‘You’ Season 4 Part 2 Ending Explained: Who Is the Real Eat the Rich Killer and Where Did Each Character End Up?

Credit: Courtesy of Netflix © 2023

‘You’ Season 4 Part 2 Ending Explained: Who Is the Real Eat the Rich Killer and Where Did Each Character End Up?

Warning: This story contains spoilers from season 4, part 2 of You. 

He’s back! Joe Goldberg proved that a leopard doesn’t change its spots — and nothing is how it seems — on season 4, part 2 of You.

“I think what the show was doing is, like, a campy exploration of our most toxic misconceptions of love and power and ourselves,” Penn Badgley explained to The Hollywood Reporter about the show’s epic plot twist after part 2 hit Netflix on Thursday, March 9. “And if we forget that and get lured in by his unreliable narration and think we’re actually in a story about a man who’s trying to change and trying to fall in love and trying to find somebody, well then we’re too much under Joe’s spell. And that’s good on one hand, because it means we’ve made this thing in a compelling enough way that that’s what it does. But the show is most valuable when you’re under Joe’s spell and you’re watching it, again, as more as an exploration of us, rather than just about him.”

After part 1 of the Netflix hit’s fourth season premiered in February, viewers were led to believe that Badgley’s character — formerly Joe, now Jonathan Moore — had jetted off to London to begin a new life as a better person before the Eat the Rich Killer, unveiled as Rhys Montrose (Ed Speelers), began killing his friends.

Part 2, however, revealed that the villain wasn't Rhys, after all — it was Joe, who created an alter ego to embody his darker demons. In addition to being unmasked as the killer of every person who died in season 4 part 1, You also gave fans a second surprise: Marienne (Tati Gabrielle) never escaped at all.

The Gossip Girl alum shared that the play on Joe as an unreliable narrator is exactly how the show was able to trick its audience.

“If you think it’s about him, that’s when you’re too much under the spell,” he explained. “And so I think I was just trying to help the concept do what it does best. I mean, it’s right there in the title. It’s You. It’s not him. Not taking anything away from him and his transgressions.”

Showrunner Sera Gamble, for her part, shared with Vulture in March that the Fight Club-like narrative is something she and executive producer Greg Berlanti had planned for a while.

“Joe’s character arc is something we had been talking about for a couple of seasons,” she said. “Greg would point out that the pressure on him only gets greater the more he runs and tries to start over. The thing that’s particularly fascinating to me is how baroque his justifications have had to become. It’s one thing to have to justify killing one or two ex-girlfriends, and it is quite another to walk into a season with a minimum of 10 murders under your belt.”

Gamble noted that the show began weaving in Joe’s hallucinations back in season 1, adding that by season 3, “he had a fever, and the inner monologue became a whole separate Joe that was sitting there, taunting him.”

While Joe eventually attempted to kill himself by jumping off a bridge in the final episode of season 4, he survived the fall and pledged to start a new life with girlfriend Kate (Charlotte Ritchie). The decision to keep Joe alive is something Badgley was on the fence about.

"Joe is a perfect device because you can delve into something, but you always have the safety cord or the safety net of, 'Yeah, but he's a hypocrite.' We are all exploring something earnestly, I think. But of course nobody has a perfect perspective, so if there's any place where it's really got some blind spots, well, that's Joe, frankly. That's OK. So, in a way, I really like that," he told Salon in February. "It's like we can dig in and not worry about having a perfectly protected stance, because at the end of the day, Joe is an unreliable narrator and a despicable human being."

He continued: "So, just because he's thinking it and saying it, doesn't mean that we think it's right. But he is getting at something, and of course people can identify with that. So to me, Joe is, like, he's a many-sided die. He's got too many sides, and he needs to die."

Keep scrolling to see how things ended for Joe on part 2 of You season 4:

Credit: Courtesy of Netflix © 2023

Who Is the Real Eat the Rich Killer?

Part 2 of the Netflix series revealed that the Eat the Rich Killer, who was previously identified as Rhys, was actually someone else entirely. 

While part 1 led viewers to believe that Joe’s new life as Jonathan was helping him become a better person, part 2’s twist unveiled that he’s worse off than ever. Not only is Joe the actual Eat the Rich Killer — who murdered every character that died in part 1 — he has been hallucinating Rhys’ presence.

Credit: Courtesy of Netflix © 2022

Does Rhys Exist?

While Rhys is a real person on the show — an author who is running for office in London — he and Joe have never met. Instead, Joe has been hallucinating Rhys in order to protect himself from his own dark thoughts. Rhys — at least, the version that’s been torturing Joe — was a figment of Joe’s imagination to help Joe avoid his own wrongdoings. He chooses Rhys as his alter ego after stalking him and learning all he can about the writer, even keeping his memoir in one of his “secret boxes.”

Rhys is eventually tortured and murdered by Joe after Kate's dad, Tom (Greg Kinnear), bribes him by threatening to reveal Joe's real identity. Once the real-life Rhys is dead, he continues to haunt Joe, alerting him to the fact he’s created a character in his mind to deal with murderous behavior.

Credit: Courtesy of Netflix © 2023

Which Dead Characters Make an Appearance?

Joe hallucinates ex-girlfriend Beck (Elizabeth Lail) and late wife Love (Victoria Pedretti) — both of whom he murdered in seasons 1 and 3, respectively. The two women haunt him as he’s beginning to remember the atrocities he’s committed while in London. 

Credit: Courtesy of Netflix © 2022

What Really Happened to Marienne?

Viewers were led to believe that Joe let Marienne go after tracking her down in London. However, part 2 reveals that Joe actually drugged her and kept her hostage in an apartment before transferring her to one of his infamous cages hidden in a nearby basement.

Nadia (Amy-Leigh Hickman) eventually discovers Marienne, who is on the verge of death after being ignored by Joe. He, meanwhile, has convinced himself he no longer is doing dark things. In an attempt to help her escape, Nadia gives Marienne pills that help her heart stop long enough to convince Joe she’s dead. Once he disposes of her “body,” Nadia revives Marienne and she secretly flees back to Paris to reunite with her daughter.

Credit: Courtesy of Netflix © 2022

What Is Joe's Fate?

After realizing all the murders he’s committed — and believing that Marienne is dead — Joe attempts to throw himself — and fake Rhys — off a bridge to drown. While it initially looks like Joe’s demise, he’s later seen recuperating in a hospital.

While Joe's on the mend, he comes — somewhat — clean to Kate about his past, and the pair decide to start a better life together where they hold each other accountable. The two move back to New York City so Joe can run a bookstore and Kate can be in charge of the company after her father, Tom, disappears. What Joe doesn’t tell Kate is that he is behind her father’s murder.

Joe has also seemingly accepted the darker parts of himself, as Rhys no longer appears to him following his suicide attempt.

Credit: Courtesy of Netflix © 2023

What Happpened to Nadia?

While it initially seems like Nadia is going to survive as the hero of the story — and that Joe is going to turn over a new leaf — he tracks Nadia down in the season's final moments and gives her the option to either die or remain alive. He ends up framing her for all the murders he committed before departing London.