Netflix’s YOU returns for its final season on April 24, and with it comes the chilling legacy of Joe Goldberg’s long list of doomed romances.
Over four seasons, Joe (played with unnerving charm by Penn Badgley) has morphed from hopeless romantic to full-blown killer — all under the guise of “love.” But not all of his loves met a grisly end. While some were murdered (often by Joe himself), a few lived to escape, even if barely.
With YOU Season 5 promising a final reckoning, let’s revisit every woman who survived Joe’s obsession… and those who tragically didn’t.
Joe’s deadly fascinations with Beck, Candace, and Love
1) Guinevere “Beck” Beckett (Elizabeth Lail) was Joe’s textbook obsession in Season 1: aspiring writer, tragic heroine. After he staged the deaths of her friends Peach and Benji, Beck uncovered his gruesome secrets—and paid with her life. Though Season 1 ends implying Beck died off‑screen, it’s Joe’s hallucination in Season 2 that confirms he strangled her in that Soho basement.
2) Candace Stone (Ambyr Childers) predates Beck. Joe’s on‑screen story is that Candace ghosted him, but flashbacks reveal he buried her alive after catching her cheating. Miraculously, she escaped, only to return in Season 2 bent on revenge—until Love Quinn slit her throat to “protect” Joe.
3) Love Quinn (Victoria Pedretti) arrives in Season 2 as the “perfect” partner, only to prove as homicidal as Joe. Their poisoned‑plant finale sees Joe injecting himself with the antidote, then using Love’s aconite against her. Her body burns with the suburban nightmare they tried to build—and Joe’s obsession flickers at “the one who got away.”
The lucky few who survived Joe Goldberg on Netflix’s You
1) Karen Minty (Natalie Paul) breezed past Joe’s wooing until Beck’s specter pulled him back. Calmly thanked her for “being my get‑out‑of‑Joe‑free card,” then vanished—alive and untraumatized.
2) Delilah Alves (Carmela Zumbado) sniffed out Joe in L.A. but never met his cage: Love silenced her before Joe would—proof that sometimes his obsession is collateral.
3) Natalie Engler (Michaela McManus) sparked suburban lust in Season 3. Love’s ax made her a warning label in Joe’s trophy case—literally an ax to grind.
4) Marienne Bellamy (Tati Gabrielle) almost bookish bliss: a spirited escape artist who outsmarted Joe’s drugged‑bottle ruse and reunited with her daughter in Paris.
5) Kate Lockwood (Charlotte Ritchie) anchored Joe in London’s finale, nursing him back and moving to New York together—her fate now dangling just ahead of Season 5’s opening credits.
