Elizabeth Lail reflects on Beck’s Legacy in YOU Season 5

Elizabeth Lail, who originated the role of Guinevere Beck in Season 1, returns for a brief appearance in the final season, a reminder that this entire saga is built on the bones of the women Joe obsessed over. Beck may have met her fate early but her presence still lingers like a ghost Joe can’t quite out run.

In a conversation with Don’t Watch Me, Watch TV, Lail opened up about her time filming the first season, the surprise success of the show once it found its forever home on Netflix and why she believes Beck still has Joe in a chokehold, even from beyond the grave.

“We originally did it for Lifetime. Nobody watched it,” she says with a laugh. “Some people did. But Netflix really put it on the map because it’s the kind of show you need to binge.”

When YOU premiered in 2018 on Lifetime, it barely made a splash. But once Netflix scooped it up later that year, the show exploded! Suddenly, Joe Goldberg was everyone’s favorite book-loving sociopath and Lail’s Beck was the OG bookstore girlfriend who saw too much and paid the price.

“Anything extra is icing on the cake. And this icing was like five layers,” she says. “We had no idea it would go five seasons.”

In Season 4’s finale, Beck reappears in a hallucination that follows Joe through his unraveling. For Lail, it was a surprise to learn just how central Beck would remain in Joe’s downward spiral.

“I had no idea what the trajectory of it was going to be,” she admits. “I’d only read the first book. My grandmother read the second.”

And now, with YOU returning to New York for its final chapter, the ghost of Beck feels more relevant than ever. Joe’s no longer a nobody with a stalker complex, he’s a semi-celebrity, married to billionaire CEO Kate (Charlotte Ritchie) and walking red carpets instead of stalking Instagram pages. But don’t let the tailored suits fool you. He’s still the same monster. And the ghosts? They’re louder and more present than ever.

“I’m so happy they came back to New York,” Lail says. “We’re gonna settle this once and for all.”

When asked about a fictional character that actually has the power to take Joe down, once and for all, Lail didn’t miss a beat.

“Wonder Woman,” she says immediately. “She’d lasso him with that truth serum and he’d be confronted with his personal shame. Which I do think he has.”

A powerful woman taking down Joe? That’s the fairy tale ending we’ve been waiting for.

“It has to be a powerful woman,” Elizabeth nodded. “I don’t need you to fix me.

YOU Season 5 is offically out in FULL on Netflix now! For longtime fans who’ve been there since Joe first stalked Beck through the Mooney’s bookstore window, her return isn’t just a cameo, it’s closure.

Beck started the story. And in many ways, she’s ending it too.