‘You’ Creator Talks Love and Joe’s Twisted Finale Fates, Season 4 Location Plans

“Any main character is only as good as their partner and as their antagonist,” Sera Gamble tells TheWrap

YOU (L to R) VICTORIA PEDRETTI as LOVE QUINN in episode 310 of YOU Cr. JOHN P. FLEENOR/NETFLIX © 2021

(Editor’s note: This post, which contains spoilers through the Season 3 finale of “You,” was first published Oct. 17.)

“You” began its third season with the not-so-happy start to Love Quinn (Victoria Pedretti) and Joe Goldberg’s (Penn Badgley) marriage and birth of their son Henry, and ended with an even-less-happily-ever-after conclusion when Joe killed his wife, then framed her for killing herself, him, and all the other terrible things they had done in suburbia since they arrived in Madre Linda at the start of the 10-episode season.

Then Joe said a tearful goodbye to his infant son before dropping him off on a friend’s doorstep, and booking it to France to assume the name “Nick” and search for his new “you” Marienne (Tati Gabrielle) — the second new one of the season, actually, after his wife killed his first new “you,” Natalie (Michaela McManus). Of course, Marienne ran off after Love told her the truth about Joe — with whom Marienne was expecting to live a lovely life with her daughter Juliette and his son Henry, because she thought Love and Joe had split — and might not be so easy to find given what she knows now and the warning Love gave her to run and hide.

See below for TheWrap’s interview with “You” co-creator and showrunner Sera Gamble about Season 3’s biggest twists and her plans for “You” Season 4, which was just picked up by Netflix ahead of last Friday’s “You” Season 3 launch, but hadn’t yet been when we interviewed Gamble for this story earlier this month.

TheWrap: When you decided that this season would be the first where Joe is not only open about who he is and what he does, but sharing that — begrudgingly — with someone else, who is now his wife and the mother of his child, what did you want that to look like?

Sera Gamble: That’s the coolest thing about this season, I think, is what happens if you marry someone that’s uncomfortably like you, in certain ways? What a twisted, fabulous lens to put on the idea of marriage and parenthood. It’s very freeing to be inside these characters’ heads. They’re so honest and they actually do all of the darkest things that I think in passing, but would never do, would rather die than do, they’ll just do it on a Tuesday. But honestly, any main character is only as good as their partner and as their antagonist. And in a certain way, Love is both. So we were very lucky to have this setup for the season.

How early on did you know that Joe was going to kill Love at the end of Season 3?

We knew that the day we met Victoria for her chemistry read with Penn. We knew that this was a two-season story, if we were lucky enough to get to tell both seasons, and we went into the season knowing. And I think the actors just sort of waited to see how we would pull it off. But we always knew. It’s tough to survive that particular husband. It’s tough.

What was the process plotting out their big finale game of cat-and-mouse that ends in Joe paralyzing and killing Love after she first paralyzes him to try to get him to stay?

That was not one of those things where somebody woke up that morning and walked into the writers’ room with like a little flowchart, and they were like, “This is the beautiful plan.” It wasn’t like that at all. It was grinding that out, knowing that a lot of things had to be planted earlier in the season and trying stuff out on each other and that person being like, ‘That sounds like bullshit. I don’t believe that.’ We just tried a bunch of stuff. And we re-wrote those scenes about one billion times before the studio or the actors or anyone ever even saw them.

With Joe in France at the end of Season 3 and determined to find Marienne, do you plan on Season 4 taking place abroad?

I mean, that would be awesome, wouldn’t it? I would like to see Joe travel beyond the borders of the U.S. There’s a wide world of women he shouldn’t be following and enclaves of privileged douchebags. It would be fun. And it’s not my decision, they have to pick the show up and agree to the creative plan. But I’ll just say, I feel really excited that we live, now, in such an international moment for television, where there is more of an embrace that we live in a big world. The stories don’t have to be quite so American as they were when I started as a TV writer. So I’m for it. That’s where my vote will be.

“You” was renewed for Season 4 after this interview was conducted. Readers can find more of TheWrap’s “You” Season 3 coverage here, while we patiently await more news about the fourth season — which is hopefully set in France.

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