Joe Goldberg, played by Penn Badgley, made his way through a private club on a sound stage outside of London while lost in thought.
As in previous episodes of the Netflix drama "You", a crew member read Joe's inner monologue as the actors performed, calling the club, with its moody lighting and dark décor, "a perfect place for a frame job". The stand-in spoke with a British accent this time.
"You" has followed a formula for the past three seasons: Joe, a well-read man with a troubled past and a propensity for murder, obsesses over a woman, stalks her before they fall in love, and then Joe goes to great, bloody lengths to try and ensure the success of their relationship.
The first five episodes of the thriller's most recent season are currently available on Netflix. It takes a different direction from previous seasons.
In addition to being set in London, Joe is soon put in a precarious position as a result of a mysterious adversary who may be an even more skilled murderer.
In a recent video interview, Sera Gamble, the show's co-creator, writer, and executive producer, said, "We've known we can't really repeat ourselves from season to season.
The production team muses over "what kind of thriller we're going to put him in" before each new season, according to Gamble.
A murder mystery with a London setting was the answer in Season 4, paying homage to the genre's long history in Britain and authors like Agatha Christie.
When the audience last saw Joe, he had just killed his wife, Love, who had informed his love interest, Marienne, of his history of murder.
This was how he had ended a dysfunctional marriage. Joe vowed to track down Marienne after she and her daughter fled to Paris.
Joe is a professor in Season 4 at a fictional university in London.
He is attempting to rebuild his life and convince Marienne that he is "not that man," as he says in a voice-over: "I would never hurt you."
Joe's plans, however, are quickly derailed when friends who are extremely wealthy and who he resentfully joins start dying, and he must track down the killer before he is held responsible for their crimes.
When Joe realizes he's in a whodunit, his voiceover comments, "Great, I get to reacquaint myself with my least-favorite genre."
The Nigerian princess Blessing, the artist and billionaire's son Simon, and the celebrity aristocrat Lady Phoebe are among the Londoners Joe meets.
Again, viewers might find themselves rooting for Joe because these characters are obtuse, morally dubious, and frequently ridiculous.
Ironically, Tilly Keeper, who plays Lady Phoebe, said in a set interview that "putting him in a completely foreign environment and then switching everything up, we feel safe in Joe's hands."
Joe "walks himself closer and closer to a self-awareness that he really won't know what to do with" throughout the season, according to Gamble.
Gamble claimed that when he was with Marienne, "those stories he told himself with previous love interests, like Beck in Season 1 or Love, stopped." He was subjected to something by her.
In a recent video interview, Badgley noted that Joe is now "managing to grow emotionally, while not growing at all," a development that he is also acutely aware of.
He is beginning to understand that he is the only one who can solve his problems—other people or places cannot.
This kind of development is visible in how Joe interacts with Kate, the season's love interest, a seemingly cold, privileged gallerist who is initially wary of him.
She is not the same kind of object because he doesn't have the same lust for her, according to Badgley.
He continued, "He seems to actually respect her more in Joe's twisted mind."
The bodies continue to pile up in this season as they have in previous ones, and it is still unclear what Joe's redemption might entail.
According to Gamble, "We never felt any obligation to reform Joe or to give him a particularly happy ending."
Additionally, I don't believe it is reasonable to assume that someone with Joe's appearance, behavior, and social standing would automatically be apprehended and punished.
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