You Season 3 began with Joe and Love moving to a Cali suburb called Madre Linda, or pretty
mother. Although the doctors had said that their child would be a girl, they had a boy
and named him Henry Forty Quinn-Goldberg. Love’s goal was to protect Henry since she
had failed to protect Forty. And Joe’s goal was to be a good father and husband for Henry.
But problems began right away with their neighbor Natalie. Joe wanted her. He stalked her. And
she wanted him as well, so she invited him over to drink, shut off the cameras, invited
him inside, and then they kissed in her book room. Joe stopped it there, but went back
to Love and thought about Natalie while he was inside her, the first of several times
that they both did this over the course of the season.
Love and Natalie almost bonded at Sherry’s party until Natalie lied to Love. Joe had
already told Love that he went over to Natalie’s, but Natalie tried to pretend as if he had
not. Big mistake. Love found Joe’s box of Natalie’s stuff and knew that he was obsessed
with her. So she then signed a three-year lease for the new bakery shop and in a moment
of rage, she killed Natalie. That leads into part 2. The Cage.
Love told Joe that she had not planned it like some sort of psychopath. So they decided
to build a new vault. Something that they could use to slow things down and make smart
decisions. And it’s worth noting that they both secretly hid keys in the vault, highlighting
their divide and foreshadowing the eventual showdown.
The first victim of the vault was Gil Brigham. Henry came down with the measles. Then Joe
did, too. Love was pissed at Joe for having not been vaccinated. But Gil Brigham went
to Love’s store and apologized to her because he and his wife were anti-vaxxers. So it was
actually their children that got Love’s child sick. And as a result, Love smashed
him over the head. They then locked him in the vault so as to plan out what to do instead
of killing him. Joe asked Gil for some dirt, but Gil didn’t
really have dirt on himself. However, Joe figured out that Gil’s son, Alan, had assaulted
a girl named Vicky. And Gil’s wife, Margaret, paid off Vicky’s family so that Alan could
attend Dartmouth. Gil hadn’t known. So he felt like a failure of a father and hung himself.
Love then came up with a plan. She planted the axe in the woods and had Joe plant a fake
suicide letter so that it looked as if Gil had had an affair with Natalie, killed her,
and then killed himself. Well played, psychos. But things began to go south because both
Love and Joe began lusting for other people. Theo and Marienne. Theo pursued Love hard.
They kissed, and eventually, they went all the way. Similarly, Joe became infatuated
with Marienne, and they eventually kissed when the faulty sprinkler system went off
at the library. All you book nerds out there – don’t lie. That was pretty hot.
But back on track. Although they were not aware of the other’s transgressions, they
knew they had issues. And Love wanted their relationship to work, so she encouraged Joe
to swing with Shelly and Cary. At first, Love liked it, but then Love realized that Joe
was imagining someone else. So she ran downstairs and freaked out, yelling that she had killed
Natalie for him. Shelly and Cary heard her say that, so Cary tried to run away, but Joe
shot him with the gift bow and arrow. And then they were locked in the vault. Hakuna
Matata. Cary tried to shoot the door, but it ricocheted
and grazed Shelly’s ear. She then tried to graze his leg in return, but instead, she
straight up shot him, and he almost died. But towards the end, Shelly found Love’s
key. They both got out. They both survived. And they wrote a book: Caged: A Radical Couples
Therapy Technique. Next up, Ryan.
Ryan was Marienne’s ex. And he was friends with the judge, so he won custody of their
child, Juliette. Ryan got a new job, so he was going to move out to New Jersey, and Marienne
planned on following them there. That meant that Joe was going to lose Marienne. And he
could not have that. So Joe pushed Ryan off of the parking deck. That was a callback to
the stairs from his youth, where he thought about pushing off one of the school bullies
and also thought about pushing his nurse’s abusive boyfriend. It was a callback to Joe’s
very first kill that we know of in adulthood – Elijah. And it was also a callback to
the hunt, when Joe pushed Cary off the ledge. But just like Cary, Ryan did not die. So Joe
ran down, stabbed him, and bounced. Meanwhile, Natalie’s husband Matthew had
never bought into the story that Gil and Natalie had an affair. He suspected Love and Joe.
So he had a friend hack into the public camera system with facial recognition software. Long
story short, Theo found out that Matthew had his eyes on Love, so Theo told her what his
father was doing. And inside the vault, Shelly convinced Love to out Matthew on Shelly’s
popular blog. So Matthew deleted everything, but not before Theo stole some of the camera
footage. Theo saw Joe, so he ran to Love and warned her. But she betrayed him. Luckily
for him, Joe decided to drug Theo and drop him off at the hospital, which allowed Joe
time to escape Madre Linda. And Marienne also got lucky.
Love realized that Joe had killed Ryan, which meant that Love had killed Natalie for Joe,
but Joe had killed for Marienne. And that broke Love. So she put aconite on the knife,
and Joe was paralyzed. Then she texted Marienne to come over so that she could kill her as
well. But right as she was about to do it, Marienne’s daughter Juliette came inside
to use the restroom. And Love decided to let them go free.
Love told Joe that Marienne made being a single mother look good. And she attempted to do
the same by killing Joe. Unfortunately for her, it didn’t work out. And the reason
is very ironic. Love told Joe that he was poisoned when he
grabbed the weapon. In other words, she had put aconite on the knife. However, Joe had
already taken some adrenaline because Love’s own mother, Dottie, had betrayed her.
Dottie betrayed Love by telling Joe that Love had killed her ex-husband James. Joe had seen
Love gardening wolfsbane. So he put two and two together and realized that Love may try
to kill him. And here’s the best part. Dottie lost her
son Forty in Season 2. Dottie husband divorced her in season 3. And after her drunken fire
incident, Love disowned her. So Dottie lost her son, her husband, her daughter, and her
grandchild. She was broken. That’s why she told Joe that Love had killed her ex. In other
words, Love wanted to kill Joe and be a single mother just like Marienne, but Love’s own
mother was the reason that Joe figured things out, took adrenaline, injected Love with a
taste of her own medicine, and killed her. And now, the ending.
Joe staged his own death by writing a second fake suicide letter of the season. He also
cut off two of his toes and burned the house down, the toes being a callback to the finger
that he lost in Season 2. So in effective, the authorities now assume that Love killed
both Joe and herself. And Joe gave away his child Henry to Marienne’s
friend Dante. This was huge as it paid off Joe’s primary Season 3 character arc. So
let’s take a step back in order to appreciate it.
As a kid, Joe killed his father, and his mother placed him into the system. Joe developed
abandonment issues, but over time, he grew attached to his nurse. She was presumably
killed by her abusive boyfriend, which is yet another reason why Joe does what he does
to protect those he loves. Joe then snuck into the records room and found
out where his mother lived. So he went to her, and she told him that sometimes, it’s
just better to move on. That must have hurt. But now, Joe understood her. Joe realized
that it’s a parent’s job is to protect their child even if that means protecting
their child from themselves. So that is why Joe chose to leave Henry with Marienne’s
friend, Dante Fergeson, who had been struggling to adopt a child for years. So win-win for
Dante and Henry. But let’s not skip over the fact that Joe
said that Henry can read the rest of the letter when he is older. But that is between him
and Joe. So for better and worse, mostly worse, it appears that Joe may not be done with his
son, Henry. And last, but not least, Joe’s new love,
Marienne, left town. She turned off her phone and did not leave a forwarding address. Earlier
in the season, Marienne had told Joe that she was born in Paris. And on top of that,
she told Joe that if she was sure that Ryan could never find them, she would grab Juliette
and run to Paris. And last, she told Joe that she was going to fly somewhere. And thus,
Joe flew off to Paris in hopes of finding Marienne.
The show ended with Joe thinking that he will search the world if he has to. And he will
find her. And it’s also worth noting that Joe had been sending money to Ellie. So she’s
out there somewhere as well. Will Joe find them? Let’s hope so, or actually, let’s
hope not. As a fan, it’s complicated. You know what I’m saying. Hakuna Matata.