REVIEW | Romanticism of Anti-Heroes – The Danger of Netflix’s ‘YOU’

Warning – The following article contains extensive spoilers.

The romanticism of anti-heroes has always been prevalent on our screens. I’ll admit that I have the biggest crush on Don Draper, but his biggest crime was adultery and lying.

Netflix’s You just released its second season and boy oh boy, it was intense. Described by Netflix as “thrilling and sexy”, the show’s first season followed charming book-seller Joe Goldberg who turns out to be an obsessive serial killer.

In the first season, Joe meets Beck an aspiring writer. He then proceeds to stalk her, but fans of the show claim that it was all out of love and that Beck was ungrateful for not returning Joe’s creepy-disguised-as-romantic gestures.

It does help that Joe is portrayed by the attractive, bookish Penn Badgley (Gossip Girl alumni), who uses his sharp features to seduce his female victims, as well as audiences.

At the end of the first season, he has murdered the woman he loves, Beck, and all of her friends. But still, fans of the show are rooting for Joe’s innocence and are ecstatic when another character is wrongfully convicted for Beck’s murder.

It cannot be denied that You is well made. Though it is at times cringe-worthy, the story is compelling and knows how to keep an audience interested.

But it does raise the question; what responsibility do the filmmakers have to protect audiences? Though Joe knows he is an evil person with the capability to murder multiple times, a lot of the young audience of the show haven’t yet grasped this memo. An unnerving amount of mostly female fans think Joe is “hot” and would happily let him “lock (them) up in his box”, speaking here of the box he would entrap his victims in before their untimely end.

The second season is no less thrilling, as Joe now finds a new love/obsession in Los Angeles. The show begins to hint at a self-awareness not present in the first season. Joe now will only kill if absolutely necessary to protect himself. He wants to protect his fifteen-year-old neighbour from a high-profile pedophile, yet is responsible for her sister’s murder.

In the last few episodes, his love interest of the second season, Love, calls him out on his obsessive romanticism of the women he lusts after; “While I was seeing you, really seeing you, you were busy gazing at a goddamn fantasy”.

Love turns out to be a mirror of Joe’s character, a murderess who also has a dark past. While Joe looks himself in the face, he realises that he is a monster. But fans online debate whether Beck or Love is a better match for him. It seems the obvious answer would be Love; they are essentially the same character. But, ironically, fans are adamant that Beck was the best for him because she “wasn’t a murderer”.

You is a compelling and well-made watch, but it does frame Joe in an unnervingly positive light as we follow only him throughout the two seasons. Audiences, especially younger audiences, should be wary of the way that film and television can warp opinion and view Joe for who he truly is, a criminal with no value for human life except his own.