Imagine Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. But, of course, there are twists- they both are cunning and deceptive, they’re both calculating instead of naïve and they’re both in a conquest to kill each other instead of themselves. This has pretty much summed up the beginning, middle, and end of Love Quinn and Joe Goldberg’s relationship. Here’s how we’d sum up the ending twist from the last episode of YOU Season 3:

A little context before the details

At the beginning of the second season of YOU, television’s arguably (disturbingly) most beloved stalker-cum-psychopath-cum-murderer relocates to Los Angeles. He has killed a number of people that he felt threatened his relationship with Guinevere Beck. And at last, he killed Beck herself.

Whatever little sympathy fans felt for him whenever Beck ignored or cheated on him completely vanished at the end of the first season of YOU. Then his older partner, Candace, appeared. Candace, who Joe thought he had killed. She was hell-bent on destroying Joe. And so the man runs away from New York to Los Angeles, where he meets Love Quinn.

Love Quinn is a young chirpy woman that seemed a little more upfront than Joe’s previous partners- and fans loved it. The seemingly innocent chef turned out to be murderous. She killed twice in the second season for Joe- Delilah, and Candace. She had already killed her and her brother’s abusive nanny way before she met Joe.

While Joe was busy dealing with his new identity and killing people because of it, Love was busy clearing his other messes. Could it get better, really?

Then came season three of the Netflix Original on October 15th, 2021. And here viewers saw both of them really not hold back with the killings. Love had already killed a woman Joe seemed interested in Natalie. All this by the end of the first episode itself. But what about the ending twist?

Here’s what happened in the last episode of YOU Season 3

The key takeaway of Natalie’s death wasn’t just Love’s impulsive murderous tendencies, we also see Joe seemingly losing interest in her. He was obsessed with Candace, then Beck, followed by Love. The former two had died or were presumed to be dead. It still took Joe time to get over them.

Love was alive and living with Joe. She expected him to be obsessed with her forever. But seems like Joe can only stay interested in a woman as long as she is enigmatic and mysterious to him. The stalking is what keeps him going. The stalking aspect is what gave him the thrill in a relationship and Joe and Love were married. They were past the need for Joe to stalk and “protect” her.

Hence, Joe lost interest in Love. He chased other women. Initially, it was Natalie, their flirtatious neighbor, and then Marienne, Joe’s acquaintance at work. He felt the need to stalk and protect them and so Love felt threatened.

By the final episode of the season of YOU, Love knew Joe was about to leave her. She had been growing wolfsbane in her garden and doesn’t hesitate to give Joe a dosage of it. Viewers expected this to be the death of Joe Goldberg.

But the man pulled an uno reverse on her. Joe injected Love with the very same poison. As for himself, Joe has taken an antidote beforehand. The man knew what his wife was up to all along.

Joe Goldberg had killed Love Quinn Goldberg in a very unexpected climax in the last episode of YOU season 3. He, of course, ensured that nothing could be traced back to him. Joe forged a suicide note claiming it was Love who had committed all the past murders. He cuts his own finger off and puts in a pie, making people believe he’d been killed too. Joe leaves his son Herny with a childless couple who are glad to have the boy. Finally, Joe burns the entire house down.

In the last scene of the Netflix Original, Joe moves to Paris as a reminiscence of the conversation he had with Marianne about the city. And so he’ll find another conquest, another woman that needs to be protected, and another season of YOU on Netflix.