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"Mature Content Warning!" |
Joseph Gabriel "Joe" Goldberg is the main protagonist of the Netflix thriller series You.
He is an obsessive serial killer who establishes a pattern of encountering and stalking women, falling in love with them, subtly isolating them through machinations and murders, "fixing" them, having his dark secret found out somehow, trapping the women, and killing them. He repeats this pattern fully or partly throughout the show while lying to himself that he is an ordinary person until the finale of the penultimate season, where he embraces his serial killer nature and wholeheartedly acts in what he considers the name of love while choosing to live in his savior complex delusions.
He is portrayed by Penn Badgley. He was also portrayed by Gianni Ciardiello, Aidan Wallace, and Jack Fisher for his youth, and Ed Speleers for his alternate personality as Rhys Montrose.
His Evil Ranking[]
What Makes Him Heinous?[]
In General[]
- He is a stalker and serial killer who targets emotionally vulnerable women that are generally intelligent or artsy and attempts to remove the obstacles in their lives through murder and manipulation. As the series progresses, he increasingly kills people just because he enjoys doing so while making a post-hoc justification.
- While he claims to love the various women he targets for his stalking efforts, he is actually just obsessed with them and views them as "projects" which he needs to fix in order to attain the idealized romantic partner in his head who will validate his horrible characteristics as a human being and which he can put on a pedestal in an uneven and hierarchical relationship. When they deviate from Joe's expectations, he will start to lose interest in them, and when they come too close to discovering the insane serial killer who he actually is, he will kidnap or kill them. If they do die, Joe will dismiss them as a failed relationship before moving onto his next target.
- Additionally, while he does care for Paco and Ellie, he still negatively impacted both of their lives in some way, permanently warping Paco’s moral compass leading him to abandon Beck to her death, and he indirectly caused Delilah’s death, which left Ellie an orphan.
- While he does care for his son Henry, Joe still refuses to change his ways for him. He also takes him away from Dante and Lansing despite them being far more sane, stable parental figures for his son. Kate Lockwood herself notes that Joe barely even sees Henry, and primarily sees him as an extension of himself.
- Though he views himself as an extremist who murders human garbage and is a protector and savior of women, this is just a manifestation of Joe's pretentious nature and his delusions. While many of the people he murders are very unpleasant and cruel people, many of them don't deserve to die and Joe kills them not for justice, but because they’re an inconvenience to him in some way. Joe consistently looks down on other people for relatively minor transgressions while justifying any flaw and act of violence when they are committed by him, a clear showcase of his narcissism.
- Most, if not all, of the standards he claims to hold are hypocritical:
- He claims to object to abusers and misogynists as a result of his backstory, calling out people like Forty, Malcolm, and Benji for what he perceives as misogynistic attitudes, believes men like his father, Ryan, Ron, Dane, Henderson, etc. are evil predators who have to die. He says he's nothing like them, but he is no better than them. He is a nightmarish partner who stalks, gaslights, manipulates and who is willing to kidnap or kill the women he is with when they find out about his true nature. His own beliefs are incredibly misogynistic as he views women as fundamentally incapable of navigating their lives on their own and needing a man to steer the wheel. In the Season 5 finale, he goes on a misogynistic tirade towards Bronte, calling her selfish and ungrateful for not loving him, believing himself to be entitled to her, in spite of all his actions, he even states that his actions made her special, completely disregarding her own achievements, and this is where we finally see how Joe truly views the women he preys upon, despite stating that he loves them unconditionally.
- He expresses horror at Peach Salinger for stalking Beck and taking nude photos of her, but Joe had been stalking Beck the entire time (and kept those pictures for himself) as well.
- His standards against sexual abusers are also a bit hypocritical even if they hold up, as Joe is a sexual voyeur and is shown masturbating to women and his stalking victims while watching them without their consent, as shown by him doing so while watching Beck masturbate through her apartment window, and also collecting their personal belongings for his own gratification.
- His disgust at being cheated on is hypocritical as well. While he is hurt by Beck gaslighting him and cheating on him, he also cheated on Karen with Beck, and he would only repeat this tendency of cheating on his partner with a women he has a new obsession with, when he got bored with his current partner as shown with Love, where he had an emotional affair with Marianne, and Kate, where he had an affair with Louise Flannery. Essentially, he is a bigger gaslighter and cheater than the women he calls out for that behavior.
- While he expresses guilt about his actions throughout the first four seasons, he is still unable to prevent himself from falling into his old habits of stalking and obsessing over women, and he doesn’t want to admit the truth that he’s a cruel man just like the men who victimized him as a child. While he does attempt to redeem himself in Season 2, by throwing away the spare key and keeping himself locked in the cage for the police to arrest him, this disappears after he marries Love, and he falls back into his habits as shown when he becomes obsessed with his neighbor Natalie Engler, and then later on Marienne Bellamy.
- After his failed suicide attempt at the end of Season 4, Joe takes his survival as a sign that he should embrace the murderous side of himself and his actions are ones he shouldn't be ashamed of. While he does express remorse near death twice in the season, after he embraces his murderous nature, he goes back on it and is fully remorseless by the end.
- Any of the remorse he feels throughout the show is not because he genuinely believes he is in the wrong, but mainly through blaming others for his bad actions to absolve himself of any guilt. This is to reinforce his belief of himself as a good person, believing everyone else to be in the wrong, which is the center of his misogyny, as he thinks all other women are "ungrateful, and spiteful" for not reciprocating his feelings or for rightfully believing his actions to be horrific.
- While he is undeniably insane, he still has a clear understanding of right and wrong and is simply willfully delusional of how evil he actually is as opposed to genuinely having problems with his moral autonomy, as shown with how extremely he judges other people for their immoral acts.
- While he seemingly lacks autonomy for a good portion of Season 4 due to his killings being performed by the alternate Rhys personality, Joe deliberately formed this alternate personality as a way to isolate his normal part of his life from his mass murder and after his suicide attempt fails, he reincorporates both personalities and acts with full autonomy from then on.
- While he has a biting sarcastic sense of humor and several humorous moments through the series, he's still taken completely seriously by the narrative and is played for pure terror at many points in the final two seasons.
Background[]
- He murdered Elijah Thornton in a fit of rage by pushing him off a building, after Candace had cheated on Joe with him and even after Elijah revealed to Joe that he wasn’t aware of him since Candace never mentioned him. Before Joe charged at Elijah, he stood there with an unhinged demented smile on his face, indicating that the idea of killing this man excited him — an early indicator of his sadism.
- After Candace attempted to leave him, Joe kidnaps her and attempts to coerce her into remaining his girlfriend. When she tries to escape, he grabs her and slams her head on a log, knocking her unconscious. Thinking she’s dead, he buries her in a shallow grave. While he thought he accidentally killed her, given his pattern, it’s most likely he would've killed her anyway if she did not take him back.
Season 1[]
- He begins stalking Guinevere Beck after meeting her in his bookstore. He breaks into her home and steals personal items (her underwear, tampons) for his own gratification and one night, he masturbates while watching her outside her window.
- He steals Beck's phone so that he can monitor every single action that she does, completely violating her privacy.
- He kidnaps Benji and attempts to mine information from him before killing him with peanut oil that he's deathly allergic to even after he cooperates.
- He manipulated Paco to buy gasoline to avoid suspicion by buying it himself. Afterwards, he uses it to dispose of Benji's corpse by setting it on fire in the forest.
- He steals Peach Salinger's laptop where he discovers NSFW pictures of Beck taken by Peach in secret. He keeps these photos for his own gratification.
- He attempts to kill Peach by hitting her with a rock from behind while she's jogging.
- After his initial attempt to kill Peach fails, he discovers she intends to offer Beck to live with her in Paris, which causes him to commit to killing her again because it would take Beck away from him. He trails Peach to her house upstate and shoots her before staging her death as a suicide, which emotionally devastates Beck.
- While he is cordial and appears to treat Karen well during their short relationship, he ultimately breaks up with her because of his dissatisfaction with their relationship. She does not suit his image of a woman that needs saving, which demonstrates he never really cared about Karen more than as a rebound from Beck, and this only highlights his misogyny.
- It’s heavily implied that Joe was using Karen as another means of justifying his behavior towards the women he was obsessed with, to convince himself that he “never wants to hurt women” because Karen dated him and lived.
- She was not only one of two women Joe dated that he was not obsessed with (the other being Delilah) but arguably the most well-adjusted out of everyone he dated, which implies he prefers women that are dependent on him or that give him an excuse to indulge in his murderous tendencies. This is also highlighted with Kate when she no longer required his saving and forbade him from expressing his murderous desires.
- He physically assaults Dr. Nicky and contemplates killing him after he discovers that he was having an affair with Beck.
- While he seemingly has a Pet the Dog moment by letting Dr. Nicky go, he subverts this when he frames him at the end of the season.
- He kidnaps Beck after she discovers the truth of his actions from a box of trinkets of his previous victims that he kept hidden behind bathroom ceiling panels. While there, he attempts to frame his actions as rational and acceptable despite Beck being absolutely horrified by him being a deranged serial killer. It's also implied that he kept the trinkets of his previous victims as trophies of his kills.
- When Beck attempts to escape, he strangles her to death and then finishes the memoir in her stead, taking her voice from her.
- He frames Dr. Nicky for murdering Beck, resulting in him being sentenced to prison for decades.
Season 2[]
- He buys an apartment at a specific location in Los Angeles for the specific purpose of being able to surveil Love Quinn through a telescope, having become obsessed with her.
- He kidnaps Will Bettelheim, steals his identity, and contemplates killing him.
- While he does eventually let him out of the cage and gives him his passport, it's primarily to convince himself he's a good person for Love rather than any true moral reasons. It's also unlikely that Will would've told the cops anything due to being a shady man himself who was using a fake name.
- When he accidentally throws Ellie's phone off the roof of his apartment when he believes she is spying on him, he buys her a new phone with a tracker app linked to his phone so he can essentially spy on her, which shows how his behavior with Ellie starts out by bordering on the same behavior he exhibits to the women he obsesses over.
- When Joe couldn’t come up with the money that Will owed Jasper Krenn (a mafia gangster) to make him go away, he made an offer to hand the real Will over to him, even though he knew that Jasper would probably maim or kill Will over his money.
- He stabbed Jasper to death with a machete before disposing of his body with a meat grinder, though it was in self defense. While Jasper deserved it, he was right when he said that Joe needed psychiatric help upon seeing Will in a cage.
- He kidnaps Henderson and tries to get him to confess to his sex crimes via knife torture. While this is arguably deserved as Henderson did molest teenage girls, Joe partially does this to rationalize his own behavior. This attempt to get justice for the victims also goes awry as Joe gets angry when Henderson compares himself to Joe and calls him out on his attempts to play hero, causing him to reveal his face, exposing himself at which point he gets distracted when he calls him out and Henderson attempts to escape by running upstairs, only for Joe to grab a hold of him and accidentally kill him by throwing him down the stairs. While Henderson deserved to die, Joe’s failure to keep his emotions in check prevented him from getting a confession on camera and Henderson dies with his reputation largely intact.
- He attempts to kidnap Candace from her apartment so he can try to kill her, but her roommate is present and she ambushes him.
- When Love found out the truth about Joe from Candace, he plays the victim and distorts things to make Candace sound like she is crazy.
- He kidnaps Delilah after she discovers his box of trophies and evidence that he’s the one who killed Henderson.
- While he was not the one to kill her (Love Quinn did), Joe created the circumstances that allowed it by locking her in the cage.
- It’s also very likely that Joe would have killed Delilah himself, as he decided he wasn’t going to leave his relationship with Love behind and he had been trying to get to the cage to lock the door before Delilah’s handcuffs opened up, thus preventing her from escaping. That is how he discovered her body. He also has a hallucination of his mother (who is a manifestation of his own subconscious thoughts), whilst on acid, that says he intended to kill Delilah and was simply in denial about it.
- He attempts to kill Love’s brother, Forty, by choking him to death in a fit of rage after he recited words similar to what Beck told Joe before he killed her. Even though Forty was being provocative and Joe wasn’t entirely in his right mind due to being dosed with heavy acid, this doesn’t absolve him as he was already contemplating killing Forty and staging it as an accident long before he had been drugged.
- When Forty tells Joe that he suspects that Dr. Nicky was framed by a jilted ex boyfriend who actually murdered Beck, Joe walks up behind him with a glass shard, fully prepared to slit his throat with a broken glass figurine. He does stop himself, but only when he realizes that Forty was not accusing him directly.
- He nearly kills Love Quinn and only relents when he learns she's pregnant. This is arguably justified, because Love is revealed to be an obsessed serial killer and she kept Joe in the cage, but this does show more hypocrisy and a lack of accountability on Joe’s part, since Love is exactly like him.
- At the end of the finale, Joe is shown to be obsessed with the next door neighbor, who is later revealed to be Natalie Engler.
Season 3[]
- Growing increasingly unsatisfied with his new life in Madre Linda, he attempts to cheat on Love with Natalie. This is extremely selfish on Joe’s part as he is risking an innocent women’s life by putting her between his marriage to Love despite being well aware of Love’s violent possessive nature.
- One of the reasons Joe starts losing interest in Love, is because he saw her as impulsive and too emotional which could’ve had bad effects on their family, and while this might be true, it’s another showcase of Joe's hypocrisy, since he also commits terrible actions out of pure impulse, as shown with Elijah and Cary.
- He steals Natalie’s personal belongings, keeping them in a box of trophies which Love discovers later on.
- He assists Love in disposing of Natalie's corpse after she kills the latter in a fit of rage.
- He attempts to help find dirt on Gil Brigham after Love beats and kidnaps him. This leads to Gil killing himself in shame after discovering his wife had helped cover up his son sexually assaulting two women, although Joe does try to save him.
- After Gil’s suicide, Joe frames him for Natalie's murder by forging a letter where he confesses to it, with no regard for the impact this would have on his wife and kids.
- He shoves Cary off a cliff in a fit of rage, momentarily thinking he might have killed him. While Cary had struck Joe and tried to goad him into a fight, Joe’s response was wildly excessive.
- While he does want to be a good father to Henry, and is initially there for him, he starts to become a more absent father towards him, since he prioritizes stalking and obsessing over Marienne Bellamy even while he is still married to Love. something Love notes multiple times and even states herself that she does most of the actual parenting.
- He attempts to start an affair with Marienne despite her objections. He attempts to destroy his marriage with Love to do so, deliberately attempting to ruin her self esteem and manipulating her into considering an open relationship after Sherry brings up the idea so it will look like he didn't directly destroy it.
- When Joe is rummaging through Marienne’s belongings, he finds nude pictures of her and he proceeds to uses them for his own pleasure, despite the fact that she never meant for him to have them. It’s unknown if he kept them, but it’s very likely, given he made copies of NSFW pictures that Peach had taken of Beck and kept them.
- After Love has an outburst where she reveals that she killed Natalie, Joe assists her in subduing Sherry and Cary who overheard it, then locking them in the cage, so they couldn’t go to the police.
- When the couple is in the cage, Joe and Love have sex with each other, which they both remark is the best they’ve had. Joe says to himself that “our love language is violence”, one of the earlier implications of Joe’s sadism.
- He brutally murders Ryan Goodwin by pushing him off a ledge and stabbing him to death after his attempts to make him appear an unfit parent fail. While Ryan was a scumbag who abused Marianne and lied about being sober in order to get custody of Juliette, Joe did it for self-serving reasons, because Marienne was going to follow Ryan out of state to keep fighting for her daughter and Joe, being fixated on Marienne, wanted to keep her right where she was at. Joe also forces Ryan to look into his eyes when he stabs him, another subtle implication of him relishing the act of murder.
- While Joe killing Love was justified, deserved, and on the surface might seem like self defense, he knew that she was planning her move against him with the poison and instead of telling the cops, he decided to make his own injection of poison to kill her first. It’s also very likely that Joe would’ve proactively killed Love as he intended to take Henry away and raise him with Marianne which she wouldn’t have allowed to happen.
- He abandons his son in order to evade suspicion with authorities, though he leaves him to be raised by Dante and his partner due to knowing they'd be good parents.
Season 4[]
- He trails Marienne to France and claims he'll let her go before drugging and kidnapping her in an attempt to convince her to stay with him. He keeps her captive for several days, drugging her constantly and breaking her arm when tossing her in a cage. There, she's kept captive for nearly a month, with Joe giving her drugs with the intention to make her relapse and with the food stores eventually trickling until she nearly starves to death.
- He intentionally develops a split personality based on author and politician Rhys Montrose in order to separate the normal and serial killing aspects of his life from each other.
- After Malcolm Harding comes back home drunk with him from a party, his Rhys Montrose personality stabs him to death for unintentionally insulting Marianne by saying she isn't worth it. Upon regaining consciousness, he chops his corpse into pieces before disposing of them.
- He begins to stalk Kate Galvin, growing jealous of her high-class friends and how they treated her.
- His Rhys Montrose personality kills Simon Soo by stabbing him to death for threatening to ruin Kate's career.
- While stalking in a cemetery, he kills Vic, Lady Phoebe's bodyguard, by strangling him to death with his tie after he rightfully suspected that Joe killed Malcolm, though this was in self defense. He then buried him in Simon's freshly dug grave and forged a letter saying that Vic resigned to avoid raising any suspicion.
- After his Rhys Montrose personality kills Gemma Graham-Greene for bullying Kate and accusing Joe of being the Eat the Rich Killer, Joe manipulates Kate into helping him hide the body.
- His Rhys Montrose personality attempts to kill both his dominant personality and Roald Walker-Burton before Joe chains himself and Roald below a medieval dungeon in Phoebe's mansion. Then, Joe sets the dungeon on fire with a lantern, burning down the entire mansion.
- His Rhys Montrose personality makes his dominant personality frame Dawn Brown as the "Eat The Rich" killer.
- While he sincerely believed he was getting rid of the Eat the Rich killer by killing the real Rhys Montrose, he still needlessly tortures him in an attempt to extract a confession despite Rhys actually being innocent.
- While Tom Lockwood was an absolutely monstrous human being who deserved to die, Joe's sloppiness results in him killing and framing his innocent bodyguard as collateral.
- After his failed suicide attempt, Joe abandons the notion that he should stop murdering people or any repentance for his actions, committing fully to being a serial killer while lying to Kate Lockwood about the extent and motivation of his actions.
- He kills Edward Owens and frames him as the Eat The Rich killer before framing Nadia Farran for killing Edward and Rhys Montrose and getting her sent to prison for decades, subverting his care for her. This resulted with Nadia's father dying of a heart attack upon hearing his daughter's sentence.
Season 5[]
- It’s mentioned that Joe does manage to go 3 years without killing anyone, but this is only because he hadn’t been provoked into doing so, and it was mainly to garner a good public image as a member of the Lockwood family.
- During his free time, he acquired a typewriter and used it to create sick and twisted murder fantasies on paper about ways he could sadistically kill people, such as Kate's uncle, Bob Cain.
- He kills Bob after he attempts to vote Kate off the board by leveraging the crimes that Kate helped covered up in order to force her to leave.
- When Joe finds out that Henry got into a fight, he comments that he can’t wait to get his hands on the “little sh*t who messed with” his son.
- He kidnaps Maddie Lockwood under the mistaken belief that she's her twin sister Reagan.
- He kidnaps Reagan and forces her and Maddie to kill one of each other and then force the other to imitate the sister they killed.
- When Kate shows repentance and objects towards his actions, Joe is incensed and enraged.
- He cheats on Kate with Bronte.
- He kills Clayton Angevine after he gets into a dispute with Bronte.
- He attempts to manipulate the media into siding with him by getting a livestreamer to interview him. This demonstrates that while Joe's tragedy still affects him, he is willing to use it in order to reinforce his public image.
- He kills Dane after Bronte lets him go, although he deserved it for what he planned to do to her.
- He nearly kills Teddy Lockwood after breaking into the house where he was keeping Henry in an attempt to see his son.
- He contemplated killing Harrison and Maddie after Kate spitefully told him he would never see Henry again, although he doesn't go through with it.
- He frames Harrison for the murder of his wife Reagan, to draw out Kate Lockwood back to New York since he knew she would bail Harrison and Maddie out.
- He tries to ambush and kill Kate Lockwood in a parking lot, only to discover it was a ruse with a body double in order to kidnap him and force him to admit to his crimes.
- He attempts to emotionally manipulate Nadia by sowing division against her with Kate and relating her experiences to his own (further demonstrating him using his backstory to his advantage), while demonstrating no actual remorse or conscious for completely destroying her life. He enrages Nadia so intensely that she nearly shoots him before they can force a confession.
- He escapes the cage by stitching a key into his arm and ripping it out and then attempts to kill Kate by shooting her and bashing her head in with a mallet. When Maddie sets the bookstore on fire without realizing Kate is inside, he tries to manipulate Bronte by claiming that Kate was attempting to kill him unprovoked.
- He breaks Bronte's ankle while she's asleep in order to ensure she can't try anything against him while they flee the country.
- While Bronte expresses sympathy for him during his emotional breakdown after his son calls him a monster, she still decries him for his self pitying behavior and his obsessive need to frame himself as a victim despite her pity, and Joe's refusal to see that he is responsible for his own predicament due to him continuing his actions for his own selfish desires.
- He tries to kill Bronte after she reveals she was leading him on to force a confession of his murder of Beck. Joe is shown at his most animalistic and deranged during this sequence, shooting her, tackling her repeatedly, and showing clear sadism as he pledges to show Bronte how he killed Beck by attempting to strangle her to death. After he believes he killed her through drowning, Joe shows absolutely no remorse for his actions.
- After the police close in on him, Joe stabs one of them to death.
- After Bronte reveals that she mimicked dying to fool Joe, he attempts to convince her to kill him so that he will evade responsibility for his actions and won't have to face jail time. When she refuses, he attempts to tackle and kill her.
- His fate of having his genitalia destroyed by having it shot off and being sent to life in solitary confinement is played for complete satisfaction in light of his previous actions.
- Even after being sentenced to prison, Joe shows no remorse for his actions and attempts to play himself off as a victim of society with no autonomy despite being given numerous clear chances to go straight and repent for his crimes, instead placing the blame on everyone else, and by proxy the audience.
What Makes Him Inconsistent?[]
- He has a genuinely tragic backstory that clearly still affects him to this day, which is too much for NPE.
- His mother had multiple abusive boyfriends that physically abused the both of them while she worked as a prostitute, and she would leave him in public sometimes for hours when she had sexual encounters with them. Afterwards, Joe's biological father put cigarettes out on his arm to force a confession of his mother cheating, which Joe refused to do, leading his mother to claim she would kill his father and escape with him. After his father attacked his mother, Joe shot and killed him to protect her. His mother affirmed his actions but abandoned him at a group home due to being afraid of him and wanting to start her life over without him. There, Joe was viciously bullied and physically harassed, just for believing that his mother would come back for him, only receiving affection from Nurse Fiona, who was a mother figure to him. After discovering that she was in an abusive relationship, Joe was told to not interfere, with Fiona eventually being likely killed by her boyfriend, which made Joe feel guilty and gave him the impression that he should've interfered, since he had an opportunity to kill him, but didn't go through with it since he remembered his mother abandoning him after he killed his father to protect her. When he tracked down his mother, he learned she had moved on without him with a new son, which leaves him heartbroken and lonely. Afterwards, he was taken under the wing of Ivan Mooney, who frequently physically abused him and locked him in a glass cage downstairs with no food or water for days straight to discipline him. Mooney would also persuade Joe that it was a place for protection and that he locked him in the cage out of love, and as a result, he would improve as a person and a bookstore manager. When Joe committed his first murder, he was distraught at what he had done and went straight to Mooney, who told him that "some people deserve to die", and strongly believed Joe was justified in this murder, which explains why Joe views himself as an extremist who murders human garbage. All of this led to Joe becoming a serial killer and resulted in him gaining a savior complex towards women, a belief that depriving people of autonomy could be justified for their own good, and to pursue a woman to love and care for as well as a desire for unconditional love and adoration no matter what he does.
- This tragedy is shown to still clearly affect and motivate him throughout the show. He recites exactly what Mooney taught him to Paco and seeing the cage as a place for growth and introspection to Beck (who expresses some sympathy for him) in Season 1. In Season 2, he starts crying uncontrollably when he recalls a memory of his mother when visiting Love's acupuncturist friend Gabe and its revealed that the loss of his mother is what makes him chase love so much. In Season 3, he hallucinates his mother saying she forgives him when he's on his LSD trip after Forty drugs him, and later that season during a Madre Linda men's weekend bonding trip, recalls a memory of being bullied at the group home leading him to shove Cary in a fit of rage, and later breaking down in tears when feeling acceptance by the men at the trip. Even at his worst in season 5, he has an emotional meltdown when he recalls being locked in the cage by Mooney, showing that he has unresolved trauma despite it making him look worse to the press, and when talking to Bronte in the cage, he is uncomfortable talking about his past with her and she sympathizes with him when talking about his mother abandoning him for a new life and son and leaving him in the group home, saying he didn't deserve that. At the end of the season, he breaks down crying at his inability to ever find love after being rejected by his son, which drives Bronte to tears.
- His stalking and murderous tendencies are also a direct product of his tragic background, with each action around it symbolizing a stage of the cycle, falling in love with women (his mother and Nurse Fiona), removing toxic influences in their life (saving his mother by shooting his father), befriending a younger individual so they don't suffer like him (the innocence he lost as a child), kidnapping the women or locking them in the cage to get them to understand him (Mr Mooney's teachings that changed him in the cage) and the women leaving him in some way after they find out about his actions (his mother abandoning him). He even makes numerous attempts throughout the series to improve himself and change, only to be held back by his inability to recover from his trauma and break the cycle. When he seemingly makes progress, it starts to fall apart once he realizes his dissociation as the Eat the Rich Killer. After learning of this, he feels remorse for his actions and attempts suicide, but after this fails, he embraces his murderous side after concluding that he can't get better.
- While not a villain by proxy due to his actions, he likely wouldn't have turned out to be the person he is if he had been raised in a healthy environment with care and support from a normal, loving family. He even has a moment of contemplation when he wonders what he could've been like if he grew up with different parents or was raised in another bookstore.
- He also has many resulting insecurities due to his trauma which are played for sympathy, such as his deep settling abandonment issues stemmed from his mother, unconditional need for love and adoration, self pity and view of himself as broken, and his constant fear of rejection and need for control that he lacked in his childhood, all of which contributes to his attachment to women and belief that his actions will prevent them from leaving him like his mother left him.
- His mother had multiple abusive boyfriends that physically abused the both of them while she worked as a prostitute, and she would leave him in public sometimes for hours when she had sexual encounters with them. Afterwards, Joe's biological father put cigarettes out on his arm to force a confession of his mother cheating, which Joe refused to do, leading his mother to claim she would kill his father and escape with him. After his father attacked his mother, Joe shot and killed him to protect her. His mother affirmed his actions but abandoned him at a group home due to being afraid of him and wanting to start her life over without him. There, Joe was viciously bullied and physically harassed, just for believing that his mother would come back for him, only receiving affection from Nurse Fiona, who was a mother figure to him. After discovering that she was in an abusive relationship, Joe was told to not interfere, with Fiona eventually being likely killed by her boyfriend, which made Joe feel guilty and gave him the impression that he should've interfered, since he had an opportunity to kill him, but didn't go through with it since he remembered his mother abandoning him after he killed his father to protect her. When he tracked down his mother, he learned she had moved on without him with a new son, which leaves him heartbroken and lonely. Afterwards, he was taken under the wing of Ivan Mooney, who frequently physically abused him and locked him in a glass cage downstairs with no food or water for days straight to discipline him. Mooney would also persuade Joe that it was a place for protection and that he locked him in the cage out of love, and as a result, he would improve as a person and a bookstore manager. When Joe committed his first murder, he was distraught at what he had done and went straight to Mooney, who told him that "some people deserve to die", and strongly believed Joe was justified in this murder, which explains why Joe views himself as an extremist who murders human garbage. All of this led to Joe becoming a serial killer and resulted in him gaining a savior complex towards women, a belief that depriving people of autonomy could be justified for their own good, and to pursue a woman to love and care for as well as a desire for unconditional love and adoration no matter what he does.
- He demonstrates care towards several people:
- He cared for his mother, evidenced by him refusing to tell his father about his mother cheating, leading to his father to put out cigarettes on him, and shooting him to protect her when he was attacking her. When he tracked her down, he was happy to see her and tried to reconnect with her, only to learn she moved on with a new son. Even after this, he still seems to leave her be and accept that she wasn't coming back for him, as he doesn't wish any ill-will towards her or her new son after finding her, and even tells Love his mother was a saint and that she tried to take care of him. He also hallucinates her as a subconscious of his own thoughts, being genuinely happy when hallucinating her forgiving him, showing deep down he just wanted his mother's approval and love in his obsessions.
- He cared about Nurse Fiona, seeing her as a mother figure and wanting to protect her from her abusive boyfriend. When she disappeared, Joe blamed himself and felt guilty about it.
- He genuinely likes Paco, letting him rent books, giving him food, stops him from getting in trouble for his "chemistry experiment" on Ron by refusing to press charges on Ron for his assault, stops Paco from stealing a gun to shoot him and gives him the keys to his place, kills Ron after he threatens his life, and when Paco asks if it was right to kill him, he doesn't tell him it was. He also admitted to Claudia that he cared about Paco, and when they both leave New York, he returns his goodbye hug and tells him he can move on from his experience with Ron and live a good life.
- He grows affection for Ellie, saving her from Henderson, genuinely comforting her when she is distraught over Delilah missing and thinks that nobody wants her, rejecting Love's plan to frame her for Henderson's murder, and makes an effort to send her money after she leaves. Even after Ellie tells Joe she hates him, Joe simply tells himself that she should hate him, but as long as she is safe.
- While he partly views Henry as an extension of himself and his need to succeed as a father compared to his own, and lies to him about his actions, he shows too much concern for him and his well-being to dismiss his care as purely being an obsession. He reveals in his internal monologue he's the most terrified he has been in his entire life when he's sick with measles, is enraged at Dottie when she endangers him by taking him on a drunken joyride, finds the best possible couple he can think of to raise him, shows clear affection towards him and is angered when Kate hides a knife under his bed, and he is heartbroken after he rejects him and declares him a monster. Even after being rejected by him, he still admits to Bronte that he loves Henry so much and that maybe he deserves better than him.
- Despite Mr. Mooney's abuse towards him, Joe shows clear affection and appreciation towards him for taking him in and raising him. After Mooney had a stroke, he blamed himself for not being there for him at the time, making sure to visit him every week, and while he wasn't present when he died during COVID, this was because the country was on lockdown and Joe could not travel to see him. He also speaks fondly of Mooney in Season 5, buying his bookstore back in appreciation for him, and telling the press that Mooney was his father figure who loved him.
- While letting Will out of the cage and getting him his passport was self serving, he has affection for him after he leaves, even remarking him as a good man. In season 5, he is revealed to be on friendly speaking terms with him and even helped Will pay for his house, for no pragmatic reasons.
- He abhors rape and pedophilia.
- He is disgusted by Henderson and attempts to make him pay for his crimes to the point of breaking into his house, restraining him and attempting to extract a confession out of him.
- He saves Ellie from being molested by Henderson.
- When he thinks Reagan is about to be raped, he prepares to save her because he could not bring himself to let her suffer that, and this is also in spite of the fact that he does not like her and saving her would ruin his goal.
- He would also never sexually assault someone under any circumstances and also refuses to target any minors as his "Yous".
- Whilst displaying a perverted side in retaining their underwear, masturbating outside of their homes, even keeping their bloodied tampons, his prevention still holds up for the aforementioned reasons.
- He is disgusted by Henderson and attempts to make him pay for his crimes to the point of breaking into his house, restraining him and attempting to extract a confession out of him.
- He's shown to be protective of kids and has a fondness for them, helping Paco and Ellie on multiple occasions, before having to part ways with them, as well as growing to care for them. He's also shown to have enthusiasm towards a reading circle that he has with children and is disturbed at the thought of a child having to go through the system, which is one of the reasons why he stops Paco from killing Ron, refuses to frame Ellie for Henderson's murder, and leaves Henry to be raised by Dante and Lansing when he leaves the country.
- Whilst faux-affably evil and innately contemptuous of others, he has numerous “Pet the Dog” moments:
- When Claudia explains that Ron has connections and he can use them to get Paco removed from her custody, Joe apologizes to her for lashing out and tells her he didn't know that her situation with Ron was that screwed up, and when Claudia gets a new job which will give her and Paco an opportunity to have a fresh start, Joe is shown to be happy for the both of them.
- When Delilah was struggling to expose Henderson for his sex crimes against her and others, Joe comforts her and apologizes with how Henderson hurt her. Joe also did initially try to help Delilah be the one to expose Henderson at first, by giving her the photos he found at Henderson’s home. It’s only after that failed and Ellie was being targeted that he decided to take things into his own hands.
- He genuinely sympathizes with Forty for his tragic past and abuse at the hands of his former babysitter, as well as him being lost in life and desiring to prove himself to his family, comforting and assuring Forty that he was not a monster, that he had a bright future, and that he did not kill his babysitter, Sofia, and that he was just a confused kid. This was even after Forty had trapped and drugged Joe.
- He refuses to frame Matthew Engler for his wife Natalie’s murder after empathizing with him and viewing him as a good man.
- Sent Theo to the hospital so that he could recover from the injuries he sustained from Love Quinn’s attempt to kill him, for no pragmatic reason, despite the threat Theo could pose in reporting this.
- In Season 2, he planned on letting Delilah out of the cage (like he did for Will) and was very distraught at the thought that he might’ve killed her. He even says if he did kill Delilah that he deserves to be punished.
- He later genuinely apologizes to Candace while locked in the cage, saying that she isn’t crazy and he was wrong for trying to kill her in the past. This was in front of Love (who he assumed was just a normal girl, not a killer), so he had nothing to gain out of doing that.
- He advises Phoebe to live her life the way she wanted it, tries to help her relationship with Adam, and protects her from her mentally ill stalker Dawn Brown.
- He pushes Kate away when she asks him out, saying that he wanted to protect her from him.
- He comforts Connie when he confides that he is depressed over being a deadbeat dad and a drunk, and refuses to frame him as the Eat the Rich killer due to empathizing with him.
Trivia[]
- His original book counterpart lacks his TV show's counterpart's redeeming qualities and his deeds are so horrifying and worse that there's a chance that he could qualify as Pure Evil.
- He can be compared to Johan Liebert from the manga and anime Monster, as both are the main villains of their story who bring pain and destruction to several people, and both were abandoned during childhood by their mothers and thus were deprived of their affection and love, which serves as the root of their evil. They were both also NPE at one point before being removed and added here due to being too tragic and sympathetic.
External Links[]
- Joe Goldberg on the Villains Wiki
- Joe Goldberg on the You Wiki