In the second part of You season 4, Joe keeps meeting Rhys, even after torturing and killing him, leaving him to figure out who this other Rhys is.
In You season 4, Joe is left with no option but to follow Rhys’ commands, as Rhys can frame Joe for the deaths of his friends whenever he wants. Though Joe continues to play around, he quietly works on taking him down too.
With the help of Kate’s father, Tom Lockwood, Joe tracks down where Rhys is hiding all alone. He knocks on his door, and Rhys fails to recognize Joe.
Assuming that Rhys is pretending, Joe knocks him out, tortures him, and, in fury, kills him. Moments later, another Rhys shows up in front of Joe, claiming that the real Rhys wasn’t lying about not knowing him. Also, Rhys does have Marienne in captivity.
Is Joe imagining Rhys?
After disposing of Rhys’ body, Joe finally gets to talk to the other Rhys that he is seeing. Joe agrees that he is hallucinating about Rhys, but he denies that he and Rhys are the same person, as this Rhys claims.
Joe looks into the camera that he has installed in his apartment. He rewinds it back to check the footage from the time Rhys visited him in the apartment. The footage shows Joe talking to himself and acting like Rhys and Joe at the same time.
The other Rhys then reveals that Joe and Rhys never met until Joe located him and killed him. Joe looks back on his interactions with Rhys and realizes that he hasn’t had a conversation with Rhys in public. Whenever he did, people around saw him responding to nobody.
The real Rhys was only present at Simon’s funeral, where he gave a speech and nodded to Joe just because Joe was staring at him. Lastly, Joe also imagined the texts that were sent to him through Evanesce.
This Rhys is the version of Joe that Joe was trying to move away from. Rhys did everything Joe wanted. He killed Malcolm for insulting Marienne, killed Simon for ruining the lives of young artists, and got rid of Gemma because she was onto Joe.
Joe wanted to change himself and was on a quest to save them, but deep down he knew that saving these people wasn’t worth it. Also, Joe locked himself in a dungeon because he is still in denial. If he admits who he really is, he can save Marienne too.
How was Joe’s Rhys born?
So it turns out that Joe never let Marienne go, and this Rhys version of Joe existed all the time. It just started appearing as Rhys when Joe kidnapped Marienne.
At the station, while Joe stole Marienne’s necklace to show it to Elliot Tannenberg, his other version slipped a potion into Marienne’s drink. The potion made Marienne sleep.
Marienne later woke up in Joe’s apartment. Joe attempted to make things right and force Marienne to give their relationship another chance. While he kept her captive, Joe studied Rhys, his book, and who he is as a person.
Joe developed a particular interest in Rhys’ life. Marienne’s efforts to escape made Joe mad, and eventually, this darker version of Joe, who later becomes Rhys, took over the real Joe.
Rhys made Joe forget about Marienne. Joe started thinking that he had let Marienne go. Marienne was left in the cage inside a basement, all alone, with limited food.
Rhys tells Joe that Marienne could die anytime as he hasn’t visited her for a while now, forcing Joe to track down where she is.
Also Read: You season 4 part 2 review: Gripping narrative aided by smart twists