This New 'YOU' Season 2 Character Could Mean Joe's About To Get Into Even More Trouble

Some fresh blood is on its way in the form of a new YOU Season 2 character named Will. Played by Robin Lord Taylor (AKA Oswald Cobblepot on Fox’s Gotham), Will "deals with unsavory sorts as part of his job, but is himself a thoughtful, personable, and highly intelligent guy who marches to the beat of his own drummer," Deadline wrote when announcing the casting news on Friday, Feb. 15, adding: "That is, until he gets trapped in a bad situation."

What does that all mean for charming anti-hero Joe Goldberg (Penn Badgley)? Well, a safe bet would be that whatever this "bad situation" Will finds himself enmeshed in, Joe is probably somehow involved — especially with "unsavory sorts" being an operative term. After all, Joe, in Season 1, worked as an obsessive bookstore manager with stalker and, ya know, homicidal tendencies.

As previously reported, the second season of YOU will loosely follow the plot of Hidden Bodies, author Caroline Kepnis' 2016 followup to YOU, her 2014 novel on which the show is based. According to Deadline, Netflix's adaptation "will follow Goldberg to Los Angeles where he meets Love Quinn (Victoria Pedretti), an aspiring chef that isn’t into social media like his previous leading lady."

In January, when Netflix announced Pedretti would join YOU Season 2, they further describe Love Quinn as someone who's "tending to a deep grief — so when she meets Joe she senses a shared knowledge of profound loss."

The same day as they announced Taylor's casting, Netflix also posted photos from the first YOU Season 2 table read — and Pedretti (of The Haunting of Hill House fame) was seated right next to Badgley in the first of the two. In the second photo, the Gossip Girl alum posed with another actor whose character is sure to central to Joe's story in the new season: Ambyr Childers, who plays Joe's once-presumed-dead ex Candace. "And we’re back!" the tweet from the See What's Next account read, in part. The actors all have their scripts handy, too, of course, and, upon close examination, the episode title appears to be "A Fresh Start." We'll see how that goes for Joe...

Also sure to complicate matters for Joe: another new character named Ellie (played by Stuck in the Middle's Jenna Ortega). Deadline provided the following description: "A teenager who grew up fast in the big city, Ellie likes to act and appear older than her years. Secretly living with minimal supervision or nurturing in her life, she must take care of herself and isn’t afraid to get into murky waters to make a little cash. This includes working cons on the adults around her, including Joe Goldberg."

Fans also already know is that the move from New York to L.A. isn't going to sit well with Joe anyway. “New York was instrumental in telling [Joe and Beck’s (Elizabeth Lail)] particular love story — and whenever I say ‘love story,’ it’s a little bit in quotes, of course,” showrunner Sera Gamble told TVLine in January. “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. ... 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.'”

And since the writers clearly have it out for Joe, there's no reason not to believe that Taylor's new character Will is also going to bring some additional discord into the murderous protagonist's life — or, perhaps, vice versa.