WARNING: The following contains spoilers for Season 3 of You, now streaming on Netflix.
In Netflix’s You, Season 2 did hint that Love Quinn was a bigger monster than Joe Goldberg as she orchestrated everything, playing Joe and driving him to murder so she could win his heart. It was a very brutal bit of entrapment, although Season 3 finds Joe once more reverting to his nasty, selfish ways. It’s left fans bickering once more over who’s the bigger villain, so let’s dissect why this is officially confirmed to be Love.
Admittedly, Love just wanted a happy home, but her maniacal sense of control runs deeper than Joe. It shows in flashbacks where she killed her nanny to free Forty from her grip, proving she was every bit as impulsive as Joe. And in Season 3 of You, while Joe cages his murderous beast, wanting to be a good dad to baby Henry, it’s Love who goes off the hinges, bringing her old persona back.
She’s as rash as ever, firstly killing their neighbor Natalie as Joe’s lusting for her, while resolving Gil’s anti-vaxxing and Henry getting measles from his kid with violence too. Love has no restraint, and these deaths push Joe into clean-up mode and an unhealthy obsession with Marienne. If not for Love, he’d be calmer, but he needs Marienne to balance himself out.
Not that it’s acceptable, but still, Joe becomes a monster again as Love starts manipulating their marriage even more. To top it off, Love has an affair with Theo, a teen next door, as he tries to figure out with his dad what happened to Natalie, his step-mom. It’s literally Love playing with a fire she created while Joe just wants to put it out and move away from the smoke.
Sadly, for all the calculations he makes, Love undoes everything and keeps adding fuel to the flames and chaos to the sadistic order Joe’s trying to create. And the thing is, Love has no compassion or empathy as she doesn’t care that he’s mopping up the messes she constantly makes. She’s too emotional, which comes out when the bombshell is dropped by her own mom: Love actually killed her first husband, James.
We thought he died of illness, but when James wanted to leave, Love drugged him, with the dosage accidentally murdering him. The family covered it up with their wealth and influence, which is why it makes sense that she drugs Joe up too and tries to kill him for loving Marienne.
It says a lot to see that Joe’s scared of her, hoping to run away and find happiness, as he knows as evil as he can be, Love takes things to another level. Sure, he’s culpable, but once more, Love’s stringing him along this path as she needs the veil of death in their lives to keep him as her unconditional slave.
Season 3 of You is streaming in full on Netflix.
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