Joe and Love Turned a Tragedy to Their Advantage in ‘You’ Season 3 (SPOILERS)
Published Oct. 16 2021, 2:40 p.m. ET
Considering the body count on the Netflix thriller You, the odds of survival for any new character are slim — especially when that character runs afoul of murderers Joe (Penn Badgley) and Love (Victoria Pedretti), as Gil (Mackenzie Astin) did in the third season.
So, does Gil die in Season 3?
Warning: Spoilers ahead!
Gil, described in his character bio as a “mild-mannered geology professor” who is “thoughtful, friendly, and genuinely good-hearted, if a bit vanilla and naive,” met the business end of a rolling pin at Love’s bakery in Season 3’s third episode. That blow doesn’t kill him, but he doesn’t make it out of the season alive…
Gil dies by suicide after learning the truth about his son.
In Episode 3, Gil comes into Love’s bakery and confesses that he and his wife are anti-vaxxers who didn’t give their twin girls the measles vaccine. That means that he’s the reason that Love and Joe’s son, Henry, came down with measles. Infuriated, Love hits Girl with a rolling pin and locks him in the glass cage in the bakery basement.
Joe and Love try to dig up dirt on Gil to coerce his silence, but the only thing they find is a family secret about his son abusing women. That secret, however, comes as news to Gil. And it’s devastating news to the professor — so devastating that Gil dies by suicide in the cage.
Of course, Joe and Love use that tragic twist to their advantage…
'You' Season 3: Joe and Love pin Natalie’s murder on Gil.
They frame Gil for the murder of neighbor Natalie (Michaela McManus), putting his fingerprints on the murder weapon so that it seems like he killed her. Joe even types up a suicide note that explains that Gil and Natalie were having an affair, Gil killed Natalie, and then he died by suicide out of guilt.
In actually, Love bludgeoned Natalie to death after finding out she had a tryst with Joe. And that twist happened in the season’s very first episode, upending expectations that Natalie would have a season-long storyline…
The ‘You’ writers are keeping viewers on their toes.
“You do have to keep switching things up,” You showrunner Sera Gamble told TVLine, reflecting on Natalie’s death. “With a show like this, where Season 1 was such a particular fun, twisty ride coming off of Caroline [Kepnes’] book, we really had to prove to you at the beginning of Season 2 that we would still be able to surprise you. So we did a lot of stuff in Season 2 to try to do that.”
Sera continued: “The conversation at the beginning of Season 3 was, ‘What do you think would happen if you were a viewer?’ And it’s that Michaela would be in the whole season, so we were like, ‘She’s got to go in Episode 1.’”
If you or someone you know are experiencing suicidal thoughts, call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-8255 or text HOME to the Crisis Text Line at 741741.