Joe Goldberg (Penn Badgley) is a touch defensive as he ushers us into You Season 4. After leaving a trail of devastation across America, he swears he’s going to lay low and avoid romance in his new home of London. Joe’s new mantra is “No love. No people. Just books.” Then he looks out his window and his resolve to be an introvert is gone. All that remains is his crush on Kate Galvin, portrayed by Feel Good dream girl Charlotte Ritchie. 

In Part 1, their complicated attraction blossoms. On the one hand, Joe’s hunt for the Eat the Rich Killer is keeping them apart. But, Kate’s own standoffishness and suspicion is its own romantic obstacle. “I had a feeling that there was something deeper in her,” Ritchie tells Tudum. “There’s something in her hatefulness that is so self-hating. It feels very much like it’s a reflection of how she feels about herself.”  

So what is Kate hiding? And how does it come to light in Part 2? Keep reading for your complete syllabus on Professor Joe’s — that is, Jonathan Moore’s — latest love interest.

Who is Charlotte Ritchie? 

The British actor who plays Kate has been appearing on Netflix for years. Ritchie co-starred in the comedy Feel Good as Mae’s (Mae Martin) slightly posh girlfriend George. She led four seasons of historical drama Call the Midwife as nurse Barbara Gilbert and was one of the few nonspectral protagonists of the original UK version of Ghosts. 

Although Ritchie fits right in onYou, she didn’t start watching the thriller until she scored her audition for Kate. Now Ritchie has caught up to Season 3 and is tuning into You anytime she can — including on the bus, as long as no one notices. “I didn’t want to look like some sort of egomaniac watching the show that I’m in,” she jokes. 

According to her castmates, Ritchie is a bit of a philosopher. One of You Season 4’s least deadly mysteries is the question of what, exactly, Joe said to Lady Phoebe (Tilly Keeper) upon their introduction. Whatever the sentiment was, it generated an instant fondness for Joe in Phoebe’s heart. Keeper revealed that Ritchie has the best theory yet. 

“Charlotte thinks that Joe said to Phoebe something like, ‘Does this make you feel happy? Does this life make you feel fulfilled?’ ” Keeper tells Tudum. “I wish she had shared that thought with me while we were filming, because that would’ve really helped with the journey!” 

Who is Kate Galvin? 

It depends on when you’re asking. When Joe first meets Kate, he assumes that despite her success as an art dealer, she’s essentially “poor” compared to her ultra-wealthy socialite pals. Then in Episode 4, the truth starts to trickle out. Kate went to boarding school in Rhode Island with Roald (Ben Wiggins), she’s in fact richer than all of her friends and her father is Tom Lockwood (Greg Kinnear), a businessman and, according to Kate, “one of the more powerful men on the planet.” 

Kate wants nothing to do with her father’s money, power and last name — favoring her mother Greta’s maiden name — because, as Kate says, Tom is the “worst man alive.”  Allegedly,Tom falsified well-water toxicity reports, resulting in several children getting cancer. Still, though, as Tom reveals in Episode 10, he never really let his daughter out of his shadow. Tom pulled strings to get Kate her first big art internship, followed by  years of more behind-the-scenes manipulations to help get her where she is today.   

What’s the truth about Kate? 

Ultimately there’s a reason Kate is her father’s favorite child. In Episode 7, Kate sits Joe down and confesses that she is actually the one responsible for those children getting cancer  in the process of getting the pipeline built — not Tom. Kate was 19, a business prodigy, hungry for approval and unapologetic about the harm she caused. Now, many years later, Kate feels nothing but shame about her ruthless and destructive past. Considering Kate’s present-day “lack of emotion,” Ritchie wasn’t surprised to learn the truth about her character — but the gravity of her actions, she says, is “hard to conceptualize.” 

“Kate has probably been responsible for more pain on a structural level than Joe,” says Ritchie. “Which is in some ways more insidious and horrifying because it’s this bureaucratic violence. It’s faceless and all-powerful.” 

Although some actors would find tackling this level of darkness intimidating, Ritchie was game. “Kate’s my shadow,” she says. 

Does Kate die in You Season 4? 

No, Kate enters a fully committed relationship with Joe, even after learning his real name and murderous tendencies.  But — as Joe would say — things are different this time. “Kate is more committed to fixing the mistakes of her past. She’s an echo, in a good way,” showrunner Sera Gamble tells Tudum. 

Upon deciding to stay together in the Season 4 finale, Kate and Joe also agree to “keep each other good." It’s this sense of redemption that binds them, in comparison to the co-dependent chaos that pulled Joe and Love (Victoria Pedretti) apart. 

“Kate sees that if he can be saved, then so can she,” Ritchie says. “And she’s a person who goes for the most challenging possible route. It’s the ultimate challenge to reform a person like Joe. So it’s another sign of her redemption if she can do it.” 

But Ritchie recognizes that Joe could pull Kate back into the darkness as well. Despite their finale promise to dedicate their lives to “good,” Joe murders a teen and threatens another one into silence minutes later. “Is Kate allowing her own demons to be condoned? I don’t know,” the actor muses. “She’s a bit of a Lady Macbeth. She can’t get the blood off her hands. She’s trying everything possible.” 

And anything could happen if Kate ever learns the whole truth about Joe. Although she knows her boyfriend eliminated Rhys on Tom’s behalf, there are many other stalkings, kidnapping and homicides (including her own father’s) still to be uncovered. 

“Kate’s whole concept of love is so strangely adjusted. You would hope it would be too much. I mean, surely the cage is too much?” Ritchie asks. “It’s just awful. With every ounce of me, I’m like, ‘Why does she do this?’” 

Is Charlotte Ritchie in You Season 5? 

Yes, Ritchie returns as Kate Lockwood in You’s fifth and final season. 

“I felt really excited to get another go at it. I felt like I was just getting to know the character and working her out last season,” she says. “I felt like there was still unfinished business with Kate.” 

Picking up three years after the Season 4 finale, the new season finds Joe and Kate happily married and living in a gorgeous apartment on New York’s Upper West Side. By day, Kate is the CEO of the Lockwood Corporation and trying to take the company in a more charitable direction, much to the chagrin of Reagan and Maddie, Kate’s sisters (twins, and both played by Anna Camp). By night, she’s a loving stepmother to Joe and Love’s son Henry (Frankie DeMaio).

“Having Henry has opened her up and softened her in a way that she probably wouldn’t have expected in Season 4,” says Ritchie. “That’s been quite an unexpected change that it’s been quite enjoyable to play. It’s almost like she just needed an opportunity to love properly, but she hadn’t ever really been presented with one.” 

Of course, the family’s stability can’t last. 

What happens to Kate in Season 5? 

When one of Kate’s advisors, Uncle Bob, threatens her power at the Lockwood Corporation, Kate sees no other option but to ask Joe to kill him. And Joe has no issue obliging. However, this creates a crack in their marriage because Kate immediately regrets her decision and maintains this was a one-time thing, but Joe wants to keep killing to protect their family. Kate refuses to accept Joe’s dark side, which sends him flying into the arms of his new employee at Mooney’s, Bronte (Madeline Brewer). 

Any hope Kate had that Joe could stuff the murderous genie back in the bottle vanishes after two back-to-back incidents. First, Kate learns that Joe kidnapped her sisters and made Maddie kill Reagan, who was also plotting to take Kate’s job. Second, a video of Joe killing Bronte’s friend Clayton (Tom Francis) goes viral on TikTok. So, Kate resolves that it’s time to put an end to Joe’s reign of abuse and recruits Nadia, who she frees from prison, and Marienne to help. 

Does Kate survive You Season 5?

Yes, but barely. Her plan to trap and kill Joe goes sideways once Maddie accidentally locks both her and Joe in the basement of Mooney’s and sets the building on fire. As she and Joe lie on the floor on the brink of death, she elicits a confession out of Joe, which she records and sends to Nadia. 

Thankfully, Kate survives the whole ordeal, even if she has been physically — and emotionally — scarred in the process. In the wake of Joe’s incarceration at the end of the series, Kate serves a short prison sentence for framing Nadia. Once she’s released, she regains custody of Henry, gives up control of the Lockwood Corporation, and returns to her first passion: art. 

“I was pleased [that Kate lived] because the world is often so bleak, and it felt really nice to have some kind of survival where some people get to progress beyond the end of the story,” says Ritchie. “Poetically, it would’ve been OK if Kate had gone with Joe, but I was happy.”  

Additional reporting by Chancellor Agard

‘You’ Season 4, Part 2 Trailer Love finds a way (to spook Joe) in the ‘You’ Season 4, Part 2 trailer.