What actually happened to Candace in Netflix series 'You'?

This is blowing our minds.

You
(Image credit: Netflix)

This is blowing our minds.

If you haven’t seen Lifetime series You, you’ll definitely have heard of it, with its first season only recently joining our Netflix queues.

But it’s not the casting of Penn Badgley (AKA Gossip Girl's Lonely boy) or even John Stamos’ cameo that has made it the most talked about series of the year so far. Instead, it’s because it’s creepy AF.

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The series follows Joe Goldberg (Badgley), a New York bookstore manager who, in a nutshell, becomes obsessed with an acquaintance, stalks her on social media, kills the people around her, and then when she finds out, kills her.

Apologies in advance for spoilers.

You

Netflix
(Image credit: Netflix)

While Joe’s obsession with Beck (coincidentally, an awful person) is the focus of the series, there are flashbacks to his past girlfriend, Candace, who it seems he was similarly obsessed with before. But what happened to her?

While the final episode tied up a lot of story arcs - Beck’s affair, Ron’s death and what Joe was hiding in his bathroom ceiling, when it came to Candace, we were left just as much in the dark.

We knew that Candace had mysteriously disappeared, and with Joe being a mass murderer and all, it was a safe assumption that he had killed her. It was surprising therefore when she rocked up in the last scene, asking Joe if he was surprised she was alive and telling him they had unfinished business.

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But what unfinished business? WHAT HAPPENED TO CANDACE?

Well, it turns out that in the book that the series is based on, she was murdered by Joe, leading viewers to theorise that she somehow managed to survive, after Joe presumed she was dead.

That’s right. In the book, Joe opens up about killing Candace while murdering Peach, telling her that he had previously drowned his ex girlfriend on Brooklyn's Brighton beach.

You

Netflix
(Image credit: Netflix)

In his opinion, she followed him down to the water’s edge after breaking up with him to make him feel vulnerable, and therefore she deserved to die.

‘It wasn't my fault that Candace followed me down to the water's edge,’ Joe explains in the book. ‘And it wasn't my fault that I picked her up and held her down in the water and watched her pass on to the great beyond. She wanted to be there, or she wouldn’t have gone down there with me.’

Is that the unfinished business that Joe is referring to? We’re going to have to wait till September to see!!

Jenny Proudfoot
Features Editor

Jenny Proudfoot is an award-winning journalist, specialising in lifestyle, culture, entertainment, international development and politics. She has worked at Marie Claire UK for seven years, rising from intern to Features Editor and is now the most published Marie Claire writer of all time. She was made a 30 under 30 award-winner last year and named a rising star in journalism by the Professional Publishers Association.