YOU Season 1: What Does The Ending Really Mean?

9. The Ending

After Beck finds Joe’s stash of creepy mementos – including her own underwear and the phones of her dead friends – she realises just how disturbing Joe actually is. Once Joe knows that she knows, Beck awakens in the book vault in the store’s basement.

Joe tries to give good reason for what he did, and Beck eventually realises that she must agree with him in order to escape. She writes a manuscript framing her therapist, Dr. Nicky, who she had an affair with. But once Joe lets her out of the cage, she turns on him, saying he’s going to spend the rest of his life in jail.

In the end, he killed her. Of course he killed her. He was equally creepy as he was romantic. Joe knew that she was never going to love him again, and if he couldn’t have her then no one could. Plus, there was the fact that Joe did confess to Beck that he killed her ex-boyfriend Benji and wealthy friend Peach, so he definitely couldn’t leave her alive.

Four months later, we learn that Joe used Beck’s manuscript to frame Dr. Nicky for Beck’s death and Joe’s other murders. Even in her death, Joe says he managed to give Beck exactly what she wanted in the end: “The book is yours, Beck. And it made you famous. It’s sad that you’re not here to see it. But I know you would be so happy.”