Love Quinn (played by Victoria Pedretti) in YOU Season 3 had quite the journey over the past two seasons. For a split second, she seemed on track to be leaving her murderous past behind her. She was a mother now, living the safest life possible in the suburbs of Los Angeles.
All of that changed towards the end of Episode 1, when in a fit of rage and jealously, Love murdered her neighbor, Natalie (Michaela McManus), after she learned Joe (Penn Badgley) cheated on her.
Ever since then, Love’s number of victims continued to rise, as did Joe’s. She even attempted to kill Theo (Dylan Arnold), her naive next-door neighbor who seemed to be the only person in the world who actually stood a chance of giving Love what she wanted.
By the finale, Love had plunged into total chaos and turned her back on Joe. She planned to poison him and by the looks of it, decapitate him. However, as predicted, Joe was able to be one step ahead of the game and managed to poison love with wolfs-bane, a paralytic, the plant she had been growing in their garden the entire time.
The last audiences saw of Love was her lifeless body lying on the kitchen floor as Joe and Love’s white-picket-fence house went up in flames.
By all intents and purposes, Love is dead at the end of Season 3, showrunner Sera Gamble confirmed to Newsweek.
She said: “She is lying there [dead]. I’m not trying to be ‘was there a parachute under that seat in the airplane?’ She is [dead]. We’ve done that before with Candace but you know, there were questions you could ask about that. I feel like you literally watch every second of her [Love] dying, right on the screen.”
Gamble added: “I love that people will always have questions and I think that that’s really satisfying to me as somebody who’s working with something and trying to surprise people, you know, we all work really hard to try to surprise you.”
There is no doubt some YOU fans will remain skeptical about Love’s fate. After all, Joe’s first ex-girlfriend and original victim Candace (Ambyr Childers) was believed to be dead before she reappeared in Joe’s life at the end of Season 1.
Many YOU fans remain in disbelief Peach (Shay Mitchell) from Season 1 is dead. After all, audiences did not actually see Joe shoot her, with some suspecting her “suicide” could be faked.
In Victoria Pedretti’s eyes, her character Love is officially dead. She told Newsweek she had been aware of Love’s impending death when she joined the cast in Season 2.
Pedretti said: “I’m pretty sure we had an understanding about how Love’s story was going to end before I even signed on to the show, so I’ve been prepared.”
When asked if she would come back for a fourth season, alive or dead, Pedretti said: “Hell yeah. I love my job and I love the people that I’ve met and had the pleasure of working with through this. I wouldn’t pass up the opportunity to come back.”
On killing his co-star, Badgley said: “It’s never easy to know intellectually that your character is going to murder the very person you’re like striving to have this chemistry and relationship with and tell this story through the relationship, Right?
“That’s always been the thing about Joe that is hard before action and after the cut. Obviously, during the scene, I can’t really be thinking about all these things but that’s, and that’s why I’ve spoken about Joe in the way that I have, because he’s, a hard guy to play. If you’re invested in the work and you care about the characters, he’s a hard guy to play.”
YOU Season 3 is streaming on Netflix now.
JOHN P. FLEENOR/NETFLIX