All The Ways Love Quinn Morphed Into Joe Goldberg in ‘YOU’ Season 3
- For Love, jealously = violence
Just like Joe, Love’s victims in YOU were often somebody she was jealous of or somebody who is posing a threat to her relationship.
In YOU season 3, Love killed her next-door neighbor Natalie (Michaela McManus) just moments after she learned of Joe’s (creepy) affections for her.
In the season finale, it even looked like Love was very close to killing Marienne (Tati Gabrielle), with whom Joe was having a fully fledged affair. Earlier that evening, Joe asked Love for a divorce, only fueling Love’s rage and jealously.
However, Love stopped short of stabbing Marienne with a large carving fork after Marienne’s young daughter Juliette burst into the living room asking to use the bathroom.
If Juliette had not appeared, there is no doubt Marienne would have been Love’s next murder victim, killed in a jealous rage.
- Love is dealing with childhood trauma just like Joe
In YOU season 3, both Love and Joe’s childhood traumas are explored.
Although they came from different backgrounds and had entirely different upbringings, there are some significant parallels between their childhood and the trauma they experienced.
For example, both of them killed at a very young age — Joe his mother’s abusive partner, and Love, her nanny who was sexually abusing her younger brother. They also had absent parents: Love’s rich mother and father were never around and Joe was placed in a children’s home, abandoned by his mother, whose life he had helped save.
During their couples therapy sessions, Love and Joe both admitted to having fears of abandonment and vulnerability.
Victoria Pedretti, who plays Love Quinn, told Newsweek: " I find that they’re not unique in the way they replicate a lot of patterns in their childhoods in their adult life. I don’t think that Love would know what to do with a compassionate, loving, gentleman in her life. I think she would be very confused and skeptical of the situation. You know what I mean? She needs the chaos, she somehow finds comfort in it, I believe, because it feels like home and it feels familiar. And it feels more real than anything else."
- Just like Joe, every killing is justified
Just like Joe, Love always had a reason for why taking somebody’s life was the only option.
If it was not in a fit of jealously, it was because she felt the need to protect her family and what is hers. In season 3 alone, Love killed Natalie as she posed a threat to her new suburban life, Gil (Mackenzie Astin) was attacked and later died after Love found out his daughters gave her son Henry measles and she even attempted to kill Theo (Dylan Arnold) after he found Sherry (Shalita Grant) and Cary (Travis Van Winkle) locked in the basement.
In the end, Sherry and Cary narrowly escaped Love’s (and Joe’s) murderous hands but they too are imprisoned in the glass cage by Love and Joe after they heard Love admit to killing Natalie.
Even when Love tried to kill Joe in the season finale, she justified her actions on the grounds nobody would love Joe as much as she did.
- She is unfaithful
If Love thinks Joe has a wandering eye, she should take a look at herself. In YOU season 3, Love pursued an affair with her younger neighbor Theo (Dylan Arnold), the same way in which Joe chased his colleague Marienne.
It was clear from the outset both were not happy in their relationship and despite Love’s best attempts to salvage their marriage, her attraction to Theo was too strong to resist.
Despite both Joe and Love having extra-marital affairs, both were hurt and angry when they heard of each other’s infidelities and both were willing to make each other pay.
- She killed her first love
Love’s mother Dottie (Saffron Burrows) turned against her daughter in the penultimate episode of YOU season 3.
In a surprising move to protect Joe, Dottie shared with him on their drive to rehab her suspicions that Love had killed her first husband James (Daniel Durant).
Since season 2 of YOU, fans have had their suspicions Love was behind her husband’s death and Dottie’s thoughts on the matter only re-enforced those feelings. In the finale of season 3, Love confessed to Joe that her mother was right. She did kill James and she was about to kill Joe in a similar way.
Love revealed after James recovered from cancer he planned to leave her, something which Love could not handle. “It was the first time I lost it”, she told Joe, explaining how she poisoned James with the intention to temporarily paralyze him so he could not physically leave her. However, Love got the dosage entirely wrong and the poison ended up killing him.
For years, Joe thought he had also killed his first girlfriend, Candace (Ambyr Childers), who had left him for another man. However, Joe was unsuccessful in killing Candace and she reappeared in his life years later, ready to take revenge.
Joe also killed Beck (Elizabeth Lail), who he regarded as his first true love. Just like Love and her ex-husband, Joe had killed Beck after she decided she no longer wanted to be with him.
- Love’s stream of consciousness
In season 3, episode 6 of YOU we hear Love’s consciousness for the first time. During the first two seasons of YOU, everything has been told from Joe’s perspective and for the first time, we really get to hear how Love is truly feeling.
In the episode, Love is attending her mother’s Women Owning Motherhood And Business symposium (#WOMB) at Gaia, Dottie’s vineyard resort, which featured a talk on the “secret of joy.”
Love has no interest in being there which becomes evident later in the episode when she drinks copious bottles of wine and takes a bath, where her inner consciousness revealed her rebellious outbursts were a way to get back at her mother.
While in the bath, Love believed she was having a full conversation with Forty (James Scully) where she came to accept Joe was not her soulmate, her brother was.
- Caring for the vulnerable
Just like how Joe served as a big brother figure to Paco (Luca Padovan) in YOU season 1 and Ellie (Jenna Ortega) in YOU season 2, Love adopts a similar role in terms of caring for Theo.
Before their relationship turned romantic, Love looked out for Theo. For example, she would help search for Natalie’s body (despite knowing where it was), listen to Theo as he grieved the loss of his mother, book him Ubers to make sure he arrived home safe, and would often provide him with food from her bakery.
Make no mistake, there is no doubt Joe and Love’s need to care for those who are vulnerable came from a place of guilt and if they were not their next victims, somebody close to them was.
YOU season 3 is streaming on Netflix now.
