Everything to remember from ‘YOU’ Season 1

Happy one-year anniversary, you.

That is, happy one year since most of us binged the heck out of Lifetime’s YOU when it hit Netflix, making us all hide under the covers and hit play after Amazon Prime-ing some thick new window curtains.

The twisted drama returns for Season 2 on Dec. 26, picking up once again with Penn Badgley’s menacing Joe daring to enter into a new relationship.

But as we steel ourselves for Season 2 (and truly, we cannot steel enough), let’s look back on that honestly batshit first season, all the horrible things Joe did, and everything that might come back to haunt us.

Here’s everything you need to remember about YOU Season 1.

The Candace stuff

Season 1 may have been all about Beck, but it wrapped her story up tragically and left us on a Candace cliffhanger. All we know for sure is that Joe still struggles to let go of his pre-Beck ex-girlfriend and that now she’s back for “unfinished business.” After he found out about her cheating and knocked the other guy off a building (Murder Count: 1), Candace moved to Italy and mostly disappeared from her social circles to the point where Beck believed her dead. Joe disproved this by revealing Candace’s new Instagram, full of European adventures, and that was that … until she came back.

All the murder

It should go without saying, but the fact that Penn Badgley himself had to repeatedly address tweets from people crushing on Joe means that this man’s good looks and charm threaten to outweigh the murder of it all. The Murder Count goes from 1 to 5 as he kills Beck’s flaky fling Benji, her best friend (and O.G. stalker) Peach, his neighbor’s boyfriend Ron, and finally Beck herself. He has his reasons, but that just brings us to…

Joe thinks he’s a hero

Joe Goldberg thinks he’s the lead in the universe’s most epic romance. It’s no accident that his inner monologue is always addressed at someone else — he wants to be heard, to be understood, to get attention and acknowledgment for his effort. All he needs, in his opinion, is a leading lady who understands. As far as he’s concerned, the Season 1 murders — except Beck’s — were all necessary for him to ride off into the sunset with his wife. 

He believes his objectively harmful actions serve to protect the woman he’s in love with, that he’s making the necessary sacrifices people make for love (he’s not!).

Regarding Beck herself, Joe chalks that up to having no other option, talking about it like an everyday couples’ dispute that got out of hand. He believes it could have been avoided with better communication and trust, largely on her part. Ummm…

All the crime

Murder aside — a phrase one should never have to type, but here we are — Joe did many, many other invasive and criminal things. He spied, he snuck into Beck’s apartment, he stole, he looked through her phone, and he faked someone else’s identity on social media more than once. Before two of his murders, he kidnapped his victims (before the third he just…tried to murder her but didn’t). Again, he got away with everything, either by killing the victims or erasing the evidence. Except that one thing…

The jar

In one of YOU‘s most twisted instances of injecting levity into the dark, Joe has to pee, badly, while stalking Peach and Beck at the Salinger house. He finally relieves himself in a jar, shuddering with relief, and forgets he left it on a shelf. After Peach’s death, we got a dramatic zoom on the jar while police searched her house, and Joe even remembered it later, terrified of the incriminating evidence.  We still haven’t witnessed any fallout from the jar, but it could come back to haunt Joe as he tries, once again, to escape his past.

Beck’s book

I take no pleasure in admitting this, but as a fellow writer I spent a lot of Season 1 wondering if and when Beck would actually write (for the record, talking about writing is a huge part of the process. Ask any writer). I regretted this hypocritical judgment when she finally put fingers to keys while trapped in an underground glass cage by her boyfriend. Nevertheless, Beck began to write, and she wrote her and Joe’s entire story, though he sold off the manuscript as the story of her and Dr. Nicky.

We don’t know the full contents of this book (hey Netflix, companion novel?), but those close to Beck will have read it by now and could uncover clues or hints that point to Bluebeard’s identity or at least alert them that all was not well when she wrote it. It’s a stretch, but expect Beck and the book to not be gone forever…yet.

The witnesses

Before Beck’s death, the last person she spoke to was Joe’s young neighbor, Paco. Beck was pounding on the basement door, begging Paco to release her, but the boy walked away, afraid that Beck calling the police would incriminate both himself and Joe for Ron’s death. Paco and his mom move some time between Ron’s death and Beck’s book publication, so it’s unclear how much may or may not have got back to them about how things ended up in New York.

Paco is a child, and Joe one of his few protectors, so his confused loyalties do have some grounding. However, as he grows older and these events haunt him, his developing conscience might compel him to share what he knows.

There’s also the case of Dr. Nicky, Beck’s therapist-slash-fling (unethical!) and Joe’s therapist-slash-mark upon whom he framed Beck’s murder. Nicky knows he’s innocent and about Beck and Joe’s more surface-level relationship troubles, so it would have made sense for him to urge the police to investigate the boyfriend. As of Season 1 they had either not done that or Joe got off clean once more, but an imprisoned Nicky may put together the pieces yet.

YOU Season 2 premieres Dec. 26 on Netflix.