Fans went into a frenzy when series You released its second season Dec. 26 on Netflix. You features Gossip Girl star Penn Badgley as seductive stalker Joe Goldberg searching for love with all the wrong tactics. 

Season one’s love interest, Guinevere Beck (Elizabeth Lail), is an aspiring writer stumbling across “love at first sight” in a bookstore where Goldberg works. Goldberg immediately becomes infatuated with Beck and habitually turns to obsessive stalker mannerisms. 

Season one reveals his murderous and stalking tendencies in his point of view while somehow making the audience overlook Goldberg as a murderer and see him as a good guy. His point of view allows for him to be manipulative with the story-telling and season two takes the exact same theme, proving his repetitive habits, with brand new characters in a brand new city. 

After the conflicts of season one, Goldberg escapes his past by moving to his least favorite city in the world, Los Angeles, Calif. with the new name, Will Bettelheim. 

There, he meets his new head strong love interest, coincidentally named Love (Victoria Pedretti), with a brand new mindset that does not last long. Bettelheim knows his habits at this point and convinces the audience he doesn’t want to be mixed up in another death struck romance. Little does the audience know, he planned and manipulated his meeting with this new lover per usual while continuing to run from his past which includes a crazy ex-girlfriend, Candace Stone (Ambyr Childers). 

Flashbacks of Goldberg’s childhood expose the heartbreaking torture of his family dynamic explaining the way he is in the present. He was forced to deal with childish adults and do an unspeakable act to save his mother. 

Along with flashbacks from Goldberg’s childhood, the audience gets a peek into Love and her twin brother’s, Forty Quinn (James Scully), troubled past. The twins past slowly revealed explains the personalities and dynamic between the two and creates conflicts in the present. 

Candace plays as the ultimate conflict as she follows Goldberg to L.A. to expose his, to say the least, toxic acts. Her mission, to destroy Goldberg, becomes a difficult task when Goldberg manipulates her into being the crazy ex-girlfriend no one can trust. 

You season two takes it’s time unfolding the story of every character allowing for intense plot twists and character development making it better than the first season that had very shallow characters. The season leaves the audience on a lingering question of what’s to happen next and the decision of whether Goldberg, with his past mistakes and trauma, deserves the happy ending he was given.

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