REVIEW: ‘YOU’ Season 3 Throws All Expectations Out of the Window

A show about a stalker shouldn’t work. I mean, on my first attempt at watching Season 1 I tapped out about two episodes in. That said, when I came back to the series right before Season 2 I ended up getting pulled into the melodrama of it all and the way the series never puts Joe (Penn Badgley) in the right. And You Season 3 is even better than the previous two before it.

Over the course of two seasons, we’ve seen Joe become different people as he stalked and yearned for different women. In Season 1, Joe was focused on a woman who very much didn’t know he existed or saw him in a romantic way. We got to see him “get the girl” through massive amounts of manipulation and of course kill her. Then in Season 2, we see what happens when he meets a woman who matches his psychopathy and by its end, he pushes down his urges to seek vengeance when Love (Victoria Pedretti) tells him that she is pregnant.

And now, in YOU Season 3, we’re in the thick of it. There is no focus on love and obsession in the same way we’ve seen it showcased in the series thus far. Instead, the melodrama is amped up, the twists keep twisting, and at its core, you find a solid story on marriage, fidelity, and keeping a family together.

In YOU Season 3, Joe and Love, now married and raising their baby, have moved into a small rich suburb outside San Francisco named Madre Linda. And of course, it’s filled with all the people Joe hates: tech entrepreneurs, mommy bloggers, and Insta-famous biohackers, all of who are as judgemental as the last. While Joe is committed to his new role as a husband and dad, there is something missing, or someone. He tries to suppress his urges but it’s no use. Only, this time, he isn’t alone and Love knows exactly who he is, how he acts while obsessed, and what it means to their marriage. I mean, they’re only married and she’s only not dead because she was pregnant.

With the knowledge of her husband’s stalking behavior, comes impulsiveness we got to see slightly last season but in YOU Season 3 damn does it take the spotlight. Not only does it make for a story with quite a few twists, but it also takes the wheel and drives the entire season into a chaotic melodrama that highlights why the show works even if the premise sounds like it shouldn’t.

For performances, Penn Badgley and Victoria Pedretti are a married couple who came together out of necessity and are struggling to find a way to curve the boredom and ultimately make them remember the spark that was there to begin with. Over the course of the series, all roads lead back to the same questions. For Love, it’s “Why don’t you love me like you used to?” And for Joe it’s “How can I save this family?” It’s when the two stop caring about those questions is when all hell breaks loose.

For their parts, each of them is intimidating and unhinged. Slowly working through their own problems, starring their dysfunction in the face and rationalizing it in the process. We already know that Joe’s narration is good. It’s the key of the series and Badgley’s vocal performance is even more terrifying than his visual performance.

But while Love and Joe keep the spotlight, the ensemble cast around them each carry their own weight. And by that, I mean that they embody everyone you hate in the worst ways, intrude in everything around them, and play their role in slowly unwinding the couple. Every single element of YOU Season 3 ups all the antes. From narrative to characters and performances, it all just works.

Overall, YOU Season 3 is the strongest season yet, and somehow, the premise is not derivative of itself. Not to mention, it ends with near perfection. Sure there are a lot of think pieces to be written on why people are down to this show, and I still feel weird for being so enamored with it. But damn did YOU end on top instead of off a cliff like most Netflix 3 season Originals.

YOU Season 3 is available now, exclusively on Netflix.