The following story contains spoilers for the entirety of You, Season 4 Part 1.
THE TIES bound between Netflix’s You and the world of literature have always been extremely tight. One of the first places we ever saw Joe Goldberg (Penn Badgley), after all, was working in a rare bookstore. Throughout the four seasons of the show, we’ve seen him make all kinds of connections from all kinds of literary references. This led directly into Season 4, where Joe, now based in London, is working at a college as a professor of literature.
But while we first see Joe (now going under the identity of Jonathan Moore) lecturing his class on a sci-fi short story written by Ted Chiang (the author behind the story that inspired Denis Villeneuve’s film Arrival), it’s an entirely different genre that goes on to inspire the first part of Season 4: the whodunit.
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By the end of the first episode, Joe has fallen in with a new social circle: his fellow professor, an annoying man named Malcolm, invites him to hang out with all of his friends. Except guess what? This is You. After a night of having fun and drinking—a lot of drinking—Joe wakes up to find Malcolm dead on his kitchen island, clearly framed for something he did not do (or, at least, doesn’t think he did).
Whoever did this, though, doesn’t know that Jonathan is Joe. Joe has experience. Joe knows how to handle this. He disposes of Malcolm’s body, and then suddenly starts receiving texts on an app where the messages self-delete after they’ve been seen. The person who tried to frame him knows that he got rid of Malcolm’s body, and is curious, taunting Joe, and seemingly intrigued by what he might be capable of.
This is where Joe’s literary knowledge (or lack thereof, when it comes to murder mysteries) comes in handy. He learns the rules of the genre from a student, and the more he learns, the more he becomes prepare for what’s to come. As the season continues, and as more and more of Joe’s new social circle are picked off, the killer is dubbed as the ‘Eat the Rich’ Killer, and Joe works hard to figure out who, exactly, it is.
Who is the “Eat the Rich” Killer in You Season 4?
After suspecting just about everyone else, we finally learn in Episode 5, “The Fox and the Hound,” that the killer was none other than the member of the social circle that Joe liked the most: Rhys Montrose (Ed Speelers).
Rhys and Joe bonded early in the season over coming from a similar rough, working-class background. Rhys wrote an acclaimed rags-to-riches memoir that was such a big deal (Joe first hears about it through his student, who loves it) that many now expect him to run for Mayor of London (and by the end of the season, he announces his intent to do just that). Joe, meanwhile, well, we’ve seen what he’s been up to the last few years. Still, the men share an initial connection.
And that connection returns in Episode 5, when Rhys—who was not believed to be on the trip to Lady Phoebe’s house on the countryside—saved Joe by knocking out the lunatic Roald who was chasing Joe down with a shotgun. Yes, things took a turn. Wild stuff.
Rhys passed both Joe and Roald out, locking them up in a cellar; Rhys revealed his true identity to Joe, believing the two would now work together. Joe knew that Rhys found out about his past, but he still didn’t see working together as something he wanted to do. He tried to feign interest as a way to escape, but Rhys didn’t buy it.
Ultimately, Rhys—after having killed Malcolm, Simon, Gemma, Vic, and possibly more—leaves both Joe and Roald to die in a fire he set in the cellar. Despite Roald not long before coming after him with a shotgun and an intent for murder, Joe saves him, and the two make it out alive.
It’s not long after that Joe—back in London, where Rhys promised if he could escape they’d meet again—is seen on TV, formally announcing his run for mayor.
Joe knows what he’s got to do.
Evan is the culture editor for Men’s Health, with bylines in The New York Times, MTV News, Brooklyn Magazine, and VICE. He loves weird movies, watches too much TV, and listens to music more often than he doesn’t.
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