You season 4 showrunner explains why they went with unexpected part two plot twist

You showrunner and co-creator Sera Gamble has explained the thought process behind the shocking season finale twist.

The fourth season of Netflix’s hit psychological thriller series sees Penn Badgley’s character Joe Goldberg bringing his antics across the pond to London, where he’s adopted a new life as Professor Jonathan Moore.

After coming into contact with his neighbour Kate (Charlotte Ritchie) and her wealthy circle of friends, Joe watches as one by one they turn up dead.

In an unusual turn of events, Joe finds himself the prey of a murderous stalker, threatening to expose his identity. He later discovers mayoral candidate Rhys Montrose (Ed Speleers) as the Eat-the-Rich killer, who wants Joe’s help in framing the string of murders on Kate’s family friend Roald, played by Ben Wiggins.

Warning: The following contains major spoilers forYou season four part two

Picking up right where things left off in the season’s fifth episode, part two sees Rhys threatening to pin the murders on Joe if he doesn’t figure out a new person to take the fall.

He then gives Joe a deadline, revealing that he’s kidnapped the protagonist’s former lover Marienne Bellamy (Tati Gabrielle), whose life is at stake if Joe doesn’t act fast.

However, in an unexpected twist, viewers learn that Joe is experiencing dissociative identity disorder, which means all of his interactions with Rhys have been a figment of his imagination, and it’s he who has Marienne locked away in his glass cage.

“At its core, it’s a story that really scares me and intimidates me as a writer,” creator Gamble said of the plot twist in a new interview with The Hollywood Reporter.

“People will immediately be like: ‘Oh, they pulled a Fight Club.’ Right? That’s what I called it. ‘Oh, we’re gonna do a Fight Club thing.’ That’s, first of all, a really high standard. There have been a lot of s***ty versions,” she said.

Continuing, she acknowledged: “You have to have a great reason that you’re doing this, and then also have a lot of ideas up your sleeve about what to do with it when you jump into the deep end.

“The first thing that was appealing was that this was going to be a real challenge. For better and for worse, I don’t have much interest in working on a season of TV that isn’t continuing to challenge me as a writer and challenge the writers room.”

Of the latest series, Gamble called it the “hardest season by a mile”.

“First, we did an entire whodunnit [with part one], and then the whole time we were then going back to the beginning of every single scene and tracking it with what happens when you find out what’s really going on with Rhys,” she added. “We had this in mind for several seasons. We started talking about it early.”

It wasn’t until “we knew we were doing the whodunnit” that they finally “committed” to the unforeseen twist, Gamble said.

“We did keep a close eye on how crazy Joe was from season to season because we didn’t want it to come completely out of left field,” she explained.

You season four part two is out on Netflix now.