The Ending Of You Season 2 Explained
In the first season of "You," we see Joe Goldberg (Penn Badgley) set his sights on Guinevere Beck (Elizabeth Lail) and go to extreme measures to get her to fall for him — from stalking to manipulating to killing her ex-boyfriend. In the end, Joe's psychopathic tendencies get the best of their relationship, resulting in several deaths including, ultimately, Beck's.
In Season 2, Joe has moved from New York to Los Angeles to escape the aftermath of Beck's death and his other ex, Candace (Ambyr Childers), who is looking to expose Joe's dangerous ways. By the end of the series, and several deaths later, Joe has still not faced consequences for the things he's done — but his true nature has been found out by his new love interest, Love Quinn (Victoria Pedretti). Yet, despite being as disgusted by Joe's true nature as Beck was, Love is just as in love with Joe as ever — if not more so. In fact, at the ending of "You" Season 2, we find out that Love is hiding quite a few secrets of her own.
Joe has met his match in Love
After an LSD trip in a previous episode, Joe thinks he may have killed his neighbor Delilah (Carmela Zumbado), whom Joe had trapped in his basement vault when she started catching on to him. But, at the beginning of the series finale, Love reveals to Joe that she killed Delilah to save him and their relationship. If this sounds like something Joe would do, that's because it is. As it turns out, the lovers have a lot more in common than Joe realized.
As Love recounts the events of the season from her perspective, which also includes the murder of Candace, it becomes clear that she and Joe are, well, two peas in a pod. She, too, has gone through the same lengths we saw Joe go through in Season 1 to begin a relationship with Joe, after first seeing and fixating on him. She's studied his past, she's hired a private investigator to follow him, and she has even killed for him.
Despite the hints being there — such as the season's tagline, "Meet your match," revealing in hindsight that Joe's new love interest is his match in more than one way — Love's true nature is still surprising. More than anything, Love was the one doing all of the pursuing as Joe tried to hold back, and after Love recounts the events, it becomes clear exactly how much she mirrors Joe. When Joe recoils from Love's revelations, she pulls out her last surprise to get him to stay with her: She's pregnant. We don't know for sure if Love tried to get pregnant on purpose to keep Joe in the relationship, but based on everything we do know, it doesn't seem too far-fetched. Indeed, if it was a possibility, a planned pregnancy would fit perfectly within Joe's playbook. And while Joe softens toward Love after hearing about the baby, the fact that he recoiled at all is telling of their one key difference.
Joe wants to deny his psychopathic nature
Once Love finds out about Joe's past murders, she becomes more attracted to him because she sees them as the same. After confessing to killing Delilah, Love tearfully tells Joe that the two of them are "soul mates." She also makes it clear that she sees nothing wrong with doing what's necessary, including murder, to "protect" the ones you love.
With Joe's narration, the audience knows exactly what Joe is thinking as he acts, and so we've seen Joe, time and time again, deny his true nature by convincing himself he was essentially pushed into a corner when he killed Peach or Beck or Henderson and so on. When he pulls back in horror from Love upon her admissions, it becomes clear that Joe looks for love as a way to forget who he is. First, he landed on Beck, a woman he saw as good and pure, to prove that he, too, must be good if Beck chose to love him. Then, it started over again with Love, who he also saw as pure and innocent. When she turns out not to be good, he becomes terrified — not of Love, or what she is capable of, but of what it says about him.
Were it not for their baby, Joe would've left Love as a way to keep denying his true nature. But in wanting to protect his future child, he decides he must stay with the mother of his baby. In the final moments of the season, we see Joe and Love, now much more pregnant, moving into a new house and settling into a permanent life together. Except, just before the episode ends, something — or, rather, someone — catches Joe's eye. Peering through the fence, Joe's gaze — and thoughts — land on his new "you." He has become instantly infatuated with a woman he doesn't know yet again, this time his new neighbor. This further proves that Joe is still looking for someone good to love him so that he can find redemption in himself. It's likely that he'll never find it, as his true self will always get in the way, but he'll continue to try, at least, through the third season of "You."