You Refresher: Everything You Need to Remember Before Joe Goldberg Returns in Season 2

Season two is heading to the other side of the country for some light stalking in Los Angeles instead of New York. Will people in New York be better at having curtains? Only time will tell. 

What we do know is that Joe is not a Los Angeles fan in any way. He’s gonna hate it, and that’s going to be fun. In fact, where the vibe of season one was very much dependent on New York, the vibe of season two is sort of based on how much New Yorkers hate LA. 

“There’s a very particular romantic feeling that comes with being in New York as a young person, especially without a lot of money. You’re young, free, you’re struggling and you’re trying to find a kindred spirit. Los Angeles is a completely different vibe,” EP Sera Gamble told TVLine. “I’ve lived here since I was 16, and one of the classic truisms about living in LA is that you’re surrounded by former New Yorkers who f–ing hate it here. So we started the writers’ room for Season 2 by being like, “Joe moves to LA and he completely hates it. Let’s talk about how much fun that is.”

Since Beck is…indisposed, Joe will now be setting his sights on a girl named Love Quinn, played by Haunting of Hill House star Victoria Pedretti. 

Love is an “artistic” aspiring chef in LA working as a produce manager in a high-end grocery store, and she’s not interested in social media or branding and much more into leading an interesting life. She’s in grief when she meets Joe, and “can sense he too has known life-changing loss.” EP Sera Gamble told EW that Love “embodies the best of Los Angeles,” while Joe hates the city and not much is going to change his mind on that. 

Love has quite the variety of friends. Melanie Field plays Sunrise, a stay-at-home lifestyle blogger, while Marielle Scott plays Lucy, a literary agent. Charlie Barnett plays Gabe, Love’s oldest and closest friend and confidant who’s an acupuncturist and psychedelics aficionado. 

Carmela Zumbado plays Delilah Alves, an investigative reporter who lives in the same building as Joe. “Delilah becomes dangerously invested in her new neighbor, Joe Goldberg, who seems to be hiding something.” Oh, he’s definitely hiding something. 

Adwin Brown plays Calvin, Joe’s pleasant new boss at the trendy LA grocery store/cafe/bookstore Anavrin (it’s Nirvana backwards). “Working at a bookstore with Joe…what can go wrong?” asks the show’s Twitter account. Love also works at the store, as does her brother Forty, played by James Scully. He’s confident, opinionated, and privileged, a charming and razor-sharp bully. He’s working through a 12-step program, relying on his sister for support and attention, but “it never takes much of a shove for him to fall back off the wagon.”

Joe’s ex-girlfriend made a surprising appearance at the end of the first season, after we were left to assume Joe had killed her, and clearly Joe also thought he had killed her. He didn’t, and Ambyr Childers was promoted to series regular for season two. It’s not clear if she has followed Joe to LA or not, but Gamble told THR that she’ll have “bigger stuff” this season, and if she’s there to torment Joe in any way we are here for it. 

Ortega, who starred in Disney Channel’s Stuck in the Middle and as young Jane on Jane the Virgin, will play a young con artist named Ellie who likes to act and appear older than her years. She grew up in the big city with minimal supervision and must take care of herself and do whatever she needs to to make some cash, including scamming Joe Goldberg, apparently. 

The casting of comedian Chris D’Elia felt like a surprise, until we read Deadline’s description of the character: “Henderson, a designer-hoodie, black Ray-Bans, expensive sneakers-wearing famous comedian with a ‘hard-life-lessons man-of-the-people’ thing working for him.” Sera Gamble also describes him as an “uberfamous comedian and known good guy.” 

Perfect, honestly. 

Gotham‘s Robin Lord Taylor will recur as Will, a personable guy who deals with “unsavory sorts” as part of his job and finds himself in a bad situation. Aside from Forty, he’s the only main character there are still no photos of, which might mean something or it might mean nothing. 

Just because Joe has framed Dr. Nicky and moved across the country doesn’t mean Beck and Peach’s murders (and Benji’s and….) couldn’t come back to haunt him. EP Sera Gamble reminded THR that Peach’s family has hired an investigator and there’s still probably evidence in her house. 

“If you look at every act of violence that he does in season one, that is potentially something that could come back and bite him,” Gamble said. “And Dr. Nicky is in prison and he is ardently protesting his innocence.” 

Gamble couldn’t promise John Stamos will return, but said the writers have been “talking a lot about the character.”  

Season one deviated from Caroline Kepnes’ book in a few small ways, most notably by keeping Candace alive. Season two will be a mix of staying with the book and following that Candace story somewhere new. 

“There’s a lot of great story in the second book that we’re going to be able to do, but in our way,” Gamble told TVLine. “Even though some of the changes we made in Season 1 seemed small at the time, they were fundamental. Every little change we make to a character is a butterfly flapping its wings and causing a hurricane in Season 2.” 

In that same interview with THR, Gamble described Joe as a “very interesting, particular kind of guy who thinks that he is—what’s the word for it? Maybe ‘woke.'”

“He thinks he really understands women. He thinks that he is such an incredible ally,” she continued. “I think that can be one of the most dangerous positions of all when you’re entitled and when you’re not entirely self-aware about why you do the things that you do… So I don’t know, we’re having a lot of fun being subversive with the story, and that will continue.” 

And we will continue to remind you that Joe is a serial killer, just for those of you who keep getting too distracted by Penn Badgley’s face to remember that.