Why does Maddie Kill Reagan in You?

Netflix’s ‘You’ presents a slew of complicated characters motivated to do certain things for their benefit. Joe Goldberg ranks first amongst these people, but he finds his tribe in the fifth season in the Lockwood family. He meets Kate Lockwood in Season 4, and by the end, both seem to have seen the bad sides of each other, bad enough that they connect over it and get married soon after. However, this happy ending is just the beginning of all the problems waiting for them, and the most difficult of these problems is Reagan Lockwood, Kate’s half-sister. She has a twin, Maddie, who appears to have a completely different personality, but in the end, she turns out to be just as ruthless and resentful as her sister. SPOILERS AHEAD.

Maddie was Never Supposed to Kill Raegan

The psycho killer inside Joe comes to the surface when Kate’s job and reputation are threatened. He kills her uncle Bob for betraying her, but this only makes matters worse. Bob’s death causes Raegan to become paranoid and look into Late and Joe’s time in London, and she has no intention of backing off. So, Joe decides to take her out of the picture. One night, he finds her in the office, having sex with her husband, Harrison. Joe distracts the husband and kidnaps Raegan. He intends to put her in the glass cage long enough for her to give him something substantial he can use against her.

In a twist of fate, he discovers that he has kidnapped the wrong twin. It is not Reagan in the cage, but Maddie, and that rewrites the whole situation. Because Maddie is innocent and poses no danger to Joe or Kate, he doesn’t want to kill her. So, he asks her to snitch on her twin and give him something incriminating that can be used against her, and she is free to go. At first, Maddie tries to keep her calm and convince Joe that she has survived worse things. However, her insulin problem and her sister’s relentless apathy towards her cause her to reconsider her plans. Joe catches her in a particularly weak moment and asks her to take Raegan’s life for herself. However, he doesn’t tell her what he plans to do with the real Raegan when Maddie becomes a fake one.

Maddie’s Decision is Fueled by Hatred and Desperation

While Maddie is still in the cage, Joe kidnaps Raegan as well and throws her in the same cell. This is when he tells Maddie that Raegan has to die, but he won’t be the one to do it. Instead, he wants Maggie to kill her by giving her an insulin shot. Of course, Maddie doesn’t want to do it. No matter their differences, Raegan is her sister, and she cannot simply kill her. However, several factors are working against Raegan, including her bad behaviour. During Maddie’s captivity, it turns out that Raegan’s daughter is not her own. She was born to Maddie, who was forced to be a surrogate mother for her twin. The reason Raegan didn’t want to go through with the pregnancy was that she didn’t want her body to suffer for nine months. Moreover, she knew that Maddie was in love with Harrison, and the surrogacy was a way for her to show her dominance over the matter.

She wanted to torture Maddie by taking everything she held dear. It’s not that Maddie didn’t already know how much her sister detested and demeaned her. Still, she didn’t think it was enough to have her killed. But then, Raegan confesses that she’d have no problem with Maddie dying. In fact, during the pregnancy, when things got complicated, the doctor told them that there might come a point when they would have to choose between saving the baby or saving Maddie. While both survived in the end, Raegan knew that she would let her daughter die. It was never a dilemma for her. This confession flares up Maddie’s anger, and she decides to go forward with the act she thought impossible. She injects Raegan with an insulin shot and kills her inside the cage.