YOU: Season 2: Ending Explained Breakdown + Spoiler Talk Review

With You Season 2 now out for worldwide release on Netflix it’s time to break down everything that you need to know about the show and it’s ending.

Throughout this video we’ll be discussing all the ins and outs of Joes…I mean Will’s new life and giving our thoughts on the series as a whole.

There will be Heavy Spoilers here so if you haven’t had a chance to watch all of Season 2 yet and don’t want to know what happens then I highly suggest that you turn off now. If you wanna know our general thoughts then head over to our none spoiler review which will be linked above.

With that out the way I just wanna give a huge thank you for clicking this video, now let’s get into our breakdown of You Season 2!

You Season 2 Breakdown

Ok so You Season 2 picks up in the aftermath of the first season.

After Candace confronted Joe at the end of the Season One the two went for a talk in which she promised to ruin his life and destroy him in the same way that he destroyed her.

In order to escape his shady past, Joe ups sticks and moves out to LA, changing his name to Will, Will Bettelheim, in order to lie low and carve out a new life for himself.

Seemingly Will has had a huge change of heart and has decided that he must avoid what he considers Love so LA, where everyone is apparently too in love with themselves to love anyone else seems like the perfect opportunity.

Unfortunately, love is difficult to get away from and after he gets a job at a new book store once more he bumps into a newly widowed character named, well…Love.

Love

She seems like the perfect woman for him and the two star crossed lovers look like their fates are written in the stars. Love played by Victoria Pedretti, who you may remember from The Haunting Of Hill House, expertly plays the character and you can instantly see why Will is swept up in her sweet and bubbly persona.

However, at the end of the first episode we learn that Will is in fact only lying to himself and his and Love’s entire meeting was staged by the character who began stalking her upon arriving in LA.

It’s a huge twist early on that I think will instantly engage viewers and I as I was watching this reveal, I can’t lie I was like ‘damn.’

The Real Will

We also discover that Will has a man trapped in a cage in a storage unit that is actually the real Will, played by Gotham’s Robin Taylor. This Will has spent the last ten years carving out a false identity and though he offers this service to John Mayer I mean Joe, he needs it faster and thus takes his as a shortcut, trapping him in a cage similar to the one that he had Beck encased in during the first season.

Juxtaposing the original entry, Will lets the real Will free in order to prove he’s a good guy. However, this also begs the question if Joe was ever really Joe. Maybe he was in Gossip Girl?

The season deals very much in how taking on the identity of someone else not only provides Will with a lot of positives but also it inherits his problems as well such as a man named Jasper who the original Will ripped off.

It causes a 50 grand problem for the character as well as the loss of a finger and similar to the first season finds himself in impossible situations that he has to keep control of.

Will At Work

You’re basically watching the master manipulator play chess but with real people and seeing him with his back against the ropes only to come out swinging with a plan B that undoes all of his problems is as entertaining to watch as ever.

In addition to this, Will is also haunted by apparitions of Beck and the series ambiguously plays with the character’s fate after last seasons cliffhanger.

Is Beck Alive?

Now, if all you’re here to find out is if she’s alive or dead then you’ll probably be shocked to know that Joe did indeed kill Beck at the end of the prior season.

Or at least that’s what we think. The character does see her with cuts and bruises around her neck at one point but Will definitely is an unreliable narrator, seeing things purely from the perspective he wants to in order to appear innocent to himself.

For the most part though I do think that the character is dead due to his actions but who knows, she may return for season 3.

Scared he’ll be drawn to do the same to Love he intentionally friend zones her though it doesn’t last long. During this, he makes a bromance with Love’s twin brother, Forty and it’s almost a balancing act for the character as they sort of play tug of war with his attention.

The Inner monologue is expertly written and seeing him methodically stalk people, working out all their anxieties, points of pride and so on makes the script really pop…even if he does…talk a little bit like this…man who am I to be dissing someone’s voice.

Similar To The First Season

They manage to keep the same tone as the original season and there even sort of repeats of plot devices such as a young and impressionable neighbor named Ellie that Will has to protect from a predator.

Played by Chris D’Elia this makes for a really twisted subplot that really exemplifies the main aesthetic of the show.

Henderson, similar to Will appears to be a nice guy with good intentions but as we discover he lives a secret life.

Things become complicated when Will kills him and tries to cover up the crime and it is slowly unearthed by his landlord who reveals to Will that she was one of his victims. I’ll discuss this later in the recap as we get into it.

A huge twist comes in the middle of the season with Candace tracking Will down and, using a fake alias, similar to Will, begins torturing the protagonist under the guise of dating Forty.

Duality

Everyone is living a dual life, whether it’s Will, Candace, Henderson or Love’s parents who paint a picture that they are the perfect couple all whilst being people that cover up abuse and neglect. It adds a duality and complexity to all of the characters and you kinda get the feeling that though you shouldn’t be rooting for Will, he’s only as bad as the people around him.

Through Candace, Love learns about Will’s true past and what he subjected her to. However, he convinces Love that she was actually his stalker and this is why he changed her identity. This causes a divide between the two and Love seemingly moves on to someone else who in the words of Forty is preying upon her.

In order to build jealousy Will or rather Joe, begins dating others and becomes romantically involved with his landlord Delilah who discovers his lockup and unearths what he did to Henderson.

She becomes locked up and Joe is left with no other option but to leave the facade behind.

The Countdown’s On

He gives himself Deliah a time-released set of handcuffs and 16 hours to say goodbye to Love before he goes to Mexico.

But this is You and yep, lots of roadblocks get in the way.

I kinda felt like these were a bit over the top as they felt like huge tonal shifts for the show and just roadblocks in the way for the sake of it.

However, they do ramp up the tension of the final few episodes, especially with the countdown. Forty also divulges he’s still in touch with Candace and spikes Will that sends him on an acid trip that had flashes of The Shining at certain points.

It also brings back memories of Beck as he and Forty re-enact her death in order to create an adaptation of her book…well Joe’s book.

Forty pieces the entire thing together but Joe spares him when he confesses to doing something similar to the woman that he loved when growing up.

Left with little time Joe returns to Delilah to reset the trap but finds her dead and eventually Candace appears and traps him in the cage, texting Love with the location.

She arrives and Will confesses to the crime believing that he did it but he also tells Love how much he loves her. In a big twist for the season, Love realises she doesn’t want to live without Will and kills Candace, becoming Will’s accomplice and covering up the crime.

Love Tells All

Love also divulges that she killed Delilah because she knew that her exposing Will would ruin their relationship.

Again this follows the subtext of duality and how every character is hiding a dark side to them in order to present their perfect life. On social media couples often do this and go above and beyond to achieve this, acting in unnatural ways, posing and removing the negative elements of their outward appearance in order to portray their relationship as something amazing.

Love does this literally and edits, removes and takes away all of the negative aspects of her life in order to get everything that she wants.

Love divulges that throughout her life, similar to Joe she has murdered, killed and manipulated in order to live what she deems as the best life she could.

She killed Forty’s first love, manipulates Will and it is possible that she killed her husband.

Whilst this is never really clarified in the show it becomes clear that she is very damaged, obsessive and arguably more manipulative than Joe. When he wouldn’t give her a child it is possible that she put things in place that lead to his death and though this was of natural causes, the fact that all she wanted was a family and he wouldn’t give her one adds motive.

A Trapped Man

Trapped in the cell this mirrors his entrapment of Beck massively and he reuses her tactics in order to escape. However, she reveals that she’s pregnant with his child and this really adds a huge twist for the finale that I’ll get into as we discuss our predictions for next time.

Meanwhile Forty travels to New York to talk to Dr Nicky from Season 1 who says he doesn’t want to go free because he destroyed his life on the outside who now believes in Divine Justice and doesn’t want to punish Joe.

Joe convinces Love to let him go and on the outside he struggles with her revelations. Realising that the vision of her he fell in love with isn’t the real her even though they are eerily similar.

Again it portrays the dangers of things like social media and painting a false image of ourselves to society as they are ultimately just a mask, an ugly side that is difficult to connect with.

However Joe accepts her though it’s not as simple as that. Forty calls the two together and even calls Joe a bloodthirsty Wolf which relates to the relationship that the two have which has many callbacks to the animal.

Unwilling to stand down Forty is about to execute Will but a policeman that was investigating the group saves him at the last second.

This shows that overall when we portray ourselves in certain ways it ultimately always leads to loss as we not only lose ourselves but also the ones around us that know the real us.

Love wanted her perfect family but should could never actually attain it because it was all an illusion, much in the same way that the character was and thus this view with loss.

A Prison Of Our Own Making

You can’t save someone from themselves which, though Joe and Love end up apparently doing, we know is still a facade as Love is still controlled by her overbearing parents.

Joe confesses to himself in creating this life he has in fact put himself in a cage. Joe, similar to Forty falls victim to his own demons, drive and basically addiction, peering at an attractive neighbor through a fence and becoming infatuated with them, once more starting the cycle.

Things are a lot more complicated now however and with a daughter, on the way he will no doubt have to appear like the perfect husband all whilst scheming away on his next target.

We are our own worst enemies and Joe who achieved the life he always wanted realises that he cares more about the chase than the thing he gains from it, which will ultimately lead to him losing it all.

It’s sort of a tragic end but it also solidifies that the character is trapped in a prison of his own making. Destined to repeat the mistakes of his past once more in order to get the one thing that he wanted more than anything, the love and attention of a woman.

Early in the season, the real Will says that we are all just trying to marry our own mothers and this cycle is exemplified by Will being dropped off at a boarding school at the end. This has forced him to constantly chase after women and though he may have escaped this situation by the seat of his pants, he is doomed to repeat it until he eventually fails.

You Season 2 Ending Explained

Going forward I think that the show will definitely deal with Joe now having to accept who he really is. In the past he’s always put on a front in order to be someone that often hides away from his own personality, falling apart when he remembers his past.

At the moment there is currently a book in production that will tell the story of Joe’s life after the events of the sequel novel to You, Hidden Bodies.

Whilst we did have a fair idea of what would happen in Season 2 due to Hidden Bodies. Season 3 is an unknown entity.

There’s also Ellie too who is now out in the wild, award that something involving Joe lead to the death of her sister. She could return and cause problems for the character though we know that the Quinn’s have the ability to brush it all under the rug.

Instead I think that Joes relationship will collapse from the inside due to his new obsession. Like Love he will have a choice this between his fixation or family and he will likely choose the former.

Anyway, You Season 2 was a blast and I can’t wait to see what happens next.