Before there was the Mystery Woman Beyond the Fence (Michaela McManus), there was Love Quinn (Victoria Pedretti). Before there was Love, there was Guinevere Beck (Elizabeth Lail). Technically not Joe’s OG, Gwen is still our OG — the first woman we saw who was unfortunate enough to lay eyes on Joe Goldberg (Penn Badgley), the independent bookstore manager who would be every literary lover’s dream…if he weren’t also moonlighting as a psychopathic stalker/murderer.
It has been nearly two years since the second season of the psychological thriller You hit Netflix on December 26, 2019, and three years since the first season premiered on Lifetime before skyrocketing to international popularity when it moved to Netflix streaming. With Season 3 of You right around the corner, we’ve provided you with not only a recap of Season 2, but also a recap of Season 1 to make sure you’ve refreshed your memory just in time for Season 3, set to drop on Netflix on October 15.
Body Count (5)
Time is of the essence, so let’s get right to it. Here is everyone who died in Season 1 of You, and unlike Season 2, Joe killed every single one of these poor, unfortunate souls (and yes, that includes the ones we hated. Looking at you, Ron.)
- Benjamin “Benji” J. Ashby III (Lou Taylor Pucci) – Ah, Benji. He had all the essentials for the privileged white boy starter pack: a #woke social media presence, an artisanal soda business funded by daddy, and the inability to please a woman. All of that being said, no one deserves to die consuming a maple latte with almond milk, two stevia, and a secret ingredient of two tablespoons of one deathly allergen, peanut oil. Joe lures Benji to the basement of his book shop on the pretense that he is interested in his craft soda business. Once he’s got him where he wants him, he knocks him out and locks him in his cage, the first of Joe’s victims we actually get to see. Benji first tries to offer Joe money, then offers to help him win Beck over, and finally shows him evidence of his most damning secret. Still, it is Benji’s influence on Beck that seals his fate. After Benji tells him earlier in the episode that he has a peanut allergy, Joe puts peanut oil in his drink. Within seconds, Benji is convulsing on the floor before dying of anaphylactic shock.
- Peach Salinger (Shay Mitchell) – The beautiful, privileged descendent of J.D. Salinger himself, Peach Salinger didn’t have much in common with Joe, except for one little thing: an obsession with Guinevere Beck. Gradually it becomes clear that Peach’s “mothering” of Beck is more than that of a woman simply watching out for her friend, but a woman attempting to gain control over a friend she is secretly in love with. Joe, who views ridding the world of Beck’s toxic friends as a necessity meant to keep her “safe,” ironically believes Peach is “a rich, unstable stalker.” He first attempts to kill Peach while she is on her daily run in Central Park. He hits her over the head with a rock, knocking her unconscious and leaving her lying in a pool of her own blood. To his horror, Peach survives the attack, but she doesn’t yet realize that Joe is the perpetrator. It isn’t until Peach guilts Beck into staying with her at her family’s vacation house in Greenwich that Joe makes a final desperate move to permanently remove Peach once and for all. He follows them to Greenwich and hides in Peach’s house until Peach catches him. As Joe runs to escape, Peach manages to shoot him in the leg. He feigns unconsciousness before tripping her and killing her with her own gun. He then frames it as a suicide.
- Elijah Thornton (Esteban Benito) – In a flashback scene, we learn that Candace, Joe’s ex-girlfriend, was cheating on him with a music producer named Elijah. When Joe confronts Elijah on the rooftop of a party, Elijah assures Joe that he didn’t know Candace was in a relationship, but after Elijah drops a few unsavory remarks about Candace, Joe pushes him over the ledge.
- Ron (Daniel Cosgrove) – Ron is definitely in the running for the one of the most irredeemable people in You. Joe’s neighbor Claudia’s abusive boyfriend, Ron enables Claudia’s drug addiction and creates a devastating home life for her son Paco. In the season finale, Paco, fearful for his mom’s life, hits Ron over the head with a baseball bat. Unfortunately, Ron gets back on his feet and furiously chases Paco outside where Joe shows up and stabs Ron through the throat.
- Guinevere Beck – Sadly, we all knew this one was coming. When Beck discovers Joe’s secret box in his bathroom ceiling tile, Joe knocks her unconscious and Beck is met with an actual nightmare when she wakes up in Joe’s cage. She manages to trap Joe in his own cage after tricking him into letting her out by convincing him that she loves him and understands he was just trying to keep her safe. Unfortunately, Joe keeps a spare key in the event he gets locked in the cage himself. He breaks out and chases Beck up the stairs after she steals his key to the gate blocking the doorway. Before she has as chance to unlock it, Joe grabs her from behind. The next scene we see is a display in Joe’s bookstore of Beck’s posthumous novel.
Season 1 Ending Explained
Episode 9 left off with Beck discovering Joe’s secret box full of everything you don’t want to ever discover in your boyfriend’s ceiling, especially a jar of teeth. Joe, horrified, knocks her unconscious before she is able to escape. She wakes up and finds that she is locked inside Joe’s cage — once a safe haven for beautiful, priceless books, now a horrifying trap with no way out.
Episode 10 begins with a flashback as Mr. Mooney knocks a teenage Joe down the basement stairs before he locks him in the cage, a cruel punishment to help him “understand” who he is to Joe.
Flash forward to the present, and we are right where we left off in Episode 9. Beck, not Joe, is now the person locked inside a glass cage. She pleads with Joe to let her out, who begs her to understand that everything he has done, he did for her. He tells her that he can’t let her out until he knows for sure that he can trust her. To Beck’s devastation, he confirms that he killed Peach and Benji, but he is alarmingly eager to get it all out in the open and tell Beck the truth.
He returns with evidence that Benji and Peach were dangerous for her, showing her Benji’s damning video and Peach’s invasive photographs. Unlike them, he claims, he was just trying to keep her safe. Those things in his creepy box? Simple mementos. He pleads with her to understand that love means you would do anything for each other. To Joe’s confusion, Beck is petrified by Joe’s confession and terrified that she will be next.
Joe continues to try desperately to make her understand his love for her, from bringing her her favorite breakfast to bringing her a typewriter so she can have the “writer’s retreat” she has always wanted. Beck quickly realizes the power of deception and feigns affection for Joe, and even convinces him to let her out of the cage just so she can use the bathroom instead of peeing in the bucket Joe has left for her. Joe, easily swayed by Beck’s emotional performance, takes out the key when Beck makes a crucial mistake and glances at the staircase. With deep disappointment, Joe tells her he can’t let her out. Instead, he encourages her to use her time in the cage to write. After he leaves, she paces with restlessness and panic before she sits down to write about a man masquerading as Prince Charming, sweeping her off her feet after a lifetime of disappointments. (No offense to Beck, but this might be the only time I believed that Beck was a semi-decent writer.)
Meanwhile, Joe continues to keep up the facade that Beck is on a “writer’s retreat” by updating her social media status. Unfortunately for him, while he is at Beck’s place making sure he hasn’t left any evidence of her disappearance, the PI investigating Peach’s murder is watching Beck’s apartment and sees him leave. When he confronts him about it the next day, it suddenly dawns on Joe that he left his jar of urine in Peach’s house in Greenwich, a rookie move for Joe. He agrees to let the PI know if he can think of anything that would help him unveil Peach’s stalker. The PI, naturally, is not convinced. Back in the basement, a disgruntled Joe tells Beck that if the PI finds the jar, he will go to jail just like she wants. Beck manages to convince Joe that she is beginning to understand him and that she doesn’t want him to go to jail because then Paco will have no one.
Joe goes back to his apartment to find that Paco has attempted to kill Ron with a baseball bat. He finds Paco hiding from Ron outside. Just when Ron is about to catch him, Joe stabs Ron through the throat, killing him. Joe comforts Paco and tells him how to cover up the evidence because no one will understand why they had to do what they did.
Back in the basement, Beck continues to fool Joe. She gives him a manuscript that will frame Dr. Nicky for all of Joe’s actions. In a near perfect performance, Beck tells him she understands now that everything he has done for her, he has done it out of love. Now, she says, she loves him more than ever because he takes care of her like no one else has ever done before. Joe finally lets her out.
She blissfully kisses him (again, she is killing this performance so far), when Joe sees in the reflection of the glass that she has a broken key from the typewriter in her pocket. She stabs him with it before locking him in the cage. She dashes up the stairs and to her terror finds there is a locked gate blocking the doorway. Just as she is banging and rattling the gate, Paco appears. When she begs him to let her out, pleading with him that Joe is a murderer, Paco slowly backs away before running out of the shop.
Beck runs back downstairs to find the keys when she sees, to her horror, Joe had a spare key hidden in the cage and let himself out. She scrambles back up the steps with the key she stole from Joe’s pocket. Before she can find the right one, Joe grabs her from behind. We don’t see it, but I think we all know what happens next.
The scene immediately switches to the bookshop where it is confirmed: Beck is dead. Joe got her book framing Dr. Nicky published posthumously. Dr. Nicky is immediately arrested, the evidence “overwhelming” because of Beck’s manuscript. Joe knows Beck would be so happy to see her book published, the book that he made happen. He made her famous.
The final scene of the season ends with a classic Joe voiceover. The bell chimes as a woman enters the bookstore, and Joe seems to have found his new obsession. But then, in a wild twist of events, the woman approaches him and lowers her hood, revealing someone we were certain was dead: Candace.
If you have already obsessively binged Season 2, don’t forget to refresh your memory in time for Season 3.
October 15th cannot come fast enough.
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Author: Rae Torres