A pair of familiar faces from Joe’s past returned to haunt him in the penultimate episode of YOU‘s fourth season. And while one was spoiled in the trailer, the other remained a bittersweet surprise.
We’ll start with the surprise guest, none other than Guinevere Beck (Elizabeth Lail), the original object of Joe’s obsession — excluding Candace, of course. While desperately searching for a way to free Marienne from the cage, Joe had a vision of his late ex-girlfriend.
“What did you do this time?” Beck asked, before jumping straight to the wrath portion of the reunion. “You’re pathetic! … I’m sorry, did I hurt your feelings? Well, I’m f–ing dead, Joe!” When he insisted that freeing Marienne was at the top of his to-do list, she then reminded him who he really is: “You don’t get it,” she said. “You don’t save, Joe.”
Then came Love Quinn (played by Victoria Pedretti), the wife Joe murdered back in Madre Linda, who’s always a sight for sore eyes — well, unless those eyes belong Joe. In rehashing their time together, Joe tried to assign blame equally, but Love wasn’t in the mood to share. “Right, amazing point,” she said. “We. Us. Our love language. Not you. Not a pattern. Not your pattern.” Turning to Marienne, still dying on the cage floor, Love asked Joe, “So, is this a coincidence?”
These shadows from Joe’s past may have read him for absolute filth, but his portrayer couldn’t have been happier to have them back to play in his twisted little sandbox.
“The show really comes home with them, especially with Victoria’s character,” Penn Badgley, who also directed the episode, tells TVLine. “Love did something for the show that I don’t think anyone else even had the opportunity to do. Her performance is amazing, but the character also provided something in that she’s a unique adversary. Just having them back was great. And I was directing that episode, so it was it was particularly sweet. It made a lot of sense in a lot of ways.”
So, how did the show lure Lail and Pedretti back for a ghostly encore? Unsurprisingly, it took very little convincing.
“The invitation to the actors was just: ‘If you can fit it into your schedule, can you come out do, like, a day or two of shooting, and you get to eviscerate Joe?’ And they did!” showrunner Ser Gamble says. “Every take we had from both of those actors was amazing. The hardest thing in posts deciding what to put in the cut.”
Did YOU enjoy spending more time with Love and Beck? Drop a comment with your thoughts on Joe’s haunting reunions, or any other Season 4 shenanigans, below.
