You Season 4 Ending Explained By Showrunner

🚨 Warning: HUGE spoilers for the ending of You Season 4. 🚨

To say that Netflix’s You Season 4 has some twists would be putting it mildly.

After all, by the end of the season we’ve learned that the “Eat The Rich” killer is not actually the IRL Rhys but a manifestation of Joe’s inner psyche. Not only that, but despite Nadia’s best intentions, Joe isn’t caught and winds up back in New York with Kate and a boatload of money.

So, BuzzFeed caught up with Sera Gamble — aka the showrunner of You — to find out how that ending came to be.

For one, it was decided that Joe would end up back in New York from the initial stages of planning Season 4. “So much of all of the things that he watched and judged from afar in Season 1 is now exactly who he is,” Sera explained.

When asked about Kate’s arc specifically, she continued, “I don’t think it’s an accident if you watch the show and you start to uncomfortably feel like certain people are complicit.”

“I don’t think we should assume that Kate leaves the season really knowing everything, just because he said he was gonna say everything. Her baseline standard of what she will accept in a relationship and in someone else’s behavior might not be the same as yours or mine. In fact, she says it’s not, because Tom Lockwood was her father and that’s what she was raised seeing.”

Sera continued, “I feel like this is the season where the whole idea was to have Joe face himself — the ‘you’ of this season is Joe. He tried hard in certain ways to look at himself and to change. But I think, by the end of the season, it should be pretty clear that that this show has zero interest in letting Joe off the hook. The fact that he lives to be Joe another day means that we haven’t redeemed him.”

If Season 5 is confirmed by Netflix, it’ll also be set in New York: “The idea we have for Season 5 is that Joe goes home again, but now he is resourced beyond his wildest imagination. What can Joe Goldberg accomplish if he has wealth, privilege, protection, more than ever before?”

A key part of this is Joe’s acceptance of “Rhys.” Sera explained, “Beforehand, 60-85% of his energy was spent lying to himself about the fact that he’s going to a location to kill someone and then cleaning up the horrible mess that has happened because he hasn’t planned it properly. If he instead is more honest with himself, and we’re accepting that this is a tool in his toolbox, what does that turn him into? He will always want to be your perfect boyfriend. His belief in love, I don’t think, will ever flag. If the Rhys aspect of him is fully integrated, if not, what’s in there?”

Thanks for talking to us, Sera! You Season 4 is now available for streaming on Netflix.