You need a knack for screenwriting to crack a good whodunnit. The detective movies need a balance between suspects, what the audience knows, and a healthy amount of red herrings. You season 4, the latest installment of the Netflix series, is a satisfying murder-mystery, and creator Sera Gamble drew from her history in TV.
“Way back in the day when I was on staff of the show Supernatural,” she explains to The Hollywood Reporter. “Sometimes I would turn in a script or a document of some kind to Eric Kripke, and he would read it, and he’d be like, ‘This is beautiful, nuanced work, but I need to remind you that you’re not writing a novel. You’re writing a short story.'”
She explains that when working on the fantasy series, Kripke advised to find the “three cleanest attributes”, to give the audience the clearest picture of a character without too much information. It was in that process that Gamble feels You fully became a whodunnit.
Unfortunately, a lot ended up getting cut, because there’s still only so much screentime, and a plot that needs to happen, even when you’ve the space of a drama series. Joe Goldberg is still the narrative centrepiece.
“There were so many characters, there was story that we didn’t have quite a chance to tell,” she says. “So I’m a little sad about some of the little storylines that fell away. That happens every season, but maybe we’ll get to revisit. They didn’t all die.”
We’ll have to see what happens. Check out our guide to You season 4 part 2 for when episodes return, and our guide to the best Supernatural episodes will remind you how Kripke liked to do things.