Summary
The first half of season 4 has Joe Goldberg, everyone’s favorite good-natured serial killer living as a university professor in London. In England’s capital, he finds love, murders, and even a deranged stalker.
Here is our full Story Recap of You Season 4 Part 1, where we describe episodes 1-5. This article will contain spoilers for the Netflix series.
The first half of season 4 has Joe Goldberg, everyone’s favorite good-natured serial killer living as a university professor in London. In England’s capital, he finds love, murders, and even a deranged stalker that’s not him. Now hanging out with members of the aristocracy, the stakes for Joe seem higher than ever. Each of the five episodes is a wildly entertaining and binge-able affair. Here are the main plot points dealt with during You Season 4 Part 1.
You Season 4 Part 1 Story Recap (Episodes 1-5)
Season 4 starts with Professor Jonathan Moore teaching a short story class at a London university. Of course, Jonathan Moore is none other than Joe Goldberg (Penn Badgley), trying to build a new drama-free life after his marriage went up in flames back in Madre Linda. At school, his favorite student is 19-year-old Nadia (Amy-Leigh Hickman), a bright and ambitious young girl with terrible taste in men.
Joe is enjoying his new life, and new city and even engages in some casual stalking of the neighbors – fellow literature professor Malcolm (Stephen Hagan), and his workaholic girlfriend, Kate (Charlotte Ritchie). Malcolm is a drunk and a sleaze (it’s later revealed he’d been sleeping with Nadia) so Joe can’t stand him. He is, however, intrigued by the stoic Kate. Still sad over losing Marienne (Tati Gabrielle), Joe vows off getting too involved with other people again.
When did Joe find Marriane?
Season 3 ended with Joe searching for his one true love Paris. A series of flashbacks show he eventually tracked her down, presumably a few weeks before the season’s main events. As soon as she saw him, the poor woman tried making a run for it, but our Joe chased her into an abandoned building. When he realized how scared she was of him, he made a rare altruistic decision and let her go. He also followed her to the train station and stole her locket. But still, he let her go back to Paris to be with her daughter.
Later on, Joe got tracked down by the Quinn family fixer, Elliot, who’d been sent there to kill him in retaliation for Love’s untimely demise. Luckily for Joe, Elliot was willing to be paid off and even gifted Joe papers identifying him as Jonathan Moore.
Joe moves up the social ladder
Despite trying hard to stay out of trouble, Joe finds himself saving Kate from a group of muggers, leading to Malcolm inviting him to the elitist club, Sundry House. At the club, Joe meets a group of wealthy, spoiled members of the elite, including Lady Pheobe (Tilly Keeper), a sweet-natured noblewoman who’s dating Adam, the owner of Sundry House, but also drowning in debt.
We also meet brother-sister duo Simon (Aidan Cheng) and Sophie (Niccy Lin), one’s a famed artist, the other is an influencer, and Roald (Ben Wiggins), an aristocrat with a knife collection and an obsession for Kate. Socialite Gemma (Eve Austin) is probably the vilest of them all, she doesn’t interact much with Joe, but every time she speaks, something offensive comes out of her mouth.
Joe instantly hates pretty much everyone, apart from Rhys Montrose, famed author and future mayor of London. Like Joe, Rhys was raised by an unstable single mother and only got out of poverty when he learned he was related to a duke. The two seem to form an instant bond, and Joe regards Rhy’s book as the best autobiography he’d ever read.
The Eat The Rich Killer
Soon enough, Joe becomes involved against his will in a series of murders. In the first episode, he wakes up from a drunken night to find Malcolm stabbed on his table. No sooner after he gets rid of the body that he starts getting mysterious texts from someone claiming to be the real killer.
Now in the middle of a whodunnit, Joe needs to figure out who the texter is. Especially as whoever’s behind the killings has also taken an interest in Joe and his past.
The second episode’s victim is Simon, who’s revealed to be a fraud claiming his assistants’ art as his own. As the series progresses and the killings become front-page news the press dubbed the murderer the Eat The Rich Killer. Joe is the only one in direct contact with the killer, who, apart from stalking our protagonist, seems to just want to be friends.
READ: Will there be a You Season 5?
Joe and Kate
Throughout the first couple of episodes, the relationship between Joe and Kate is icy at best. She seems to despise him for somehow inserting himself into the friends’ group without actually being wealthy himself.
By the third episode, their relationship takes a turn for the passionate after Joe starts following her around while trying to protect her from the killer. When the group retreat at Lady Pheobe’s countryside manor, in the final two installments, Joe and Kate’s bond grows even further after she admits she’s actually the daughter of a powerful evil billionaire.
They also work together to hide Gemma’s body (the killer’s third victim of the season) after Kate found it. After briefly suspecting Kate of being the murderer, Joe ends up telling her the truth about the texter, and she somehow believes him.
You Season 4 Part 1 Ending Explained
The half-season finale is set at Lady Pheobe’s countryside manor. While Joe spent most of episode 4 suspecting Roald of being the Eat The Rich Killer, in the end, it’s Roald who decides Joe’s guilty of murdering his friends. Adam, who was friendly to our lead up until now, fully turns against him when Joe reveals his golden shower kink to Lady Pheobe, which ultimately leads to their breakup.
Who is the Eat The Rich Killer?
After a strange mock trial in which Roald accuses Joe of being the killer before sentencing him to death by shotgun, our anti-hero finds himself running for his life in the woods with the aristocrat chasing him. Eventually, Joe overpowers Roald but is soon knocked out himself when the real Eat the Rich killer makes an appearance – It’s none other than Rhys, Joe’s only friend in London.
Rhys locks both Joe and Roald in the manor’s dungeon and sets it on fire. But Kate appears out of nowhere and saves them both. The half-season ends with Joe rejecting Kate and setting his eyes on stopping Rhys once and for all.
And so that completes our Story Recap for You Season 4 Part 1. What did you think of the first part? Are you looking forward to Part 2? Comment below.
