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Last season of the Netflix thriller “You” ended in an almost absurdly climactic way: Joe Goldberg, the main character and arch-villain of the series, killed his murderous wife Love Quinn, burned down their house, faked his own death, and left his baby son with a couple who would make better guardians. He then took off to Paris to find his new love object, Marienne, who had fled there with her daughter to escape him.

Season 4 finds us in an unexpected place: London. Joe has found his way to a new city, a new identity (Jonathan Moore), a new gig (American literature professor), and a new role in the drama. Joe, for three seasons, has been a serial killer and an irredeemable stalker; however much he may live in denial of his own nature, he has never strayed far from the role of Big Bad. But almost as soon as his story in London commences, Joe wakes up one morning to find that his colleague, Malcolm, has been knifed to death and left on his kitchen counter. In a panic, he disposes of the body — only to learn, from encrypted disappearing texts from an anonymous figure, that he did not kill Malcolm in a blackout fugue. He is being framed. Joe the villain has become Joe the victim, and, very quickly, Joe the detective, as he frantically tries to uncover the real killer.

That’s right. The first half of season four (the second half drops next month) is, as Joe himself realizes with a lit-snob groan, a whodunnit. His new milieu and social circle, a crew of sociopathically self-involved blue-bloods, are straight from an Agatha Christie novel, albeit a century later. And Joe himself is both the victim of a framing and the unlikely gumshoe. Ever the reader, he turns to reading Christie books himself to try to figure out how to untangle a mystery like a pro.

But this leaves the “You” viewer with all kinds of questions: Is the show really turning Joe into a victim, after three seasons of insisting on his villainy? Is Joe really someone who can be redeemed through a season of heroic efforts to protect some old-money elites from a serial killer? And what is the purpose — aside from keeping things fresh and entertaining, which, fair enough — of giving the season such an overt and kitschy genre conceit? What does it mean to take a dangerous man who always manages to maintain his own delusions of victimhood… and make him the victim of a cold-blooded murderer’s conspiracy?

With five episodes left to go, there are many possible answers to those questions — or perhaps the questions themselves will be invalidated by end-of-season developments. But we couldn’t resist hopping on the mic to dissect the first half of season one. We discuss its class satire and its meta-commentary on eat-the-rich entertainment, the murder-mystery conceit, and Joe as possible victim. Hope you enjoy! xo

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