- Alternative Character Interpretation:
- Did Joe intentionally kill Beck after she escaped from him and tried to run, or did he attempt to knock her out and drag her back into the cage, and either killed her by accident or because she was fighting back? It's all offscreen, all that is known is he strangled her. Joe's hallucination of Beck in Season 4 mentions that she died in his arms, suggesting he cradled her corpse after killing her, possibly indicating remorse.
- Did Peach only see Joe as competition for Beck's affection or did she genuinely and rightfully afraid that he would hurt Beck? Did she genuinely love Beck, or just see her as a possession and/or sex object?
- Some have interpreted Forty's over-friendliness to "Will"/Joe as a crush. It helps that Forty is somewhat aware of Joe's inner monologue and even calls attention to it.
- Forty and Love's relationship is just a bit too close for comfort, with some viewers wondering if they're flirting with incest. Some have also wondered if Love murdered Forty's au pair less out of protectiveness and more because she was jealous. The implication is taken further in season 3, with Love hallucinating Forty appearing in her bathtub with her and telling her he's her soulmate, as well as strongly implying that the reason Love likes her new love interest Theo is because he reminds her of Forty.
- Does Tom want Kate back in New York due to loving her and wanting her career advanced, or does he just want her expertise so she can make him millions?
- Could Kate have achieved a similar level of success without her father's influence?
- Was Bronte aroused, or disgusted and horrified, while reading Joe's smut about her? Or is it a mix of both?
- Anvilicious: Season 3 has some pretty heavy-handed commentary against anti-vaxxers. Henry catches the measles because a neighbor named Gil refused to vaccinate his daughters. This prompts Love to smash him upside the head with a rolling pin and she and Joe are forced to keep him imprisoned in their glass cage. Gil ends up killing himself after being informed that his wife bribed Dartmouth College into letting their son (who sexually assaulted someone at his first school) attend, and Love frames him for Natalie's murder. The storyline doesn't affect the plot at all, as Matthew Engler still doesn't believe the story, and could easily have been taken out.
- Big-Lipped Alligator Moment:
- Joe getting his finger cut off by the guy to which the original Will owed money. It's extremely sudden, has negligible impact on the plot (except that Joe can't make his first date with Love), marks a massive tonal shift, and yet is almost instantly resolved with Jasper's death.
- Also later in Season 2, Joe breaks into Candace's apartment with duct tape and weapons, planning to kill her. He gets knocked out by her Action Girl landlady, Amanda, in a bizarre cameo from Madeline Zima. She hog-ties him on the floor and verbally assaults him for being creepy, but Joe figures out she's into BDSM and pleads that he was only trying to do the same to his girlfriend, "Amy". Despite the fact that Joe just broke in, has weapons, and Amanda seems more than a little unstable, she lets him go. This doesn't progress the plot at all, is a very strange and sudden tonal shift, and is never mentioned again once it occurs. That's all we see of Amanda.
- Catharsis Factor:
- After what Alpha Bitch Peach was and a passive-aggressive bully who nearly raped Beck, Joe killing her was very satisfying for some.
- Despite how crazy Joe is, seeing the utterly abusive and cruel Ron get stabbed in the neck by him at the end of Season 1 is nothing but an utter relief.
- Even if by accident, Joe killing Henderson after how utterly disgusting he was is this too. Same with Jasper who also was not very pleasant.
- The Season 3 moment when Joe first defenestrates Ryan and then viciously stabs him to death in order to protect both Marienne and her daughter from him and to pay him back for how incredibly awful he was certainly qualifies.
- Season 4 has Joe experience a bad trip where he envisions none other than Beck, who greets him simply by saying "You".
- Pretty much the entirety of Season 5. After so long of Joe's murderous rampage across the world and getting away with everything, at long last several survivors of his crimes get in contact and work together to put an end to him. And the honor of personally bringing him down goes to a woman nicknamed after his beloved Bronte, who refuses to give him an easy way out and forces him to rot in prison for the rest of his life...after shooting his penis off and making him a laughingstock to the public during the trial.
- Complete Monster: Season 2: Joshua "Henderson" Bunter is a Serial Rapist who uses his status as a famous stand-up comedian to gain the trust of adolescent girls, before taking them to his home, where he would then drug them before raping them while they are unconscious. He would also take photos of his victims, revealing to have claimed many victims through the number of pictures he had. Henderson had also raped Joe Goldberg's neighbor, Delilah Alves, and attempted to rape Delilah's younger sister, Ellie, after drugging her.
- Crosses the Line Twice:
- The season 1 finale ends on a low note, with Joe murdering Beck and receiving no comeuppance. He mourns her in his usual twisted, possessive way, right up until he sees another pretty face walk in, at which point he immediately forgets Beck.
- Love reads Beck's memoir after figuring out that she was murdered by Joe. Ultimately Love concluded that Beck was a bore who didn't deserve Joe. The melodramatic way Love narrates this to Joe makes for some good Black Comedy.
- In the finale, Joe is filmed during his arrest after being shot in the dick by Bronte. This makes him a meme, and we're shown Twitter posts mocking Joe's castration, including an image of a Ken doll with a smooth crotch and a photo of a deer's face captioned "Some deer finding Joe's blown off dick." Clearly the writers and production designers did their research on how social media users actually respond to causes célèbres.
- Cry for the Devil: Joe's way past the point of redemption by the time it comes, but getting disowned by Henry - the one person in the world that Joe genuinely loved - is still quite harsh to watch. Even Louise felt bad for Joe despite holding him at gunpoint.
- Designated Hero: One of the arguments leveled at Season 2's twist that Love is also a murderer is that it makes Joe into one of these, making his terrible crimes (such as murdering Beck, Peach, and Benji, and kidnapping and imprisoning Delilah and Will) seem even worse by comparison.
- Designated Villain: Also related to the above, but Love. While she is certainly a villain, this show literally has a Villain Protagonist and, unlike Peach or Beck (where we were supposed to believe that Joe was being unreasonable if he had a point), Love has more or less committed the exact same crimes as Joe for the exact same reasons.
- Draco in Leather Pants:
- Perhaps inevitable, since part of the creators’ intent seems to have been to deconstruct this trope. Penn Badgley is handsome enough, and gives a charismatic enough performance that a worryingly large amount of viewers (including Millie Bobby Brown) are willing to overlook the whole "misogynistic stalker and murderer" thing. (Badgley himself has expressed his bewilderment about this on social media, pointing out that his character is an absolutely loathsome human being.) Having Joe forced into a relationship with a murderer after realising the error of his ways hasn't helped matters. To its credit, Victoria Pedretti has dismissed those trying to look deeper into the phenomenon by acknowledging that most viewers are swooning over Penn Badgley, not actually Joe.
- Love fits this trope even more than Joe himself. While Joe has many detractors, Love is the most popular fan favorite, due to how beautiful and charismatic Victoria Pedretti is. She is seen as a badass woman who loves Joe the way he is, and many fans claim that Joe's biggest mistake was killing her. They even try to justify Love killing many innocent people by saying that she only did it for her Undying Loyalty to Joe. They also forget that Joe killed her because Love was trying to kill him as well, after Joe told her he wanted a divorce.
- Peach Salinger had a lot of fans, many of whom couldn't believe Beck would consider Joe when someone like her was in the picture and wanted them together. Disregarding the fact that Peach is a toxic, abusive, manipulative friend, has been obsessing over Beck for years and photographing her without her consent, and much like Joe, wants to control her and can't stand to see her with anyone else.
- Ensemble Dark Horse:
- Everyone loves Paco because he's Joe's Morality Pet and is just a scared kid caught in a terrible situation.
- Ethan delivers serves as the show's comic relief and is all around a nice guy.
- Forty Quinn, with much of the fandom affectionately dubbing him "a disaster." His backstory and current dilemma earns him a lot of sympathy, and the fact that he's a genuinely good person underneath all his dysfunctions endears him to a lot of people.
- Ellie for similar reasons to Paco, while also putting up a tough exterior despite the crap she has to put up with.
- The real Will Bettelheim (or “OG Will” as Joe calls him). Even though Joe kidnaps him, holds him captive, and steals his identity, he’s a genuinely Nice Guy who doesn’t hold it against him, and even offers up some helpful advice later on, good-naturedly calling Joe “Will” in reference to what happened between them. There’s also the fact that, apart from Joe himself he is thus far the only other person to survive being imprisoned in Joe’s glass box.
- Epileptic Trees:
- A lot of people have theorized that Joe deliberately pushed Beck onto the railroad tracks in the first episode so he could have an opportunity to save her.
- There are a number of theories that Beck is secretly alive.
- It's speculated that Love killed her first husband. They were right.
- A common Season 4 theory is that Rhys is a figment of Joe's imagination.
- Double Subverted. Rhys is a figment of Joe's imagination, but also a real person who has no idea who Joe - or rather Jonathan - even is. Too bad for him, Joe figured it out after he killed him.
- Another S4 theory proposes that Nadia is somehow involved in the murders. As it turns out, nothing could be further from the truth - Nadia discovers that Joe is keeping Marienne in a cage and is horrified. He does frame her for her boyfriend's murder at the end of the season, after she saves Marienne and tries to expose him.
- Fanon:
- Just about everyone agrees Forty is bi, James Scully included.
- Even people who don't believe that Love killed her first husband speculate that she had at least something to do with his deteriorating health. They're right.
- Fridge Horror: Joe taking an interest in his new neighbour when he's settled down with the equally yandere-esque Love is likely to cause this woman a kind of torment yet unseen. Joe on his own is enough to upend her world, but Love's fixation on Joe means that once she gets wind of this, she may blame the neighbour of leading Joe on and take revenge.
- Ascended Fridge Horror: Come Season Three and that's exactly what happens. Love figures out that Joe is taking an interest in Natalie and Natalie feels the same way so Love brutally murders Natalie in a fit of rage in the first episode.
- Genius Bonus: In the pilot Joe recommends Don Quixote to Paco as one of his favorite books, saying it's about "a guy who believes in chivalry so he decides to be an old-school knight." Thing is, the titular Don Quixote is an insane old man who sees himself as a hero because his worldview is so distorted, much like Joe.
- Harsher in Hindsight:
- Stand-up comedian Chris D'Elia's role as Henderson, a stand-up comedian who preys on underage girls, took on an extremely uncomfortable subtext after he was accused of preying on underage girls
in real life. - Love and Joe’s relationship (though it was more mutually abusive) and her volatile relationship with her mother became a lot more disturbing when Victoria Pedretti revealed in 2021 that she had an abusive boyfriend and that she grew up in a troubled home which left her with severe self-esteem issues. Her being stalked and lusted over by Joe also gets more unnerving after she revealed that she was sexually harassed by a well-known actor
at a party. - Internet misogynists spurned by Joe's interview harass Bronte, one even trying to kidnap her. In real life, a few of the final season's detractors harassed Bronte's actress Madeline Brewer over her looks to the point she responded
.
- Stand-up comedian Chris D'Elia's role as Henderson, a stand-up comedian who preys on underage girls, took on an extremely uncomfortable subtext after he was accused of preying on underage girls
- He's Just Hiding:
- Beck has been the target of many of these theories, with lots of watchers theorizing that she's somehow still alive, as her death is never shown and we don't see the exhumed body. However, the second season dismisses this: Joe takes the cage with him to Los Angeles (meaning she isn't being held captive), she's only ever referred to as a murder victim, and Joe is plagued with guilt of his murder of her, which includes seeing her ghost show him bruises on her neck from where he strangled her.
- Love's death at the end of Season 3 has gotten a similar treatment, with it being noted that she could've planned ahead like Joe did and taken an antidote to the poison preemptively, as well as the fact that like Beck, her actual moment of death is not shown either. Word of God says that she's indeed dead, however.
- Ho Yay:
- Forty and Joe. Mostly from Forty's end, but Joe also more or less accepts that he's in this situation.
- Original-Will and Joe. Original-Will seems to straight up adore him, especially after being let out of the cage.
- Rhys and Joe, despite (or maybe because of) the former being revealed to be Joe's stalker. Joe flat out admits that they're in a relationship. Even the reveal that Rhys was (mostly) in Joe's head didn't stop fans, judging by how much AO3 Joe/Rhys posts there are. The finale even has Rhys proclaiming that he loves Joe.
- After Kate breaks up with Joe and moves back to London, Kate and Phoebe swear to "swear off men and grow old in the countryside together"
- I Knew It!: Season 4's lategame twist (that Joe was committing the murders and hallucinating Rhys out of guilt) was widely guessed and reported on in the weeks prior to part 2's release.
- Jerkass Woobie:
- Forty is needy, obnoxious, and an overall trainwreck... but, God bless him, he genuinely means well and just wants people to like him. His messed-up background and ultimate fate just seals the deal.
- Candace. She was abrasive and self-centered in the past, and in the present, she's not above using the unstable, affection-starved Forty to get closer to Joe. However, her vindictiveness is entirely justified considering what Joe did to her, and her heartbreaking trauma is evident when he physically gets too close to her at a retreat.
- Dr Nicky in Season 2. He was, by his own admission, a philanderer who preyed on troubled women. However, his life and family was ruined and he was imprisoned for the murders Joe committed. By the time Joe flees New York, he's a broken man who believes he deserves his fate and refuses to help Forty take down Joe. And in Season 5, he is finally exonerated, only to learn that his son Clayton was one of the latest of Joe's victims.
- Natalie Engler, a bored housewife who is completely willing to cheat on her husband with her "boring neighbor." Yet, when all is said and done, she does want to form connections with genuine people and certainly didn't deserve to be killed for Joe's mistakes.
- Matthew Engler violates his neighbor's right to privacy and makes some baseless accusations, but it's obvious from the get-go that he's not dealing with the death of his wife in a healthy manner.
- Theo Engler is annoyingly obsessed with Love and unsubtle about said obsession, even when she makes it clear she's uncomfortable. But when she uses his crush to her advantage, manipulates him and ultimately attempts to bludgeon him to death, it's hard not to feel sad for the dumb kid. Joe even takes pity on him when he finds him injured and heartbroken.
- Love to Hate:
- Joe is a truly lothesome, creepy piece of work to the point that his own actor despises him, but good god does he make one hell of a Villain Protagonist.
- The London socialites (Phoebe being the exception) tick so many insufferable twat boxes that their deaths are very satisfying. Kate's cold-hearted half-sister Reagan maintains the trend in Season 5.
- Magnificent Bastard: Season 4: Elliot Tannenberg is a hitman working for Ray Quinn who has grown tired of killing. Tasked with killing Joe Goldberg, he successfully tracks him down in London. Elliot offers to set Joe up with a new identity as a university professor named Jonathan Moore located in London and trick Ray into thinking he has killed him. Elliot then tells Joe to kill Marianne - with him detailing her location at the train station and the time she is going to leave - and contact him via text once the job was completed. Despite Joe deciding to trick him by sending him a picture of her necklace, Elliot’s plan of tricking Ray still succeeds and is living his best life in retirement. When Joe decides to contact Elliot in his new identity, Elliot destroys his phone when the call is over, showing he is good at covering his tracks.
- Memetic Mutation:
- It's become very common for fans to joke about Joe's narration by imagining him describing something mundane in the same way or even joking about their own harmless fixations being similar to Joe's behavior.
- Jokes about the series crossing over with Emily in Paris after the Season 3 finale puts Joe in Paris.
- Joe's creepy smile at the end of Season 4 became a popular meme template among the fandom.
- Joe shaving off his beard at the end of Season 4 was met with disappointment, some fans claiming that was his worst crime in the season.
- "I was DISSOCIATING!" has arguably become one of the most referenced and memetic lines among the fandom after Joe blurts it out during his mid-Season 5 Villainous Breakdown.
- Wey yaExplanation
- Misaimed Fandom: The entire point of the story is that Joe is, in fact, a bad guy and a loathsome human being, and yet, people find themselves swooning for him.
- Moment of Awesome: It has its own subpage.
- Moral Event Horizon:
- Benji crosses this by unintentionally drowning - albeit with no remorse - a homosexual boy during a particularly intense hazing.
- Peach attempting to straight-up sexually assault Beck after rendering her pliable with drugs.
- Paco, of all people - alike to child protagonist Owen in the movie Let Me In - crosses this when he leaves Beck to die because Joe helped him, just as Owen did by leaving a police officer to be killed by the Villain Protagonist; because they were nice to him when nobody else was.
- The director of Let Me In stated that this was the point where Owen could not turn back anymore, having crossed a line.
- Joe murdering Beck, then framing Dr. Nicky for it. Up until this point his victims weren't any better than himself. The fallout from this action not only forced Joe to move around causing further deaths, but also galvanized a vigilante group to avenge Beck and Dr. Nicky.
- In the books, Joe brutally strangles and suffocates Beck to death. The show depicts her as having bruises around her throat. Her death scene was doubtlessly omitted as it would have been impossible to keep up sympathy for Joe, though in the final episode it's very nearly reprised in horrific detail.
- He crosses it even further at the end of Season 4 when he murders Eddie and frames Nadia for it with no remorse, despite access to limitless resources to deal with them non-violently. With this act, he broke one of the only standards he had of not harming his Morality Pet.
- Henderson is revealed to have crossed it when he molested Delilah when she was 17.
- Love crossed it when she murdered Delilah, who had done nothing wrong by her and was handcuffed in Joe's prison, so she couldn't defend herself.
- From Joe's point of view, Forty crossed this when he bribed a newly-wed couple into letting him kiss the bride, which Joe saw as an attempt to poison the happiness of others for Forty's own twisted sense of amusement. The bride herself was visibly uncomfortable while he was kissing her.
- Ray and Dottie Quinn crossed it when they allowed their au pair to rape their 13-year-old son.
- Dottie crosses it in Season 3 when she goes on a drunken joyride and burns down her vineyard with Henry in tow. When Joe and Love are understandably furious at her for endangering their child, she responds in her usual passive-aggressive, gaslighting way.
- Ryan crosses it constantly when he abuses and torments Marianne in order to get his daughter.
- Narm:
- The wide-eyed, clenched jawed face Joe makes when he's in a dangerous mood (such as when Candace is leaving him or when Beck tries to escape after discovering his true nature) can come off as unintentionally silly to some.
- Beck not having curtains despite living on the ground floor of a very busy street, which many viewers thought was a very hilariously contrived way of giving Joe a way to spy on her sex life.
- It isn't as noticeable to us because we're watching the show through Joe's perspective and can hear his Internal Monologue, but if you take the narration away, you're left with a lot of scenes where Joe is just staring at people for long periods of time without saying anything. Netflix themselves actually caught onto this and released a video with the narration edited out
, even throwing in some snarky annotations at Joe's expense. Eventually the writers themselves took note of this and had other characters acknowledge Joe's pauses.
- Nausea Fuel:
- Benji's decomposing corpse.
- Joe’s various creeper habits, such as stealing and sniffing Beck’s panties. Special mention goes to him keeping used tampons.
- When Joe and Love try swinging with the Conrads, Cary instructs Joe to watch him furiously masturbate. When Joe steps out to answer his phone, Cary tells him he's missing the best part.
- Joe killing a loan shark and turning his body into mincemeat.
- Love accompanying Joe as he digs up Natalie's corpse. Not only is she decomposed, Joe removed all of her teeth.
- Joe frames Love for his murder by hacking off two of his toes and leaving one of them in a pie.
- Malcolm Harding's penis with its pierced foreskin is shown in full uncensored glory after he's been murdered.
- Joe makes an incision in his own arm and sticks a key in the wound. His wincing shows that it is not a pleasant experience. When he's trapped in his own cage, Joe rips the stitches out of his arm using his teeth, leaving his face slathered in his own blood.
- Paranoia Fuel:
- Just about everyone Beck interacts with wants to possess her.
- So you meet a sweet, intelligent guy you have loads in common with, and you two have a whirlwind courtship that seems to perfectly coincide with everything else in your life getting better... except people who have bothered you have disappeared, and that sweet guy is keeping very close tabs on you. Way, way too close. So you call it quits, and from there, things get way worse. Happy dating, ladies!
- And the second season shows that those attracted to women won't get off easily either. That sweet, attentive, lovable girl you've developed feelings for? She's a Yandere who has killed innocent people to "protect" you and those she cares about, and there's a chance you'll be trapped into being with her... Forever.
- Upper middle-class suburbia. No dramas there, right? Aside from having one neighbour who sets up cameras everywhere, another who exposes children to diseases because he objects to taking vaccines, a local tv personality who can get away with beating up anyone that tries to expose him as the monster he is and the fact that several neighbours start disappearing right when a pretty young couple moves in.
- The Eat the Rich Killer, naturally. There's a string of brutal murders happening, the murderer is able to leave zero trace of their involvement or even their existence and worst of all, they've taken an interest in you.
- Season 5 can be this for anyone married to an identical twin, especially when one of them suddenly stops appearing in the same place during family gatherings.
- And in the fifth season, even when you know that there's something wrong with the guy before you date him, that he could have murdered your friend, you can still be in a situation where parts of yourself (your identity, your name) is erased in order to have this relationship, even defending a murder in order to believe in this man, as seen with Bronte.
- Realism-Induced Horror: For most of the show, especially highlighted in Season 1 and 5, Joe will infiltrate a woman's life and take out any obstacles along the way, all in the name of finding the 'One'. For those that can't fit this ideal, Joe will harm them.
- Ron the Death Eater:
- Related to the Draco in Leather Pants phenomenon above, some fans do this to Beck, exaggerating her admittedly true personality flaws (and even accusing her of ones she doesn’t have) and going so far as to imply or even directly state that she “deserved” what Joe does to her.
- Some fans also do this to Paco, mostly because he runs away after Beck begs him to help her escape, leaving her to be murdered by Joe. Never mind that he's a scared child, or that after seeing Joe kill Ron, he's warned by Joe that if anyone finds out, he'd be taken away from his mom, which explains why he leaves Beck to her fate when she starts screaming that Joe has 'killed people.'
- Ellie to some, not enjoying her Bratty Teenage Daughter behavior and the fact that she's an obvious replacement for Paco.
- Also, in an example of "making a villainous character significantly more evil", there's Love in Season 2, who is definitely a villain. She killed several people, but her Moral Event Horizon is almost certainly murdering Delilah, solely to protect Joe. However, a large chunk of the audience are especially keen to see her as "worse" than Joe, which overlooks the fact that Joe is also a murderer of both guilty people (Henderson, Peach) and innocent people (Beck), and framed Dr. Nicky for all his crimes.
- A few fans berated Nadia for being nosy and not minding her own business, even saying that she deserved to be framed for murder and cheering when it happened. While she does make a few stupid decisions and her initial suspicions were not entirely justified (which she herself admits), her nosiness is what led to her finding and ultimately saving Marienne. The only other option was to let Joe be a Karma Houdini. Her apparent stupidity is also overblown; Joe was seemingly hospitalised when she broke into his apartment again.
- Rooting for the Empire: It's almost impossible to dislike Joe, especially in the TV series and even moreso in Season 4 when he's disassociated his violent stalker side and became genuinely good for a time. He presents a likable personality, while most of his victims arguably had it coming. This was likely intentional (to an extent) on the part of the creators, however, and most viewers will be jerked back to their sense by the time Joe murders Beck. As for those who still don’t get the point afterward- see Misaimed Fandom above.
- Spiritual Antithesis: To Gossip Girl (2007). Both feature Penn Badgley as a tech-savvy sociopath stalking a blonde girl in a New York setting, but while Gossip Girl presented that character as a good guy, You emphatically does not.
- Spiritual Successor: A charming sociopath with a genial Mask of Sanity who frequently uses First-Person Smartass to hide his utter disdain for the people around him, and who has to balance his personal life with his work and frequently finds the two crossing over despite his best efforts. Basically this is what happens when Dexter switches genres from a Crime/Police Procedural to a romance.
- They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character:
- Paco and Claudia. They're mentioned at the end of Season 1 to be moving to California but although Joe also moves to California in Season 2, we...simply never see them again, nor are they ever mentioned.
- Mr Mooney. He is set up as a major part of Joe's backstory in Season 1. He never appears after that due to Mark Blum's death from Covid-19 in 2020, but that still leaves Season 2 where he could've appeared and shed more light on Joe's backstory, which he doesn't.
- The mysterious photographer following Joe, theorised to be his mother or a PI, is a stalker obsessed with Phoebe.
- Tom Lockwood had the potential to be Joe's ultimate nemesis, but he appears very late in Season 4 nestled in among all the other subplots before getting killed off in the finale.
- They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: Adam's manipulation of a drugged-up Phoebe appeared to be leading up to a confrontation between Joe and him, which someone was definitely getting murdered. Instead, Kate's father is the one who has Adam killed.
- Threesome Subtext: A lot of very weird subtext for Joe/Love/Forty. Joe and Love are in Mad Love, Forty and Love are dangerously codependent, and Forty really likes Joe, who tolerates him for Love's sake. Love insists that even if she and Joe run away together, Forty has to come with. Even Joe acknowledges he's basically in a "goddamn throuple" with the twins. Season 3 even leans into this by showing Love hallucinating that Forty is taking a bath with her.
- Too Bleak, Stopped Caring: The fact that Joe is a serial killer who ended Season 1 victorious has led a lot of people to believe that, ultimately, Joe will come out on top and not being punished for his crimes; indeed, a lot of people don't want him to. This surfaced again in Season 4; not only does he date a billionaire heiress and get away with everything, including framing his Morality Pet for murder, unlike Season 1, he isn't even presented with any new threats.
- The Woobie:
- Beck. She's an average woman suffering from abandonment issues, surrounded by narcissistic people who are either obsessed with her or don't care about her. Then Joe comes into the mix, complicates everything and she's strangled to death after being trapped in glass cage for days. Regardless of what you think of her attitude or lifestyle, she didn't deserve that.
- Karen Minty, albeit to a far less traumatic extent. She's a kind, loving woman who's a great friend to Claudia and is actually a good girlfriend and positive influence on Joe... and for her trouble, she gets cheated on and unceremoniously dumped. Ouch.
- Paco, the poor kid. His mom loves him, but she's an addict and trapped in an abusive relationship with a man who hates him. The only adult who treats him with kindness and is consistently there for him is Joe. Yes, that Joe.
- Dr. Nicky. Not only was he arrested for a murder he didn't commit, but years later, Joe kills his son.
- The Alves siblings. Ellie is a fifteen year old girl with dreams of being a cinematographer, and is one of Henderson's current targets. Delilah is a journalist with a moderate disdain for men after her experiences with Henderson sexually exploiting her. At the end of the series Delilah is murdered by Love after being locked in Joe's cage, and Ellie is forced to leave town because the Quinns have tried to paint Henderson's murder on her.
- Forty Quinn. In past he was molested by his babysitter when he was thirteen, dealt with addiction and longed for approval from his family and friends. And when he finally finds a good friend in Joe, not only he finds out later that he is a stalker and a murderer but also his sister is a psycho Yandere. And his reward for trying to defend his sister from Joe is an accidental Suicide by Cop.
- Gil Brigham, his anti-vaccine opinions aside, is a genuine Nice Guy who stands out from Joe and Love's two-faced neighbors. But when Love learns that his views led to Henry catching measles, she assaults him with a rolling pin and she and Joe are forced to imprison him in a glass cage until they can dig up blackmail material on him. When they finally unearth that Gil's son is a sexual predator, Gil is so devastated by the news that he commits suicide. Love then frames him for having an affair with and murdering Natalie and hangs his body at his house for his wife to see. At least his name was cleared by the end of the season.
- Marienne Bellamy, the latest of Joe's love objects. She's recently divorced and her ex-husband treats her like utter crap, using his influence and connections to keep her from gaining custody of their daughter as well as barging in on her during work hours and screaming in her face for the sake of feeling dominant. Then he leaks her nude photos and ruins her chance at a book deal. It's little wonder Joe finds her huddled outside a liquor store when her attempt at a custody hearing proves to be rigged against her. And that's without mentioning that her knight in shining armor is chauvinistic murderer who won't hesitate to kill or traumatize women that don't fit his definition of perfect. Then Joe tracks her down in London and kidnaps her, clearly having snapped and gone full on crazy. He imprisons her in his glass cage for weeks and she only escapes through faking her death. If that's not bad enough, the girl who helped her escape ends up framed for murder and imprisoned.
- Phoebe, especially due to being manipulated by the people she considered her friends, namely Joe and Adam, who ends up using her for his own benefit.
- The real Rhys Montrose, who had genuine benevolent goals of wanting to help everyone who went through what he did but it goes down the drain when out of nowhere he ends up being tortured and murdered by a psychotic man (Joe) he has never met his entire life and that too for something he wasn't even responsible for in the first place.
- Hugo, Tom’s bodyguard. For what little we see of him, he's just a doing his job. Alas, he ends up stabbed to death by Joe and framed for Tom’s murder.
- Nadia. A promising young student who helps Marienne escape from Joe’s captivity, she ends the season with her boyfriend murdered and Joe framing her for it and the real Rhys’ murder. Even when Kate frees her in Season 5, she reveals that her family already bankrupted themselves trying to pay for her defence and her father died just after the trial.
- Maddie Lockwood. Her sister Reagan has been abusing her since childhood and pressured her into being a surrogate parent for no other reason than vanity, when the surrogacy almost damaged Maddie's pelvis. Then she's kidnapped by Joe simply because she was in the wrong place at the wrong time, was forced to share her prison with Reagan during which the latter kept up the torment before finally cracking and killing her sister. Maddie then has to impersonate Reagan to ward off suspicion, which stresses her out due to constantly having to sneer at people she loves while dealing with the guilt.
- Clayton, Dr. Nicky's son. His dad was arrested for a crime he didn't commit, and he and the rest of his family were doxxed and harassed to the point of having to change their last name. And Joe ends up killing him.
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Ymmv/You2018
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