‘You’ Season 3: The Meaning Behind Love’s Chicken Dinner Goes Back to Season 2
There are some impressive meals on You. That’s because Love (Victoria Pedretti) is a chef who cooks when she’s happy and bakes when she’s frustrated. Season 3 ends with her cooking a roast chicken and the reason goes back to last season.
[Spoiler alert: You Season 3 finale spoilers ahead.]
Love cooks chicken for Joe in ‘You’ Season 3
Love and Joe Goldberg (Penn Badgley) try to make married life work throughout You Season 3. But Joe already started falling out of love with Love at the end of last season when he realizes she’s a killer too.
Joe becomes obsessed with two different women in the new season. Love’s instinct each time is to kill to keep Joe to herself.
The season 3 finale shows Love cooking Joe a chicken dinner. This is after she figures out he’s in love with Marienne Bellamy (Tati Gabrielle). It’s obvious he’s suspicious that she’s poisoning him when he eats it. But he does after she bites into the meal. Joe says they can divorce amicably and co-parent their son, Henry. But that’s not Love’s style.
She poisons him to paralyze him. Love later gets ready to murder him, but Joe gets her first. He fatally injects her with Wolfsbane. The dinner might look like a setup for Love’s evil plan. But there is more meaning behind it.
The chicken dinner is supposed to be Joe’s perfect meal
Last season started with “A Fresh Start.” Joe lives as William Bettelheim in Los Angeles. But he struggles to adapt, given he’s a New Yorker at heart.
He gets obsessed with Love in the first episode. She also takes a liking to him. The cook tries to get him to love the city through food. They search all over for his perfect taco. Love then realizes Joe’s perfect meal isn’t a taco at all. She takes him back to their job, and she cooks for him.
“Let me tell you a little bit about yourself, Will Bettelheim,” Love tells him. “You are not a snob. You’re just old-fashioned. You like things that are real, made right by people who care. You like strong flavors. Gimmicks don’t seduce you. What seduces you is the real thing, therefore roast chicken.”
She serves him roast chicken with carrots and potatoes. Joe tells her that it’s perfect.
It seems like Love was still trying to recreate the magic of what brought them together in the You Season 3 finale. Sadly for her, that plan backfired. Joe successfully blames the recent murders on Love and fakes his own death with his evidence. He leaves Henry with friends and goes to France. Season 4 of the Netflix show will most likely take place there.
