Spoilers for season 3 of You
Joe Goldberg (played by Penn Badgley) is the disarmingly charming, conflicted, homicidal leading man on Netflix's drama You: a guy suffering from childhood abandonment trauma who wants so desperately to love and be loved, he doesn't let anything stand in his way. Throughout two seasons, Joe infiltrates the lives of others in search of "the one." This troubled, intelligent book-lover is equal parts adept and just plain lucky when it comes to pulling off a myriad of ethical, moral, and legal infractions.
Joe always finds a way to justify his actions, deluding himself into believing he's the hero of his own story instead of the villain. Forget the head games and manipulation, Joe's path to emotional self-fulfillment is littered with actual human remains.
Updated on December 3rd, 2021 by Christine Persaud: Joe Goldberg might have continued to convince himself he was trying to do better, and he wasn't really responsible for all of his wrongdoings because if just this or that was done, he wouldn't have had to have resorted to that level. But as the story continued to unfold, Joe found himself in deeper and deeper trouble, making terrible decisions that put everyone around him at risk.
Killed Ryan
Ryan was Marienne's abusive ex-boyfriend and, by all intents and purposes a bad guy. However, he did not need to die. Almost worst than killing Ryan was Joe's attempt at getting the supposedly recovering drug addict back on drugs once again.
Not only was Ryan a father, but he was also father to Marienne's daughter. Joe justified his actions because Ryan was not much of a father, leaving his daughter with her grandmother most of the time. Nonetheless, he went too far by outright murdering the man. While Marienne might have been in a precarious position, she was one of the smartest characters on You and could have taken care of herself.
Covered For Love More Than Once
Joe was seemingly trying really hard to be good in season 3, but Love let things get to her, and her darkness became too much to squash. In fact, Love was actually one of the biggest villains in season 3 of You. This left Joe to cover for her again and again. While he didn't have much of a choice and fell right back into his old ways, it was a terrible thing to do.
He covered for her killing not only an innocent next-door neighbor but also a young college man. He showed tremendous love and dedication for his wife, but it was for all the wrong reasons.
Got Involved With Marienne
Right from the beginning, fans hoped Joe would not set his sights on Marienne, the stunning, sweet, and innocent librarian. It was obvious that if he did become obsessed with her, she would be put in immediate danger.
Despite being married, and despite knowing that Marienne had so much baggage and drama in her life, or perhaps for these very reasons, Joe fell hard. Chances are, Marienne will play a bigger role in season 4 as finding her remains his sole focus.
Faked His Own Death
In the end, Joe did what he had to do to survive. He not only maimed himself to make his death believable, he also took off to another country, changing his identity once again. While there was no way Joe would have gotten out of the situation unscathed if he hadn't done this, it was a terrible thing to do to avoid taking accountability for his actions.
While it's a good thing that he decided to leave Henry with Dante and his husband, knowing they would be loving parents, he also abandoned his own child.
Tried To Frame Matthew
While Matthew appeared to be a career-focused absent husband and father, he also didn't seem to be a genuinely bad person. So, when Joe and Love, out of desperation, decided to try and frame him in order to remove suspicion from themselves for the murder of Natalie, it was a despicable thing to do.
Matthew was not only grieving the death of his wife but also trying desperately to help raise his stepson Theo from a previous marriage. He didn't deserve to be used as a pawn in their game. While Joe did change his mind, helping fuel an unpopular opinion by fans that Joe from You is actually a good person, the fact that he even considers doing this was awful.
Puts Benji In A Cage And Kills Him
The hipster artisanal soda maker Benji wasn't really enough of a distraction to pose a threat to Joe. In fact, he was hardly a threat to anything but Guinevere Beck's low self-esteem. Nonetheless, Joe decided, as he often did, to take matters into his own hands.
To justify holding him hostage, Joe makes Benji's intentions, or lack thereof, more nefarious. Joe almost lets him go, but when the Beck Joe has built up in his mind doesn't reconcile with the one Benji describes, it's two teaspoons of peanut oil in the allergic guy's maple latte.
Attacks Peach In The Park
Peach Salinger has the same dark obsession with Beck as Joe, and thanks to her money and influence over Beck, it makes her a formidable opponent for the young writer's affections. Joe is right: Peach poses a threat to Beck. It's just ironic he's able to separate her actions from his own when they mirror each other so closely.
But no matter how manipulative Peach is when it comes to controlling Beck, she's still a self-loathing socialite who can't boast a body count. She's a less sympathetic victim but still a victim. Joe brutally bludgeons her with a rock, but with Peach and Joe, it's always fated to be a showdown. Joe doesn't just take her life, he takes her legacy as well. Joe doesn't just twist and manipulate women to fit a perfect picture in his mind, he can turn them into something evil.
Kidnaps Candace And Buries Her Alive
It's isn't until midway through season 2 that viewers get to see what transpires between Candace Stone and Joe that leaves him believing he's killed her. Joe's walk down memory lane ends with him bashing her head against a rock and burying her in a shallow grave. Candace can't get justice anywhere.
Joe refuses to validate Candace's feelings. She's the obsessed one. Candace is tragic because she's genuinely concerned for the Quinns but can't quite get it together. She also has no idea the dark forces she's working against that make Joe look downright sane by comparison. Candace is a woman who is brutalized, dismissed by the justice system, despised by the people she's trying to protect, and labeled as insane by her attacker.
Murders A Russian Gangster
There's a price for the things Joe does, but he never pays the same way other people would. He's ready to pass off Will --solving two problems at once -- to this henchman and let him do Joe's dirty work. This is a gangster, and it is self-defense when Joe guts him like a fish, but it's still murder.
Every time he kills, his deluded sense of purpose is reinforced. He's also getting better at it. He could barely stomach disposing of Benji's body, but he dismembers Jasper and puts the body through a meat grinder. This is a Cohen-brothers level of disturbing.
Holds The Real Will Captive
Joe suffers some karmic retribution after knocking the real Will Bettelheim over the head with a brick and locking him in the cage. Determined to change his ways, Joe picks up where he left off only now he's hurting random strangers, and it's got nothing to do with love.
No doubt, getting away with murder emboldens Joe, and he couldn't have picked a nicer guy to hold hostage; a bipolar forger who has to sit in a box with no running water and no toilet. But because Will is so desperately affable about the whole thing, Joe finally lets someone leave the cage. It's unlikely Joe would let Will go if he wasn't mentally unstable and an unreliable witness.
Kidnaps Delilah
Delilah's death is a blow and one of the most believable deaths on You. She's the plucky reporter who is supposed to get away. Joe is so torn, but would he have let her go? It doesn't matter because even though he's not the one who slits her throat, she wouldn't have been vulnerable in that cage if it wasn't for him. He is a disease, infecting everyone around him, especially women.
Delilah's already been victimized, and all she wants is to protect other women, particularly her younger sister from all the bad guys out there. Joe brings disaster into Delilah and Ellie's lives, destroying them the moment he locks Deliliah in that death box.
Murders Guinevere Beck
Beck discovers what Joe has done, and this is when Joe's deluded thinking becomes contradictory. This is pre-meditated murder, and it's not for her benefit. He's covering his tracks.
He holds her hostage in a Misery-like fashion, forcing her to write. At least Beck gets to say everything that any sane person watching must be thinking. Aside from Benji's allergic reaction, viewers don't see Joe kill Beck (or Peach or Candace). It would be harder to stomach him because Beck is likable and rational. She's flawed and imperfect and normal. Joe talks about Beck so pragmatically, treating murder like a breakup and even patting himself on the back for so adeptly cleaning up the mess. To him, it's love gone bad, and the only responsibility he takes is picking the wrong girl.
Kills Hendy
Here comes Joe to save another damsel in distress, Ellie, one of the most likable characters on You. only this time the threat is legitimate. Joe doesn't see the parallels between his behavior and Hendy's.
Hendy is a predator, but Joe's stalking isn't the same thing. His actions are born from love while Hendy's come from perversion. It's not just that Joe kills, but he breaks into houses, he hacks into phones and computers. He makes himself privy to information he normally wouldn't have. All the while, Joe's confident that he's evolving, and if Hendy slips and falls and dies as a result of a struggle, so be it.
Pushes Elijah Off A Building
Elijah unknowingly and unwittingly contributes to Joe's evolution from a clueless guy whose girlfriend cheats on him, to a murderer. Elijah appears to be Joe's first victim (season 2 reveals otherwise), and Mooney nurtures and protects Joe, helping to prevent Joe from suffering any consequences.
At first, Mooney seems to simply be an abusive guardian to Joe, but he instills moral relativism in Joe by telling him some people deserve to die. Joe holds women to impossibly high standards of perfection, and when Elijah tears Candace down, that's what makes him snap. Joe didn't go there to kill him, and while he's shocked and scared of getting caught, he's not sorry.
Stabs Ron
One reason Joe is a polarizing character is that even though he's a predator, he's also a caretaker. He steps in to fill a void in Paco's life but stops just short of getting his hands dirty until he has no choice. None of Joe's victims are particularly likable, but Ron is the worst: he's an abuser of women and children. He's likely to bash Paco's head in if Joe doesn't intervene, and it's obvious throughout season 1 that handling Ron legally isn't going to happen.
The worse crime is Joe's influence over Paco in those moments after he stabs Ron. He gives the kid a crash course in cleaning up a crime scene. He becomes Mooney, telling Paco love is more important than doing the right thing. Paco loves Joe, so he doesn't help Beck.