his unfortunate new victim is Marienne.

“W.O.M.B.”

Joe goes back to basics, learning everything he can about his new You, Marienne, by following her and breaking into her home. Ah, it’s been so long since we’ve seen Joe hiding under a woman’s bed!

Joe discovers that Marienne is a recovering addict locked in a nasty custody battle with her ex-husband, Ryan Goodwin (Scott Michael Foster) of Channel 3 News. Joe tries to intervene when Marienne and Ryan get into a fight at the library, but Marienne doesn’t appreciate it, not wanting some “white knight.” Later, a sprinkler malfunction at the library threatens to soak all the books. Joe and Marienne salvage the books together, and Marienne apologizes for snapping at him. They bond over literature, forever one of Joe’s biggest turn-ons, and Marienne starts to share more about her life, which Joe eats up like the emotional vampire he is. Ryan is probably a dead man. If Love ever finds out that Joe and Marienne kissed when the sprinklers went off again, Marienne might be a dead woman, too.

Love is having a full-on crisis. She fully spins out with a pregnancy scare, thinking the baby might be Theo’s. It’s a false alarm, but she’s engaging in other alarming behavior. She texts long confessional rants to her dead brother, Forty, who visits her in a hallucination and is way more helpful than he ever was in real life. The spirit of Forty helps Love recommit to her twisted life with Joe.

Before Love can definitively break things off with Theo, he lets her know that Matthew is spying on people all around town as part of his own investigation of Natalie’s murder. Love suggests to Joe that she continue her relationship with Theo, to keep an eye on Matthew. Joe agrees, since it’ll distract Love while he pursues Marienne. No amount of couples counseling can fix this.

“We’re All Mad Here”

Love keeps up her flirtation with Theo… but only to keep tabs on Matthew’s vigilante investigation, right? Theo, who’s perhaps not thinking with his head, accepts Love’s explanation for her intrusive interest in Matthew’s investigation: Her family has been in the public eye ever since Forty’s killing. Love discovers that she’s right to be paranoid — Matthew has hired a top-notch programmer to hack into the city’s security camera footage.

Marienne isn’t keeping up her flirtation with Joe, though. She’s been acting like the night of the sprinkler malfunction never happened, and Joe is determined to give her space… for now. We know that can’t last — Joe is already letting her affect his marriage. When Love tries to initiate sex, Joe’s already spent from “looking” at photos of Marienne.

At no one’s urging, Joe resolves to fix Marienne’s Ryan problem, and he comes up with a characteristically diabolical scheme to make Ryan relapse. With a quick text to Cary, Joe now has a teen Adderall dealer. He sneaks into Ryan’s house and laces his shakes with Adderall and OxyContin to trigger his cravings, hoping it’ll lead him back to rock bottom. But it turns out Ryan has never stopped using drugs, so the trace amounts in his shakes hasn’t had any effect at all. Even worse, he knows that Joe’s been following him.

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Joe’s worlds collide when Sherry hires Love for her library fundraiser, but Love and Marienne’s meeting is a nonevent; Marienne plays it off perfectly. Love is still feeling insecure about Joe’s lack of interest in her sexually when Sherry approaches her with an indecent proposal: swinging with her and Cary. Love leaves Sherry hanging because there’s been an emergency: Dottie, delirious after her unfavorable divorce settlement, kidnaps Henry en route to burning down her husband’s vineyard. The dedicated grandma act didn’t last long! As Joe shuttles Dottie off to rehab, she reveals her suspicions that Love murdered her first husband, James. Joe knows Love too well to doubt it.

Traumatized by her parents’ divorce, Love suggests opening up their marriage, which is only too convenient for Joe. He agrees wholeheartedly.

Open marriages never work. But it might work for them.

“Swing and a Miss”

Joe left the marriage a long time ago, but he plays along with the sham of swinging with the Conrads, hoping it will explode their relationship and free him to be with Marienne. Sherry and Cary don’t do anything halfway, so they have Joe and Love sign a swingers’ NDA. Nothing hotter than a contract!

While four-ways aren’t Joe’s idea of an aphrodisiac, being needed is, and Marienne needs him to be a character witness in her custody battle. She needs Joe even more after Ryan sends explicit photos of her to everyone they know. The only reason he can’t race over to rescue her is that he’s stuck at the Conrads’ for their big swinging night. He couldn’t be less attracted to either Love or Sherry (or Cary for that matter), so he gets through it by thinking about Marienne. Love catches Joe fantasizing about someone else, at which point she shouts their safe word, ending all operations.

Love and Joe have a truly unhinged screaming fight, during which Love mentions that she murdered Natalie. Back in the bedroom, the Conrads pretend, unconvincingly, that they didn’t hear the argument. Another four-way ensues, this time a battle royale — Joe vs. Cary, Sherry vs. Love. Joe manages to impale Cary with a crossbow and knock him unconscious, and Love successfully subdues Sherry as well. Finally, the spark is back for Joe and Love; they have wild sex right next to the plexiglass cage where the Conrads are now imprisoned.

The next evening, a drunken Matthew drops by to ask Joe about the wild noises he heard. But Joe has a more important matter on his mind. He hurries to Marienne’s custody hearing, where he sees that Ryan is friends with the judge and that Marienne is screwed unless he, Joe Goldberg, interrupts the course of the legal system.

Love and Joe watch on the security cam as Cary and Sherry regain consciousness. They seem fun. Can’t wait to see if they get out alive!

“Red Flag”

Even trapped in the plexiglass basement cage, the Conrads stay true to their weirdly charming yuppie nightmare selves. Sherry offers to help get Henry into an ultra-competitive preschool.

Joe gets word that the judge ruled against Marienne; she’s so devastated that she’s teetering on the edge of relapse. Joe brings his best self to her and gives an A-plus pep talk, encouraging her not to give up fighting for her daughter. They can’t deny their connection and end up having sex, but by helping Marienne, Joe faces the possibility of losing her; she’s going to New Jersey to fight Ryan for custody. Now Joe has no choice (none!) but to murder Ryan before his new You can leave him. Joe sneaks up on him in a parking garage and stabs him to death… all in the name of love. Not Love. You know what I mean.

Theo remains as obsessed with Love as ever; he tells her about Matthew’s surveillance footage. He also finds a backup file of surveillance video that shows Joe driving away from the bakery in Natalie’s car. He races to warn Love that Joe is a murderer.

Back in the basement, despite all of Sherry’s brilliant bargaining, Love gives the Conrads a gun and tells them if one shoots the other, the other gets to live. Which is a lie: Love is trying to stage a murder-suicide. Damn, how cold can she get?! Turns out, colder. Theo arrives at the bakery to save Love but instead discovers the Conrads, who tell her that Love killed Natalie. Theo doesn’t believe them… right up until the moment Love clobbers him in the head with a fire extinguisher.

“What Is Love?”

After everything that’s gone down, Love wants to have another baby. (Because they love the first one so much…) By now, Love has thoroughly out-Joe’d Joe, and he can’t take it anymore. The Conrads are melting down, too, both having accidentally shot each other, and all the communication tools they learned in therapy are flying out the (plexiglass) window.

News of Ryan’s death has come out, and it’s categorized as a mugging. Marienne wants to get out of town — even the country — and declares her love for Joe, asking him to come with her and her daughter, Juliette. Joe basically says, “Yes, yes, a thousand times yes.” He just has to bury Theo and free himself of Love.

But, oh, Theo’s alive, just barely. Joe’s learned from bitter experience that burying people alive will come back to haunt you. So, demonstrating considerable personal growth, he drives Theo to the hospital. Love discovers that Joe is infatuated with Marienne when she finds his T-shirt stained with Ryan’s blood, so she’s definitely not going to go away quietly. Hell hath no fury like a woman who was already a serial killer scorned.

So there’s no way that romantic dinner Love prepared for Joe will be poisoned, right? At dinner, Joe tries the direct approach and asks for a divorce, gripping a kitchen knife under the table just to be safe. Love reveals that she did in fact kill her first husband using a paralyzing poison called aconite. But it was an accident! It’s not an accident, however, when Love doses Joe with the same paralyzing agent, then texts Marienne from his phone. Matthew arrives to find Joe immobilized and is about to kill him, but Joe uses his eyes to indicate that Theo is at the hospital; Matthew leaves him for Love to deal with.

The moment Marienne steps into the house, Love confronts her about the affair, hiding a knife behind her back. As Joe watches helplessly from the floor, Love reveals to Marienne that Joe killed Ryan. When Juliette interrupts, Love holds off on murdering Marienne — so there’s a teeny, tiny trace of humanity in Love after all! — and tells her to run before Joe can come after her, too.

After Marienne and Juliette leave, Love is about to kill Joe when he jolts out of his paralysis — expecting the poisoning, he took Cary’s stash of adrenaline earlier. Love didn’t take the antidote, and after Joe stabs her with a lethal dose of aconite, she’s in for a long, painful death. Down in the cage, Sherry has an epiphany: Love and Joe don’t trust each other, so there must be a spare key hidden in the cage. She find it and frees herself and Cary, just in time — they make it out before Joe sets the house on fire and cuts off two of his toes to stage his own death and Love’s suicide. Before he ships off to Europe to find Marienne, he leaves Henry with his library coworker Dante (Ben Mehl) and his partner, who’ll be infinitely better parents. 

In the aftermath, the Conrads are closer than ever and develop their own radical couples therapy technique, called “Caged.” Theo and Matthew find common ground. Madre Linda is better off for Joe and Love having lived in it! Well, not really, since they brought multiple homicides and tons of bloodshed with them, but this is probably the happiest ending to a You season yet!

To find out more about You, check out all of Tudum’s coverage, here.

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