Death is a regular occurrence on Netflix’s You. The series does follow a serial killer, after all — Penn Badgley’s Joe Goldberg, a young man obsessed with the idea of finding “the one.” The number of his victims climbed as the series went on, but he isn’t the only one responsible for the murders on the show.
In Season 2, Joe moves to L.A. and begins to go by the name Will so that he can get closer to Love (Victoria Pedretti). He begins to obsess over and idealize her in the same dangerous ways he did Beck (Elizabeth Lail) in Season 1. However, he’s shocked and ironically horrified to find that Love is just as twisted as he is, and she gives him a run for his money in the murder department.
Look: we’re not here to advocate for murder, BUT… let’s just say that some characters on the show may have had it coming more than others. Here are the major deaths on You, ranked from least to most deserved.
Editor's Note: The following contains spoilers for all three seasons of the Netflix series You.
Delilah
Delilah’s death definitely hit us the hardest. She’s introduced as Joe’s property manager when he moves to L.A. in Season 2, and lives with her younger sister, Ellie (Jenna Ortega), who she takes care of. Delilah (Carmela Zumbado) had a rough start to adulthood, as she moved to the city at a young age and fell in with a bad guy. The man in question, Henderson (Chris D’Elia), sexually assaulted her, but she was never able to prove it.
Delilah adopts a tough exterior after all she’s been through, but she has a big heart underneath. She’s a great parental figure to Ellie, who she tries to keep safe and happy. When Joe and Love break up, he and Delilah start casually hooking up, but her investigative instincts lead her to discover Joe’s creepy warehouse housing his special glass murder box.
When Joe catches Delilah snooping around, he traps her, but is determined not to kill her. While she’s trapped and Joe tries to figure a way out of the mess he’s in, Love discovers Delilah in the cage and kills her so that she won’t be a threat to her relationship with Joe. Delilah was just a very likable character, and one who, like many on this list, deserved much better.
Forty
Sure, Forty (James Scully) has his share of flaws, but he’s just so incredibly likable that it’s really hard to hold anything against him (something Love struggled with as well). Forty was a much better friend to Joe than he deserved, and a better brother to Love than she deserved. Basically, nobody deserved Forty, and his death hit us hard.
Forty is an aspiring screenwriter, and if Joe’s opinions are to be believed, he’s not a very good one. One night, in an attempt to achieve a creative breakthrough, Forty drugs Joe and locks him in a hotel room, so they can write the film adaptation of the novel Joe wrote and passed off as the posthumous work of his ex-girlfriend Beck.
This night ends up revealing all sorts of things, and Forty begins to realize the truth behind the story. When he realizes that Joe is a murderer, he tries desperately to get his sister to stay away from him. He confronts Joe and Love with a gun, and is shot by a police officer. We did get to see him in a lovely dream sequence Love has while drunk in Season 3, but it’s unlikely Scully will reprise his role again.
Candace
Another undeserving death is dealt to Candace (Ambyr Childers), the first of Joe’s girlfriend-victims (that we know of). Candace’s arrival at the end of Season 1 is a huge surprise, as she was thought dead by Joe for most of the first season. It turns out he thought he’d killed her, but actually buried her alive, and she managed to escape. She went to the police, but without hard evidence she couldn’t prove her story.
Candace became consumed with a desire for revenge on Joe, and wanted to make sure that he never hurt anyone else. Candace tracked Joe down in L.A. and pretends to be a woman named Amy, so she can date Forty and get close to Joe and Love. She tries to warn Love about the danger she’s in, but Love kills her for her efforts.
Beck
Beck is a college student and aspiring writer who catches Joe’s eye in Season 1. He obsesses over her, but she isn’t immediately impressed by him. However, Beck’s relationships with men tend to have her turning a blind eye to problems when she doesn’t want to be lonely.
Just when she and Joe appear to be getting to a good place, she discovers Joe’s collection of… memorabilia, which totally creeps her out. She tries to run, but is caught by Joe, who locks her up in the murder box in the basement of the bookstore where he works (and, where they met). Poor Beck uses her intellect and almost manages to make it out alive. She gets Joe to let her out of the cage, but she can’t get out of the basement before he kills her.
Natalie
With Natalie (Michaela McManus), You pulled off the biggest bait-and-switch since the premiere of Season 2. Season 3 kicks off with new parents Joe and Love living in an affluent suburb. Their beautiful neighbor Natalie catches Joe’s eye, probably because he saw her read a book, which apparently does weird things to him.
In the first episode, Joe and Natalie are shown to have a mutual attraction. For Natalie, this is one of what appears to be many casual affairs, but for Joe, it’s the beginning of another deadly obsession. He starts collecting tokens of hers, which Love discovers.
In order to keep her family together, Love lures Natalie to the site of her new bakery under the guise of needing her services as a realtor. She then kills Natalie, and forces Joe to help her clean up the mess. We didn’t get to see much of Natalie, but her death hangs over the remainder of the season.
Peach
Peach (Shay Mitchell) had her share of toxic traits, but we couldn’t help but like her right away. She knew Joe wasn’t to be trusted, and never backed down from her conviction that he was dangerous. Peach is one of Beck’s best friends, and the two have a complicated relationship. Unbeknownst to Beck, Peach harbors strong feelings for her that border on obsession. However, Peach’s obsession doesn’t culminate in violent ways.
Peach often manipulates Beck, going at great lengths to maintain a closeness between them. Joe feels threatened by Peach’s obsession, and tries to kill her by hitting her on the head with a rock. She survives, and is more determined than ever to cut him out of Beck’s life.
When Beck goes to stay with Peach at her family’s vacation home, Joe sneaks along to spy on the girls. He hides around the huge house, until Peach catches him and threatens to shoot him. They end up wrestling for the gun, and Joe kills her. He gets away with it by making it look like a suicide.
Love
Oh, Love. We can’t help but adore this psycho killer, and yet, she is definitely a psycho and a killer. Love is Joe’s third great obsession, but he doesn’t realize that she’s equally obsessed with him. Not only is Love aware of Joe’s past, but it’s something she likes about him. Love feels that Joe is the only man who could be her proper match, as she’s killed in the past for people she loves as well.
Love kills Delilah and Candace so that her relationship with Joe can continue, but Joe reacts completely hypocritically to this and tries to kill Love before she tells him that she’s pregnant. After this revelation, Joe decided to stay with Love, and the two married. However, Love can tell that Joe’s heart isn’t in the relationship. At first, she tries to kill any threat to her marriage, but eventually, she realizes that the problem isn’t her, or other women, but Joe. Unfortunately, before she can kill Joe, he kills her first.
Jasper
Remember Jasper (Steven W. Bailey)? When Joe assumes the identity of Will, he takes over the fake identity of another guy who isn’t named Will. However, not-Will’s identity comes with a bit of baggage in the form of illegal activity and debts owed.
One of the complications Joe faces early on in Season 2 comes in the form of Jasper, a hired goon sent to intimidate “Will” into paying his debts. He cuts off one of Joe’s fingers as a way of threatening him with the seriousness of the situation. Joe reveals to him that the “real” Will is in fact locked up in his storage unit, and kills Jasper before he can tell anyone what he’s done.
Benji
Now we’re getting to the real scumbags of the list. Benji (Lou Taylor Pucci) is introduced as Beck’s terrible sort-of-boyfriend, who’s unfaithful to her and basically just uses her for sex and attention. Joe, viewing him as a threat for Beck’s affections, lures Benji into a trap, and thus we see the first victim of Joe’s glass cage.
While Joe tries to figure out what to do with his captive, he uses Benji’s phone to make it look like he’s just skipped town. Benji grows increasingly desperate to escape, and even offers to let Joe in on his darkest secret: while in college, Benji and his fraternity brothers hazed a recruit to death, aka manslaughter. Instead of taking him up on his offer of mutually assured destruction, Joe kills Benji by giving him coffee laced with peanut oil, which Benji is allergic to.
Ryan
Ryan (Scott Michael Foster) was introduced in Season 3 as the ex-husband of Marienne (Tati Gabrielle). When the two were married, they both struggled with drug addictions that affected their marriage and their ability to parent their daughter.
As Joe begins to fall for Marienne, he is increasingly sympathetic to her custody battle with her ex, though of course Joe’s motivations are selfish and driven by a desire to control Marienne and keep her close. When it looks like Ryan could truly ruin Marienne’s life by taking their daughter from her, Joe “takes care of” the problem by murdering Ryan. Truthfully, we weren’t sorry to see him go.
Ron
Ron (Daniel Cosgrove) was a minor character in Season 1. He was Paco’s mom’s boyfriend, and he abused her terribly behind closed doors. Paco not only had to witness the abuse, but was abused himself. Ron was a cruel man with no admirers, and he and Joe had their share of run-ins.
Toward the end of the season, Joe killed Ron to free Paco and his mother from a man he viewed as a monster. Now, we’re not condoning murder, but by Joe standards, this might be one of the nicest things he’s ever done.
Henderson
Season 2 has Joe pitted against a different kind of predator. Henderson (Chris D'Ella) was a comedian with a history of drugging and sexually assaulting underage girls. He would lure them in with the promise of helping them produce their art, only to violate them in unforgivable ways.
What’s interesting and incredibly frustrating about Joe is how he views himself as a hero, despite so obviously being a monster. Still, he genuinely cares for Ellie, and feels he must interfere before Henderson can do to her what he did to her sister. Joe breaks into Henderson’s house to find that he’s drugged Ellie, and traps him in his creepy sound-proof basement. Henderson tries to escape, but Joe (accidentally) kills him, and then covers up the murder to look like a suicide. Again, this is a death we didn’t take too hard.