You season 2, just like its first season, is a binge-worthy roller-coaster ride. Joe once again is the star, which is how it should be since he is a very well written character. The show does a great job in how his narrative blatantly twists awful actions into acts of love in his mind. He is a monster, but a monster that has convinced himself that he is a prince.
There were a lot of twists in the second season, but there were also moments that we saw coming. After all, Joe is the star character and we are familiar with his behavior from the first season. So here are five twists that surprised us and five that we saw coming. Also, spoilers ahead!
Surprising: Joe’s Finger Gets Chopped Off
This whole scenario hit Joe and the audience like a truck they never saw coming. Basically, Joe stole the identity of a man named Will. What he did not know is that Will had enemies that he owed a lot of money to.
So a guy comes out of nowhere and just chops Joe’s finger off, thinking that he is Will since he stole Will’s identity. The man causes this injury so cold and callously, he does not even blink as he provides a bag to put the dismembered finger in. It was a major shock for Joe, and for all of us watching.
We Saw Coming: Joe Locked Someone In A Storage Unit
This scenario was all too familiar after the first season. Joe used the bookstore’s basement as a place to lock his victims such as Beck towards the end.
Now he is in L.A. though, but he still manages to build a similar construction to trap people, except this time it is in a storage unit. Old habits die hard.
Surprising: Forty Getting Joe Kidnapped
Forty was a very entertaining and sympathetic character. He was far from normal in his pursuit of Hollywood fame and would often use Joe as a helper.
What really was a shocker was that Forty goes as far as to pay some Russian bodyguards to kidnap him and Joe, trap them in a hotel room, and force them to write a script for a film. This is all in the same of art! Funnily enough, this happened at worst time for Joe as well.
We Saw Coming: Joe Begins Collecting Love’s Personal Items
No duh, Joe continues to be creepy! His character was tailored for the #metoo era. His character exists to be that bad guy who stalks, sniffs panties, and feels like a hero while doing so.
He did all the same things to Beck in season one, so of course, he would do the same to his next object of “affection.”
Surprising: Love Turns Out To Be A Lot Like Joe
This twist totally changed the game. On the final episode, we learn that Love actually knew about Joe’s background for a while. However, she did not care and wanted to still be with him. She goes as far as killing multiple innocent women so that Joe and she can stay together. So in a way, Joe meets his own shadow.
She even locks him up in his own storage unit while contemplating how they can stay together, just like what he did to Beck in season one. So the season ends with not just a monstrous man, but a monstrous couple on the loose.
We Saw Coming: Joe Lies To Love About Beck And Candace
At numerous times in the season, Joe has to explain his connection to Candace and Beck. Obviously, he lies. He puts that white male privilege to use, and of course, people believe him more than poor Candace.
He frames Candace to be a stalker ex-girlfriend who he is trying to escape from, which is quite ironic since he is the stalker who tried to kill her in the past. None of this was surprising though. If he was honest, he knew that he’d go to prison and that everyone would rightly exile him from their groups.
Surprising: Joe Lets Will Go
Joe gets irritatingly close to a starting point towards redemption in this season. One of the actions towards this was letting Will go free. Poor Will was locked in a storage room for a very long time and knows that Joe stole his identity.
Will convinces Joe to let him go with the simple manipulation of “I know you’re a good person deep down,” and Joe takes the bait and frees him. What’s more surprising, is Joe did not, at least not yet, get any negative consequences for freeing the real Will. Will Will keep Joe’s secret? Will he appear in season 3?
We Saw Coming: Joe Killing People
If you kill once, then the likelihood of doing so again skyrockets . . . and Joe has killed a lot of people. Only the most naive of viewers would think he couldn’t possibly kill again. To be fair, he does kill fewer people than probably a lot of viewers thought he would. We thought he would kill Will, but Will was let go.
We thought he’d kill Candace, but Love kills Candace. He kills five people in season one and only two in season two. Not surprising, but maybe surprising in how few. One of them was even an accident.
Surprising: Joe Is Still Free
This may not be surprising for those who expected a season three, but it was surprising in this ending due to its false trail of foreshadowing. Crime and Punishment appears a lot in this season, and it a cool comparison to Joe’s inner struggle. So Crime and Punishment fans were expecting Joe to follow Raskonikov’s path towards redemption by turning himself in.
Like Raskolnikov, he even had a similar moral child compass, but instead of Sonia . . . it was Ellie. So him still being free is a strange choice based on all that. It did set itself up as a failed love letter to Crime and Punishment. However, the show must go on. Maybe it’s not too late for Joe to be a modern Raskolnikov.
We Saw Coming: Joe Sets His Eyes On A New Target
It’s obvious that Joe fell out of love with Love when she revealed her real personality. However, he stuck with her when she said she was pregnant. However, a child alone cannot fix what is between them.
So it is no surprise that Joe immediately has set his eyes on another woman. Season three will surely be interesting with a family in the mix.
