This post could be summarized in three words: Love Quinn supremacy.
For those unfamiliar, the hit show You covers Joe Goldberg’s descent into stalking, murdering, and general creepiness as he tries to grow closer to his current target. But by season two, Joe had met his match in Love Quinn. She mirrored Joe’s insanity the whole time he was wooing her – and managed to hide it till she had to reveal her pregnancy. And by now you’re probably thinking: Shreya, why in the world would you look up to a woman who’s hands are basically stained red with the blood of all the people she’s killed? And to that, I would simply say that it’s about MATCHING ENERGY!
Love showed a different side to Joe that we hadn’t quite seen before, because his disgust with Love’s actions proved his narcissism. Justifying his actions was the only way Joe could reckon with his sickness without imploding, and seeing Love embody everything he had so meticulously disguised turned him off. It’s a sad truth that can be applied to most relationships: you spend so much time with a person that you begin to act like them… only to find out that these types of men don’t want parrots, and they definitely don’t want women who are unapologetically themselves. They don’t want anything but the romanticized version of you.
What’s interesting about Love though, is that the violence seems to make her more attracted to Joe. Each time they kill and bury a body together, Love is jumping Joe’s bones right after. Obviously this is a little ironic, but if you look past that, you can see that Love represents true love (so she is in fact aptly named): She accepts her flaws and looks for someone who embodies them in the same way, unlike Joe who is constantly on the run from his.
Love felt like a guilty look into every single time I’ve wanted to overreact. Something about seeing her go genuinely crazy over valid points of conflict felt cathartic. In a sense, Love’s unique portrayal of female aggression is part of why this blog is slightly niche topic. We don’t see female villains often, and even more rarely do we see ones who have their origins of evil well before meeting their romantic interest.
One of my favorite authors, Gillian Flynn, sums up the search for fellow crazy girls best:
“I’ve grown quite weary of the spunky heroines, brave rape victims, soul-searching fashionistas that stock so many books. I particularly mourn the lack of female villains — good, potent female villains… I’m talking violent, wicked women. Scary women. Don’t tell me you don’t know some. The point is, women have spent so many years girl-powering ourselves — to the point of almost parodic encouragement — we’ve left no room to acknowledge our dark side. Dark sides are important. They should be nurtured like nasty black orchids.”
We have thousands of examples in media of male toxicity: Joker, Loki, American Psychopath… the list goes on and on. But to find spaces of media where women can be their most authentically psycho selves is like finding a needle in a haystack. So Love Quinn is special to me, because she’s a pioneer on the crazy girl frontier.
Of course, “You” is one of my favorite shows of all time, and I also had to write a blog post about it. But I really ‘Love’ (ha) how you analyzed the show from a female centric lens, and dove into Joe’s reactions when he finds out how crazy Love really is. While I do not at all condone Love’s actions, the progression of her relationship with Joe is a clear indicator of what does happen in a lot of relationships, as you mentioned. It is also interesting to think about how the public perceives the show. For example, many “You” lovers really like the anti-hero Joe, even though he is a certified psychopath and perv, but many of them also hate Love. Why do they like Joe better? Likely because Penn Badgley fits the male beauty standard, and his high emotions/psychological trauma don’t make him seem as irrational or insane as Love due to his gender, even though they are fundamentally the same.