High expectations? Mommy issues? Why Joe Goldberg could never truly love the murderous Love Quinn.
(*Spoilers only up until season 3, episode 2)
Joe Goldberg, the sociopathic protagonist of YOU, is back for season three with a gorgeous wife, a baby on the way, and a new home in the suburbs of Madre Linda in Northern California.
Based on everything that has happened in the first two seasons, it is clear Joe Goldberg could never live happily ever after with wealthy Los Angeles heiress Love Quinn for multiple reasons. And most of it involves his deeply embedded dysfunctional savior complex.
History
Joe’s history with protecting women comes from witnessing his father physically abuse and torture his mother throughout his childhood. Joe saved his mother one night by shooting and killing his father. His mother subsequently abandoned him in a group home for boys feeling he was too damaged from the entire experience.
Since then, Joe has had no limit or boundary to what he will do in order to protect women.
Reason #1: Joe possesses a deeply embedded savior complex that only attracts him to broken women in need of saving
Guinevere Beck
In Season 1, we meet Guinevere Beck. Joe is instantly attracted to the utterly flawed, slightly damaged Guinevere Beck who proves to be the perfect damsel in distress. Beck is surrounded by toxic people who take advantage of her.
Blinded by what he perceives as her innocence, gullibility, and victimhood, Joe feels the need to save her. Fulfilling his role as the hero in Beck’s life, he begins removing (i.e. murdering) people he feels are holding her back.
When Beck discovers who he is, she recoils in disgust and fear. She brings up the idea that his savior complex is an excuse for him. It is a broken, moral code he applies to himself in order to satiate an impulsive need to murder.
“You know what I think? I think that this was all just an excuse. An excuse to justify creeping into girl’s lives and violating the sh*t out of them! I think you…
