Warning: Spoilers for the final episode of You Season 3 to follow. The saga of murder-happy couple Joe Goldberg and Love Quinn came to a tragic end in the You's Season 3 finale, but fans of the show may have seen it coming — and it's all thanks to a catchphrase the duo came up with way back in Season 2. As it turns out, Joe and Love's (cringeworthy) "I wolf you" — intended as a sweet replacement to "I love you," given their complicated history with all things romance — ended up implying something much, much darker. In Joe and Love's relationship, "I wolf you" ultimately means... I poison you.
How did we get here? It all stems from Love's desire to keep her man — by any means necessary. By the end of Season 3, Love is well aware that her husband has a wandering eye, and is in love with someone else — in this case, the neighborhood librarian, Marienne. So, Love starts growing aconite — also known as wolfsbane — just in case she needs to use it should things get a little... messy.
When Joe decides to leave her to start a new life with Marienne, Love uses the poison on him to keep him literally frozen in place while she delivers her speech about how he gaslit her and destroyed her confidence. (Yes, Love's a murderer, but so is Joe, and TBH, he did do that and I would also be mad!) Though she intends to cut Joe's throat (ah, marriage), it turns out that Joe knew about her wolfsbane plan the entire time, and therefore popped an antidote before announcing his intentions to divorce her. Just as Love is about to slice his throat, he sticks his wife with a syringe full of wolfsbane and, well — that's curtains on Love.
The thing is, Love actually used wolfsbane before, to equally disastrous results. When her first husband, James, became sick, Love did everything in her power to care for him. Unfortunately for her, when he got better, he decided he didn't want to be with her after all. She injected aconite directly into his veins in order to have a chat and plead her case — but she inadvertently killed him in the process.
Was "I wolf you" a serious case of foreshadowing? It's unclear — but it is perfect that their final diabolical act connects back to their cutesy catchphrase and Chekov's gun is a major theme in the series. That, and, murder was always their love language.
Images: Netflix