Spoiler Warning: This article contains spoilers for the Season 4 finale of ‘You’
A lot of people who watched the season four finale of You came to a pretty immediate conclusion: showrunners pulled a Fight Club with the reveal that bad guy Rhys Montrose, played by Ed Speleers, was just a figment of Joe Goldberg’s imagination. Joe is of course played by Penn Badgley.
Showrunner Sera Gamble actually knew that would be the go-to comparison, per The Hollywood Reporter, but she said she didn’t really have a problem with that. In Fight Club, the big reveal at the end is that Tyler Durden was actually a figment of The Narrator’s imagination the whole time.
“People will immediately be like, ‘Oh, they pulled a Fight Club.’ Right? That’s what I called it. ‘Oh, we’re gonna do a Fight Club thing,’” Gamble said, explaining that she enjoyed the challenge the comparison would bring. “For better and for worse, I don’t have much interest in working on a season of TV that isn’t continuing to challenge me as a writer and challenge the writers room.”
Joe finds out about the split identity after he bumped his head on a box for Marienne, played by Tati Gabrielle. Marienne was of course kidnapped and held by Rhys for most of the latest season. Gamble also revealed that this split-personality thing was the plan all along.
“We didn’t commit to it for this season until we knew we were doing the whodunnit, but we did keep a close eye on how crazy Joe was from season to season because we didn’t want it to come completely out of left field.”
One of the curves of this season was the fact that Joe was obsessed with a man this time around. Gamble said that’s because “Rhys is a success story that Joe thinks he could be.”
“Rhys is like an idealized, successful, admired version of Joe. He has earned all of the acclaim and status that Joe feels that he deserves, and he seems to have done it without selling out. Joe, in a less conventionally romantic way, he really falls in love with this public figure.”
Another crazy moment is when Joe realizes he kidnapped Marienne but decides to keep her captive. Gamble said that’s because of his personality.
“He just can’t. It’s what she says: He cannot let things go, he cannot let her go. He wants a lot of things that would be better for everyone around him, himself included. But this is the deep flaw of this character. Possessing the object of his desire, essentially, trumps every reasonable behavior that he should have.”
Gamble also touched on why the show used Taylor Swift’s song “Anti-Hero” in the final episode. She said she watched the video and “realized that it was hilariously perfect for Joe, and then my first thought was, “Why would she let us use this immediately?”
You is currently streaming on Netflix.
Published: Mar 10, 2023 06:34 pm