Diksha Sundriyal
The past comes back to haunt Joe Goldberg in the final season of Netflix’s ‘You.’ Following the fourth season’s events, he returns to New York to start a new life with Kate Lockwood. He has his name back, his son back, and even his bookstore, Mooney’s, back. Still, none of this is enough for him. He soon finds himself surrendering to his dark impulses. Little does he know that all the dark deeds of his past will catch up to him, and Clayton plays a significant role in bringing about that storm of justice, which completely uproots Joe’s life. SPOILERS AHEAD.
Joe Goldberg Unintentionally Ruined Clayton’s Life
Clayton is introduced to Joe after he meets Bronte. She tells him he is her ex, and she owes him too much to break off from him altogether. Meanwhile, Clayton presents himself as the toxic ex that Joe would love to free Bronte of. His presence inflates Joe’s savior complex, and the more he sees Bronte with him, the more protective he feels of her, and the more obsessed he becomes with her. Eventually, however, it turns out that Clayton is not who he is made out to be. He is not Bronte’s ex, but he has been working with her. She is revealed to be a former student of Beck, who is intent on exposing Joe as her real killer. Clayton’s investment in this fight for justice goes a step further because the man who is in prison for killing Beck is his father.
He is Dr. Nicky’s son, whom Joe framed for Beck’s murder, partly because it was to do that and partly because he was jealous of him having an affair with Beck while she was in a relationship with him. After Dr. Nicky went to prison, the life of his family turned into hell. His wife and son were so terrorised by the public that, eventually, Clayton had to change his last name so that no one could connect him to his father. However, as he talked to more and more people on the Internet, he discovered that there were too many holes in the investigation, and the cops didn’t even look at Beck’s boyfriend, Joe. The more he read about Joe, the more he became convinced that he was the real killer, while his father was innocent the whole time. Eventually, he met Bronte and the others, and with Joe’s return to New York, a plan started to form about exposing his dark deeds and bringing him to justice.
Bronte’s Cold Feet Lead to an Unexpected Confrontation
In the plan to prove that Joe is Beck’s killer, Bronte comes up with the idea of making the killer fall in love with her. She knows that he is a romantic, and the idea of protecting women serves his fantasy. So, she makes Clayton up to be the villain of her story, whom she needs protection from. She doesn’t realize how far Joe would be willing to go to protect her. In the meantime, Bronte herself falls for him so much that she starts to wonder if she was wrong about him and if Dr. Nicky did murder Beck. She planned to get Joe to a secluded place where her friends and Clayton would get him to spill the truth. But as Bronte starts to reconsider her thoughts about Joe, she calls off the thing. This angers Clayton, and he twists things such that Joe believes Bronte is with her ex and most likely in danger.
Because Bronte didn’t know about Clayton’s actions, she didn’t expect Joe to show up at the secluded house in Atlantic Beach. As if his presence wasn’t shocking enough, Clayton later shows up. She gets angry with him for forcing the plan on her, leading them to a fight where Clayton becomes too violent. When Joe sees this, his protective side comes into action, and he physically confronts Clayton. Now, had it been a normal person, they would have stopped at a few punches. But Joe relishes killing people, and once he has his hands around Clayton’s neck, whom he already hates, he cannot stop himself.
He probably would have stopped if he saw fear in his beloved’s eyes. But when he looks at Bronte, he sees a dark fascination that encourages him to keep going. When he thinks about stopping, he hits Clayton’s head a bit too hard on the floor, and the guy bleeds out and passes away due to the sheer impact of the hit. Interestingly, Bronte sees Clayton’s death as self-defense on Joe’s end and testifies as much to the cops. By the time Clayton died, he had become so obsessed with the whole thing that he didn’t even care if Bronte were to die for it. This coldness and lack of care from him further drove her towards Joe, and in the end, she was more sympathetic to the serial killer than the person wronged by him.
