I can’t believe I actually thought Joe was changing for the better this season. I’m not usually tricked so easily.
When Penn and Greg and I sat down to just discuss the possibility of him playing Joe Goldberg, one of the things that he asked was, “Are you going to redeem the character? Is that the ultimate arc? Is it a redemption arc?” I promised him we wouldn’t and that we would feel no obligation to. And if that changed, it would be a conversation we all had together.
So the season is about the bullshit ways people talk about redemption when they’ve done horrible things, but they’re not actually changing. So of course, Joe thought he had, he was now good, and he had done better, and he had, in some ways, balanced the karmic scales, but actually, he just has been lying to himself more cleverly.
Marienne talked Nadia out of going to the police and basically said, “If Joe knows I’m alive, he’ll never stop.” Is that true? Is there a world where Joe—who now seems happy with Kate (Charlotte Ritchie)—finds out Marienne is alive in Paris with her daughter and just lets her be?
He would have to be very distracted by another problem. I mean, don’t you agree with her based on what you know about Joe? It’s very dangerous, and Nadia sacrificed a lot to help her truly disappear.
There’s now a club of people he’s sent to prison—and a lot of people who know the truth about him.
The idea is not really to let Joe off the hook. The fun of the show is to see him sort of, by the seat of his pants, slide through the crack every season to live to fight another day. But he has a lot of people out there who are very, very smart and know what he is now. Dr. Nicky (John Stamos), I wouldn’t say is very, very smart but Ellie (Jenna Ortega), Nadia, and Marienne totally have his number. But you know, the question is, what are you willing to risk for something like that? We definitely leave a lot of those dangling threads on purpose to threaten Joe with.
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