'You' Season 4: Penn Badgley to Return as Joe, Plot Details, More

Warning: Spoilers ahead.

Joe Goldberg is coming back for more! Just ahead of the season 3 premiere in October 2021, Netflix announced via social media that the fan-favorite show would be returning for a fourth installment starring Penn Badgley as the serial killer-turned-dad. “Hello, you. For you, YOU has been renewed for season 4! See you soon,” the streaming service captioned video featuring Joe’s spine-chilling voiceover.

“The next season could be quite different. It really could be quite different,” Penn told Collider. “Well, it might be … I don’t know, but I think it might be more about Joe’s relationship with himself. Because this isn’t really a show about a murderer, this is a show about … I think it’s taking the mistakes that we make in relationships to the extreme for the sake of a good story. Like, we really need to lay down our swords and stop being competitive in relationships, but that’s very hard to do.”

The final episode of season 3 sees Joe killing his wife, Love (Victoria Pedretti), after they both attempt to have a “normal” life and marriage with their baby, Henry. While fans were surprised with this major plot twist, Victoria told ELLE that she’s “pretty positive” her character is dead.

“I’ve died a few times on television, but this one, I think, especially because she was leaving her child, I think I felt pretty wrecked afterwards,” the actress recalled. “I think I was frustrated with the amount of time that we had to do it. I think that it felt like she was being cut off right as she was about to expand. Do you know what I mean? For me, as Victoria, going through those actions and stepping away, it took a second to separate myself from it. I did feel the effects of it. I did start crying as me, very sad for what the character had to go through.”

After the death of his wife, Joe frames her for all the bloodshed that occurred throughout the season and fakes his own death. Before fleeing to Paris, where the next season will presumably take place, he leaves baby Henry with a coworker so the child can have a good life.

“I feel like season 3 is a season of a huge amount of just loss and tragedy for him,” the show’s creator, Sera Gamble told Collider. “We leave him having lost or felt like he had to let go of everything he cared about really. So the story from here, is about how he gets any of that back or how he finds something else.”

Scroll through our gallery for everything we know about You season 4 so far.

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Going Back to His Son

“That’s going to be an ongoing conversation, because no, you can’t pretend something that huge about a character didn’t happen,” Sera told E! News. “I think it will shape him from this moment forward. And even his exact plan of when and if he would return for his son is something that we will … if we get to the writers room … come together and talk about for hours and hours and hours between snacks.”

One Character’s Return

Jenna Ortega was a fan favorite as Ellie in season 2. But will she return?

“Jenna is so busy and she is in the middle of so many amazing projects but the thing I can say about the story and the show is that we talk about Ellie a lot,” Sera added. “We referenced her in the season because we wanted to make it clear that, yes, she’s still out there and she does fundamentally represent a sort of threat to Joe, because she completely has his number in terms of who and what he is and what he has done.”

New Characters

Lukas Gage is set to join the cast as Adam, who is “is hiding a trove of secrets and papering over problems with heavy self-medication,” per Deadline. Charlotte Ritchie is also set to join the cast as Kate, alongside Tilly Keeper as Lady Phoebe, Amy Leigh Hickman as Nadia, Ed Speleers as Rhys and Brad Alexander as Edward.