Sandbox / You Joe Goldberg

For the main character entry, see HERE

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Joseph "Joe" Goldberg, a.k.a. Jonathan Moore

Played by: Penn Badgley

The Villain Protagonist of the story. As far as everyone knows, he is merely a humble and rather pleasant bookstore manager, but he has a secret double life as a psychopathic stalker obsessed with finding true love, whether the object of his desire wants it or not. With every new love interest, Joe's crimes slowly but surely escalate into even more serious and heinous territory.

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A-L

• Abuse Mistake: In Season 3, a camera catches Joe punching the wall in a rage while arguing with Love. This leads Theo to believe that Joe is a domestic abuser (he was with Candace and Beck, but not with Love).
• Abusive Parents: His birth father was abusive and his mother did not do anything to protect him. His adoptive father, Mr. Mooney, was also abusive, although Joe believes Mr. Mooney actually helped him and was acting in his best interest — which is part of why Joe is able to justify such extreme behavior toward his love interests.
• Aesop Amnesia: Joe has instances of moral clarity where he finally realizes that he is the bad guy and deserves to be punished, and that he shouldn't obsess over women. But it never lasts. Justified, as he's a psychopath, and his obsessions are pathological.
• Affectionate Nickname:
  • Candace always calls him "Bunny", which is especially notable as there aren't many nicknames for Joe.
  • His mother called him "Joey."
  • Forty dubs him "old sport," a la The Great Gatsby.
• Ambiguously Jewish: When Forty discovers Joe was lying when he said his name was the very Germanic-sounding Will Bettelheim, Forty has to ask if Joe is a self-hating Jew. It's never made clear if Joe is Jewish or not, though having a last name like Goldberg raises the possibility of some Jewish ethnicity.
• Animal Motif: It is less obvious than other examples but Joe is repeatedly associated with Wolves.
  • His predatory nature towards his obsessions are akin to a Wolf stalking its prey.
  • Wolves love to play with children but tend to hurt them on accident, mirroring Joe's fondness towards children but tendency to only complicate their lives whenever he tries to help.
  • He and love use 'I Wolf You' as a substitute for 'I Love You.', which is particular telling once you factor in Love's own predatory behavior.
  • As much as he wants his fairytale romance, Joe himself is, sympathetic qualities aside, the villain of these relationships, like the Wolf is in most Fairytales.
  • Forty outright calls Joe a 'Wolf in Loves Blindspot'
• Anti-Villain: Subverted. Joe may came from a hard life and while some of his victims weren't entirely good people, he's still not absolved from his numerous heinous acts.
• The Atoner: In Season 4 Joe has made a genuine effort to give up his stalking habits, though his neighbour's personal dramas do catch his eye but even then he's quick to tell himself he should look away.
• Awful Wedded Life: In the Season 2 finale, we see Joe and a pregnant Love living in suburbia after their Bonnie And Clyde-esque killing spree, which Joe refers to as his 'Siberia' and prison. Season 3 shows that the two are barely holding it together as a conventional couple, with the only things uniting them being their love for their son and their violent misanthropy. by the end of the season they've both conspired to kill each other, with Joe succeeding.
• Ax-Crazy: Make no mistake, he may hide it a bit better and posture towards her about, but Joe is no less, vengeful, dangerous or violence prone than Love.
• Badass Bookworm: Although a villainous example, Joe genuinely loves books, and he is very violent and manipulative about his behavior.
• Be Careful What You Wish For: He longs for an adoring wife who loves him as much as he loves her and appreciates all he'd do for her, and expresses a desire for children multiple times. At the end of the second season, Love happily provides him with all those things... because she's an utterly insane murderer, just like him.
• Believing Their Own Lies: Joe is as good at deceiving himself as he is others and seems to have genuinely convinced himself that he's done nothing wrong, that he's a romantic hero and his actions are justified due to his love for his victims.
• Big Brother Instinct:
  • Joe loves Paco like a little brother, often feeding him, lending him books, and being there for him when his parents can't. This culminates in him killing Ron to protect him.
  • This carries over in season two, where he takes it upon himself to protect Ellie from Henderson if her sister can't.
• Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: Plays up his innocent Boy Next Door demeanor, and has no trouble convincing cops, and the public in general, that he's an upstanding citizen.
• Blatant Lies: Frequently, both in long-term plots and when caught off-guard by law enforcement.
• Boomerang Bigot:
  • Joe hates Peach for stalking and controlling Beck while stalking them both, especially Beck.
  • Joe dislikes Forty for displaying misogynistic tendencies in his writing when he's actually a misogynist himself.
  • Most specifically, Joe comes to hate Love, having been obsessed with her all season, once he learns that she's a murderer and a Yandere.
  • In season 2, Joe genuinely believes that he's the victim and Candace is the psychopathic stalker, when in reality it's the other way around.
  • In season 4 Joe gets a taste of his own medicine when a stalker tries to upend his life, to which he naturally feels an intense loathing. In Joe's defense, his own stalking habits were never performed with the sadistic glee that he finds himself dealing with.
• Born in the Wrong Century: Downplayed Trope, but Joe is constantly described, both by himself and by others, as "old fashioned". This basically amounts to New Media Are Evil and a fondness for books. His ideal time period might be the 80s or 90s, maybe even the Renaissance given his romanticized mindset.
• Born Lucky: Joe has committed a litany of felonies, including breaking and entering, assault, stalking, destruction of property and murder, often times with very little planning, and has been able to evade justice while the people who do learn of his crimes often end up dead.
• Brainy Brunette: He has wavy black hair and is an avid reader who makes observational and insightful notes on people.
• Capture and Replicate: Mundane variant. When we see him again in Season 2, he's moved across the country from New York to Los Angeles and is going by the assumed identity of "Will Bettelheim", whom in a Wham Shot we learn is a real person he's got locked in the same cage he had Beck in. Downplayed, in that the whole reason he stole the original Will's identity is it was a carefully crafted fictitious identity designed to be as featureless as possible in the first place, and he makes no effort to actually pretend to be the original Will until he's forced to by Will's enemies catching up with him.
• Can't Get in Trouble for Nuthin': When Joe realizes that he is a horrible person, he decides to accept being punished, either for being sent to prison or being killed by Forty, but when he is about to be killed, he is saved by Fisher and Forty is blamed for Joe's crimes.
• Chick Magnet: Joe attracts a number of women throughout the series. Even Kate lusts after him in spite of her frigidness.
• Chronic Villainy: At the start of seasons two and three, Joe honestly tries to change his behavior and avoid falling into the same traps as before but he can never go straight for very long.
• Commonality Connection: Joe and Beck both love literature. He attempts to invoke this trope in other ways, in his stalking of Beck and showing up in places she likes. Repeated with Marienne when he moves to Madre Linda.
• Crazy Jealous Guy: If anything gets between him and whomever he's currently fawning over, he'll kill them. He desperately tries to avoid this with Love.
• Chronic Hero Syndrome: Deconstructed and crossing over with Engineered Heroics. Joe genuinely thinks he wants to "help" Beck (and he actually does want to help Claudia and Paco), but he will be extremely manipulative and controlling, when in fact he's actually just trying to create his perfect romance most of the time. Repeated with Marienne when her abusive ex-husband tries to break her.
• Dark and Troubled Past: Abandoned by abusive parents and raised by the abusive Mr. Mooney. It's partially why he's so nervous to be raising a son instead of a daughter as he fears his son will turn out like himself. Lampshaded in 3.04 when he tells his backstory to Marianne, she doesn't believe him, and he makes up a milder, more plausible version to tell her.
  Joe: I was practically homeless. A bookstore owner took me in, and let me work for free, and I slept in a cage in his basement.
  Marianne: [storms off]
  Joe: No, wait, Marianne, Marianne, hang on! Wait a second, stop. I'm sorry, stop. That really crossed a line. It was an exaggeration. But the truth is, we straddled the poverty line my entire childhood, and I escaped with books.
• Deadpan Snarker: Joe constantly makes snarky and insulting remarks about people he meets in his inner monologue.
• Deconstructed Character Archetype: Of the handsome Dogged Nice Guy.
  • Joe lies to Beck, manipulates her, steals her things, violates her privacy, kills several people and - eventually - Beck herself. He justifies this by saying that it's all the name of love, but the series goes out of its way to point out how horrible this all is.
  • Shows up again with Marienne, as he plays the good guy right when her ex-husband is emotionally destroying her. By this point it's no secret that Joe would do the same if Marienne deviated even slightly from his vision.
• Despair Event Horizon: Joe crosses it when Candace locks him in his own glass cage and reveals his true murderous nature to Love, so much so that he throws out the key he'd hidden inside and prepares to let himself be arrested.
• Dogged Nice Guy: An extreme and homicidal version. If Joe wants someone, he'll overshadow their entire life, twisting things in such a way that his love interest will fall into his arms. If she ever decides they're not soulmates or finds out he's a violent sociopath, Joe will unleash his full wrath on them for breaking his dreamworld.
• Didn't Think This Through: By his own admission, Joe tends to clobber first, think of a next step later. He gets very close to getting caught multiple times because of this.
• Determinator: Nothing will get in the way of Joe and the girl he's decided he loves. Even the girl's own wishes.
• Engineered Heroics: Joe genuinely wants to help some people out of selflessness (Paco and Ellie) but generally he falls into this, manipulating situations where the object of his affection will be seriously hurt, physically or emotionally, so that he can swoop in and help.
• Entitled to Have You: If Joe falls for a girl, he's going to make sure to make her think that she deserves him. He'll even murder to make sure the girl in question only has him.
• Even Bad Men Love Their Mamas: Despite knowing that both his mother and father weren't good parents, Joe is more forgiving towards his mother as while she was neglectful his father was physically abusive.
• Even Evil Has Loved Ones:
  • He genuinely cares about Paco, Claudia, Mr. Mooney, Ellie, Delilah, Henry. After becoming a literary professor he even takes a liking to his pupil Nadia with no intention to seduce or control her.
  • Subverted with his love interests (Beck, Love and Marienne), though he supposedly loves them, he doesn't really care about them.
• Even Evil Has Standards:
  • Even Joe seems to be appalled by Henderson's manipulative sexual exploitation, but there's a strong hypocritical bent. Indeed, rape (and sexual assault) appears to be the one thing Joe wouldn't do to his partners (or anybody). Not so much for kidnapping and murder.
  • To a lesser extent, Joe finds Forty's writings and general sense of taste to be lacking in substance and narrow-minded when it comes to women.
  • A more humorous version but, for all of Joe's various crimes, he often goes out of his way to make sure the rare books in his possession are never harmed and can't stand seeing books be mistreated in general.
  • Another instance that's Played for Laughs; Joe considers whodunnits to be the lowest form of literature. Then again, finding himself a major suspect in one would have soured his opinion on them.
  • Despite his history of stalking and long list of other crimes, Joe doesn't toy with his victims for the thrill of it. When dealing with a stalker of his own, Joe is disturbed by the anonymous mocking text messages.
• Expy: Of Dexter. One is a psychopath, the other a sociopath, both have Nice Guy personas and a Mask of Sanity, both make excessive use of First-Person Smartass and both are serial killers. However, Dexter kills as a means to channel his homicidal urges towards something more productive and tries to Never Hurt an Innocent, while Joe kills for (what he thinks) is love and is much more ruthless pursuing it.
• Extremely Protective Child: He shot a guy who was attacking his mom.
• Face of an Angel, Mind of a Demon: A Tall, Dark, and Handsome guy who is very good at concealing his insanity and malice.
• Faux Affably Evil: While he can play the part of a loving boyfriend, he is innately selfish and contemptuous to about everyone he meets, with few exceptions such as his "You's".
• First-Person Smartass: His internal monologue is just as sarcastic as it is utterly horrifying.
• Friend to All Children: He strikes quick friendships with both Paco and Ellie, and is very protective of the both of them. He is also seen briefly reading to kids in the bookstore in episode 3 of season 1. While he had some issues with his newborn son Henry, Joe did eventually warm up to him and made sure Henry was entrusted to a dependable couple after skipping the country.
• "Friends" Rent Control: In Season 4, Joe moves to London and takes on a new identity as a lecturer at a university. It’s currently unexplained how someone of his salary-level could possibly afford a spacious apartment in Kynance Mews, South Kensington — one of the wealthiest areas of one of the most expensive cities on the planet — as at the time of filming, flats in the mews were valued at £3.65 million and renting out at £15,000 per month.
• Freudian Excuse: Initially, it seems his warped views on love primarily comes from Mr. Mooney, who taught him that through his abuse. Later subverted when we learn that his very first murder was done to protect his mom, who assured him he did the right thing. In the orphanage, he grows attached to his therapist and later finds out she's being abused by her partner. It's later strongly implied she was killed by her abusive partner, and the combination of aforementioned events instilled in him a powerful belief that he's justified in violence if it's for the protection of someone else.

• Gaslighting: Joe makes himself and his victims think they are the ones not remembering things correctly just so he won't be blamed.
• Genius Book Club: Fitting, seeing his profession and Training from Hell from Mr. Mooney.
• Genre Savvy: As Love found out, Joe suspected that her herb garden might contain ingredients for poisons and he'd already kept a stash of counter-substances to treat himself in the event she might try to kill him.
• Gilded Cage: What he sees his future as, at the end of Season 2. He marries the pregnant Love, but ends up trapped with her in suburbia, being watched over by her evil parents and her blade-happy temperament. Season 3 ends with him escaping to France after killing Love and faking his own death.
• Has a Type: Seems to be into artists and creative types. He also wants someone he can take care of, who needs him.
  Joe: I see it now. This is why "you". You're a pattern. You're a lost lamb, attracted to wolves. Ergo, what I feel... it's not because you're special, it's—wait for it—it's mother issues.
• Heel Realization: Near the end of season two, after being locked in cage by Candace, he realizes that he is a monster. But it quickly becomes an Ignored Aesop. Season 4 begins with Joe finally getting ahold of himself and treating the opposite sex with genuine respect.
• Humiliation Conga: In "Fear and Loathing in Beverly Hills", he attempts to fly to Mexico before Delilah escapes the time-release cuffs he put on her. Before he could get to the airport, he is kidnapped by Forty who confiscates his passport and forces him to help him write his script, all while Ellie freely comes and leaves. Forty later reveals that he drugged Joe with LSD and Joe gets punched and thrown back into the room, where Forty roleplays as Beck and gets briefly strangled by Joe.
• Hypocrite:
  • Joe expresses shock and outrage over Peach's stalking behavior, without a hint of self-awareness. Repeated again when Joe gets a stalker of his own in Season 4.
  • He considers cheating the worst kind of sin, despite cheating on Karen with little guilt.
  • He is disgusted with men who treat women poorly, despite being far more violent toward women than any of them will ever be.
  • Joe hates privileged and entitled men, yet believes that living in a posh suburban home with a rich wife who loves him is the definition of hell. To say nothing of how he was able to immediately settle down in London with a steady job.
  • Humourously, Joe considers whodunnits to be trashy when he himself Thinks Like a Romance Novel, which are considered by most readers to be guilty pleasures at best.
• Ignored Aesop:
  • In the Season 2 finale "Love, Actually", after a tumultuous killing spree, Love's Face–Heel Turn and news of her pregnancy, everything should be settled then, right? Wrong. In the final scene, we see Joe's eye wandering again onto an unfortunate neighbor.
  • After Love kills Natalie, he promises not to put anyone else in danger before he can leave her with Henry. Enter Marienne.
• Ignored Epiphany: Joe has acknowledged his evil nature a few times but such revelations tend to be forgotten when he meets his next potential great love.
• I Love You Because I Can't Control You: Inverted. It's implied that he wants to escape Love because she isn't as easily manipulated the way any of his other victims are.
• In Love with Your Carnage: By Season 3 Joe and Love can't stand each other, but they're both aroused by their mutual villainy.
• Insane Troll Logic: Used to justify his Hypocrite tendencies, and violence in general.
• It's for a Book: In season 4 Joe finds himself in the middle of a murder mystery and tries to familiarize himself with the genre. When discussing whodunnits with a student he justifies his interest as a writing project. He has a better excuse than most due to being a literature professor.
• Karma Houdini: Joe never gets in trouble for any of the murders he's committed. This changes when he moves to London and someone with an interest in him starts connecting some dots, at which point Joe has to think fast to avoid jail time or death.
• The Kindnapper: A very dark version of the "obviously misguided" subtype. Joe truly believes he's doing Beck a favor by locking her in the cage, suggesting that it's an opportunity for growth for her or a chance for her to focus on her writing, all in the face of her screaming and crying for him to let her out and begging him not to hurt her. Even aside from that, he has kidnapped at least three people to protect himself or his relationships. Flashbacks into his backstory show how Mr. Mooney taught him this philosophy by repeatedly locking him in the cage under the bookshop for even the flimsiest of reasons, all to "help" Joe straighten his life out.
• Laser-Guided Karma:
  • For anybody else, being trapped in a relationship with an utterly insane murderer who's obsessed with them would be a terrible fate. But after everything Joe's done over the course of the first two seasons, it's hard not to see it as a bit of divine retribution. Too bad he gets out of that as well after killing several more people.
  • After stalking innocent women and killing numerous people for getting in his way, in Season 4 Joe finds himself being stalked by someone who is smart enough to arrange each murder so that it could be traced back to Joe if he's not careful.
• A Lighter Shade of Black: Played straight and averted depending on the case.
  • Played straight in comparison to Henderson, Although Joe is a crazy stalker, all the women he shows interest in are of legal age and always had relations with them in a consensual way.
  • Averted in comparison with Peach and Love Quinn, They're both very wicked people, but Joe is no better than them in any way, even Love has more or less committed the exact same crimes as Joe for the exact same reasons.
  • Subverted with Ron, Although Joe initially appears to be less bad than Ron, the fact that he is willing to kidnap and kill Beck shows that Joe is as bad as Ron, even if he is not overtly abusive.
• Love Makes You Crazy: Joe is of this opinion, but it's actually a subversion, as Joe seems to have serious issues regardless, love is just his preferred method of showing it. Reconstructed in Season 4, as Joe has more or less given up on romance and his predatory nature has now subsided.
• Loving a Shadow: Joe doesn't so much fall in love with actual people as with imaginary, perfect versions of them that he places on a pedestal. When the ladies in question break the illusion by acting like real human beings, he turns on them quickly.

M-Y

• Madonna-Whore Complex: Despite clearly thinking of himself a feminist, it's made clear Joe has some serious issues with women, seeing them as either perfect or evil, and overriding their agency as he sees fit.
• Meaningful Rename: A justified version.
  • In season 2 Joe changes his name to "Will Bettelheim" in order to escape Candace's revenge on him.
  • In season 4 Joe goes by "Jonathan Moore" to escape the drama of Madre Linda.
• Misogyny: Despite thinking of himself and even referring to himself as "the only feminist I know", he dismisses most women he meets as vapid or promiscuous. While he puts Beck on a pedestal, he doesn't have any faith in her intelligence, agency, or right to make her own choices. He even falls out of love with Love when he realizes that she has much more agency than he thought.
• Mistaken for Pedophile: Ron is under the belief that the only reason he hangs out with Paco is because he's a "freak." Delilah also suspected that he was creeping onto Ellie in their first interaction.
• Moral Myopia:
  • Joe could be the trope namer, he's such an egregious example. He can justify basically all of his awful behavior while freaking out over the possibility of Peach stalking Beck.
  • A notable example in the second season where Joe finds out about Love's true nature. He's utterly repulsed, even though she's done basically exactly the same things as him, for the exact same reasons.
  • Joe thinks Roald is a deviant for taking upskirt photos of Kate even though Joe himself has spied on women in intimate settings and stole Beck's panties.
• Mr. Fanservice: A lot of fans probably look past his actions on account of how handsome he is; there's also plenty of scenes of him shirtless in the show, mostly when he's engaging in sexual behavior with Beck and Love or fantasizing about it.
• My God, What Have I Done?:
  • In Season 2, he hallucinates Beck after killing Jasper and recalling that he strangled her, sobs, begs her not to disappear and frantically apologizes.
  • While he generally shows little to no remorse for the horrible things he's done and constantly finds ways to justify his actions, Delilah's supposed murder by his hands truly upsets him, and he goes to great lengths to find evidence that proves otherwise. When he was incapable of doing so, he wanted to turn himself in or somehow be punished.
• Never My Fault: Joe acknowledges that some of the things he does are wrong, but he always tries to give a justification for why he does the things he does.
  (after attacking Peach) She forced my hand, that's on her and her family for screwing her up.
• Non-Action Big Bad: Joe's not very athletic.
  • When trying to follow Peach while she's jugging in the morning in season 1.
  • When he tries to follow Milo in season 2, he can barely keep up. And in his one fair fight, he gets absolutely clobbered.
  • Going on a men's retreat with the fitness-junkie Cary tests his durability once again. He also struggles in his fight with the athletic Ryan.
  • Joe is completely helpless whenever he gets on the bad side of professional bodyguard Vic. He only managed to kill Vic because the latter was caught off-guard for a moment.
• Not-So-Well-Intentioned Extremist: In Season 3, Joe falls deeply in love with Marienne, to the point he even murders her abusive ex-husband, and it appears he actually cares about her. However, when Love reveals his murder of Ryan, Joe begs Marienne to say she still loves him, and when Love decides not to kill her and tells her to leave, he is not relieved that Marienne's safe but horrified that she's going to leave him.
• Obliviously Evil: Joe honestly does not seem to understand his evil nature and sincerely thinks of himself as a loving romantic partner who will do anything to protect those he cares about.
• Only Sane by Comparison:
  • Despite Joe being a stalker, misogynist, and a downright murderer he still comes off as the most grounded character while living in the suburbs with Love. This was earlier alluded to by Forty when he stated that despite Joe not being very trustworthy, he's still nowhere near as pretentious as the usual LA crowd.
  • After moving to London, Joe finds himself suckered into a gathering of upper-crust socialites who range from too quirky to function to outright misanthropic.
• On the Rebound: Tends to do this right after a breakup. With Beck, it was Karen Minty. With Love, it was Delilah.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business: You know Joe and Love are really through when Mr. Yandere there helps a grievously wounded and barely still alive Theo, even taking him to the hospital, even after Theo confesses to having sex with Love. Justified since Joe gave up on her, he doesn't care if Theo slept with her.
• Paper-Thin Disguise: Joe's infamous baseball cap is the only attempt he makes to hide his features whenever he's stalking someone. By season 3, it's a lot less effective, as when he attends AA/NA meetings with it to check out what Marienne's ex husband is up to, he ends up drawing attention to himself. In Season 4 Joe grows a beard, which doesn't help him any better as Joe's own stalker is just that invested in exposing him.
• Parental Abandonment: In season 3, a therapist coaxes this out of him, his great fear: "If someone sees me—if someone sees the real me—they'll go away. For good." Because that's what his mother did. Given the kind of person Joe is, his fears are a pretty blatant self-fulfilling prophecy.
• Pay Evil unto Evil: Joe can differentiate between good and bad, and most of the people he targets are abhorrent in his eyes (e.g. douchebags, stalkers, rapists, and domestic abusers) and believes that his actions benefit the world at large. However, he can't recognize that he is also a bad person.
• Pet the Dog:
  • He displays genuine concern for his neighbor Paco, and regularly gives him books, food, and companionship.
  • In the second season, he goes out of the way to look out for Ellie when he realizes she's getting groomed by a pedophile.
  • Rather than holding Delilah in the glass cage indefinitely or killing her when she learns of his crimes, Joe sets her in mechanical handcuffs timed to release her once he's taken a plane to Mexico.
  • After his Heel Realization in Season Two, he finally, truly apologizes to Candace and admits she was right about him and what he is all along. It's probably the most decent thing he ever did regarding her.
  • Joe also makes sure to leave Henry with a stable couple when he goes on the lam because he genuinely wants his son to have a healthy childhood.
• Penny Among Diamonds: He didn't grow up well-off, but finds himself in several elite social circles anyway: New York socialites in season 1, obnoxiously rich suburbia in season 3, and London aristocrats in season 4. He's often uncomfortable in these groups and internally derisive of them and their wealth.
• Pragmatic Villainy: In Season 2, Joe becomes a lot less eager with murder, with his only two in that season being in self-defense and a complete accident. This is partially motivated by guilt of killing Beck and possibly doing the same to Love, it's also because his relationship with Love being much less complicated (she did not have a lover, she's already very into him and her friends and family support their relationship) and there is no need to jeopardize it with crimes. However, in Season 3 after falling in love with Marienne, he has no problem murdering her ex-husband. In Season 4 Joe kicks his violent stalker habits if only because it's getting too difficult for him to just disappear and start a new life.
• Psychological Projection: He does this all the time, whether putting his own motives onto others (Candace once she comes back, Peach), but also assuming his romantic interests will genuinely requite and understand his horrible behavior.
• Psychopathic Manchild: It's shown throughout the series that Joe is still caught in a fairly childlike mentality, both in relation to romance and the world in general. He talks about himself like the prince in a fairy tale, sees his increasing number of love interests as the perfect princess and rationalizes that anything that brings them together is acceptable, even if it means murder.
• Reformed, but Not Tamed: In Season 2 and 3. While "reformed" is a very generous word, Joe takes pains to avoid relapsing into his possessive behavior. Though he does consider murdering Milo and Candace, he doesn't follow through with said attempts and doesn't kill anyone in pursuit of wooing Love for the whole season. His reformation goes completely out the window when he kills Ryan. It seems to stick better in Season 4, as Joe only kills one person within 5 episodes and that was an act of self-defense.
• Retired Monster: Subverted, at the end of the second season he decides to withdraw from his life as a stalker in pursuit of being a good father to his child, but quickly becomes obsessed with another woman. Played straight in Season 4 as he's trying to lay low and has already got too many murder victims that could be traced back to him.
• Rich Suitor, Poor Suitor: Occupies the role of "poor suitor" compared to Beck's other romantic interests, and social circle in general, especially Peach and Benji. Joe feels it deeply.
• Selective Obliviousness: Joe absolutely refuses to acknowledge that Beck, Love, or Marienne, aren't as perfect as he believes she is. He also refuses to acknowledge that there's anything really wrong with his behavior.
• Serial Killer: His body count is up to at least four by the end of the first season and he doesn't stop there.
• Sherlock Scan: Joe is shown to be very perceptive, perhaps to a fault.
• Sliding Scale of Beauty: Joe seems to be an example of "Common Beauty", several people note that he is good-looking, but not enough to stand out or attract attention. However his charm and wit more than makeup for it, making it easy to believe people wouldn't see his true nature. This is especially pronounced in Season 4, where he's among a group of conventionally attractive socialites but maintains an unpolished look that helps him come across as less elitist by comparison.
• Stalker with a Crush: The premise of the series; every time Joe gets a love interest, he begins stalking her to find out everything about her and endeavors to form a relationship with her based on said stalking.
• Sympathetic P.O.V.: Joe is a horrible person, but he manages to be sympathetic to the fact that we see the story from his point of view, teeming with people just as awful as he is but with much less depth.
• Tall, Dark, and Snarky: Not so much in real life for the snark, but in his monologues, he absolutely excels at this.
• They Look Just Like Everyone Else!: He's charming, handsome, and intelligent. No one would think that he's murdered several people.
• Thinks Like a Romance Novel: He really believes in true love and destiny, and imagines he's the protagonist of a romcom or an epic Rescue Romance with whomever he's crushing on, thinking about how he "can't wait to tell [their] kids about this." Which only makes his behavior so much creepier. Beck actually exploits this to trick Joe into letting her out of the cage by pretending it's the Warts and All moment where the girl professes her love for the guy in spite of all his flaws. He falls for it, and the second she's out of the cage, she makes a break for it.
• Took a Level in Kindness: After Season 1, Joe is a lot less willing to resort to violence, only killing a gangster in self-defense and a child rapist by accident, and near the end, he even realizes when a monster he is, gives up his shot at escape, confesses his crimes to Love, apologizes to Candace and prepares to let himself get arrested for seemingly killing Delilah. In Season 3, he tries to be an upstanding neighbor and a good father, but Love's outbursts force him to cover up her messes. Then Marienne enters the picture and he's the possessive, murderous creep we know and love to hate again. Season 4 shows Joe at his most sympathetic, as he's far more restrained around women and due to enjoying his new life, has no intentions of shaking things up by killing anyone.
• A Tragedy of Impulsiveness: He often does things without a plan of how to move forward. He frequently has to think of plans to deal with the aftermath of his mistakes. His first murder was also an impulsive crime of passion, which helped set him on his current path.
• Tranquil Fury: His monologue slips into this whenever he's jealous.
• The Unfettered: He has no moral qualms doing what it takes to get and keep Beck. This takes a weird turn in Season Two when he acknowledges that his actions are wrong and obsessively attempts to avoid repeating them, but he ends up doing them anyway.
• Unreliable Narrator: It's best to take some of his observations of and opinions on other people with a grain of salt, as they are very self-serving, and he's slightly Ax-Crazy.
• Verbal Tic: Joe's inner monologue always puts heavy emphasis on the word "You" whenever he's feeling dangerously romantic. After awhile it becomes clear this "You" he talks about isn't actually any of the women he's obsessing over, but rather some abstract idea of the perfect woman whose face changes as soon as Joe finds someone attractive enough to fit his standards.
• Villain Has a Point:
  • While he surpasses any justifiable actions, he is spot on about Benji being a horrible person, Peach being in love with Beck, and Beck cheating on him with Dr. Nicky.
  • In season 2, he continues to make valid points in regards to Forty's Manchild behavior and how Henderson's past traumas don't excuse his actions.
  • It's very rich coming from him of all people, but in Season 3 he's not wrong that Love has zero self-control when it comes to, you know, not murdering people, or bringing that up in a fit of jealousy at the worst possible moments.
• Villainous BSoD: He suffers from this once Candace locks him in his own glass cage at the end of season 2 and calls Love to show that ”he” killed Delilah. When this happens he thinks that this means that he is Beyond Redemption and thus doesn’t deserve Love.
• Villain Protagonist: Joe is the protagonist in a series with a regularly-changing cast and he does some pretty heinous crimes throughout the show.
• Villainous Parental Instinct: He claims that his sacrifice is that he stays with Love to make sure that Henry is safe. When that doesn't work out, Joe ensures that Henry is adopted by a much better father figure than he could ever have been.
• Wanting Is Better Than Having: The end of Season 2 reveals this to be his problem in a big way. He gets exactly what he wants — a brilliant, beautiful, and even wealthy wife in Love. However, although she really did only do it out of (twisted) love for him, he is both bored and repulsed by her.
• Wicked Cultured: Joe's a definite psychopath but also quite intelligent and has a love of books, particularly old and rare classics. His literary passion helps him get a job as a literary professor in Season 4 and he genuinely loves it.
• Wouldn't Hurt a Child: Arguably his one redeeming quality.
  • Despite the fact that he's murdered multiple people, he wouldn't kill or hurt Paco.
  • Extends to teens as well, as he's shown to care a lot for Ellie's wellbeing even knowing that her sister is capable of looking after her.
  • Joe does seem sincere in his desire to be a good father to his unborn child. When he disappears after killing Love and burning their house to the ground, Joe makes sure to leave Henry with a loving and responsible couple.
• Wrong Genre Savvy: Rather than the disturbing psychological thriller that it is, Joe perceives his romance with Beck as that of a romantic comedy, albeit maybe with a bit of drama. On one occasion he notes (when Beck almost catches him in her apartment) how he's seen enough romantic comedies to know the guy gets out of plenty of similar situations like his. When he and Beck get back together after having broken up, as Joe runs to her house he notes how much this is like in the movies when the protagonist is running in the rain to meet with the girl he loves (though it's not raining, and tellingly when he tries to throw a rock to get Beck's attention he breaks her window on accident.) Even Beck plays into this to tempt him to let her out of the cage, noting how if they were in a movie this would be the climactic moment when they would be kissing, with the music swelling and everything.
• Yandere: Joe will take out anyone he sees as "interfering" with his and Beck's relationship, including Benji and Peach. Additionally, it's shown that he can get extremely jealous and controlling if he suspects his girlfriend of cheating. Furthermore, he murders Beck when she ultimately refuses to accept his dangerous and obsessive side, as well as having kidnapped and then killed Candace (to his knowledge) when she angrily tried to break up with him.
• You Are What You Hate:
  • Joe hates Peach for being a Stalker with a Crush to Beck, despite that being his own most defining trait.
  • He dislikes Forty's misogynistic writing, despite being a misogynist himself.
  • Most glaringly, he utterly hates Love when he finds out she is a murdering Yandere, despite his own body count nearing the double digits by that point.
  • Joe is disgusted by Ryan's manipultions and emotional abuse of Marienne, when he's been just as awful to his own love interests.

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