"If you've got a rocket, you want to aim it straight down into the darkest heart of the characters you've created," showrunner Sera Gamble tells EW.

You (TV series) type TV Show network Lifetime

Netflix genre Drama

In YOU‘s first season, viewers watched as Joe fell for Beck … and then stalked Beck … and then, eventually, killed Beck. But that was only the beginning of Joe’s story. When Candace, his ex-girlfriend, showed up in the season 1 finale, everything changed. Now, in season 2, Joe’s moving to Los Angeles where he’ll find someone new — Love. “We were very clear that we weren’t going to try to make season 1 again,” YOU showrunner Sera Gamble tells EW. “That love story only worked because you were getting to know Joe for the first time. Season 2 is a completely different challenge because now you know Joe really well. We saw that as an opportunity to double down on the stuff that we loved about Joe’s character. I always feel like season 2 of a show is an opportunity to take more risks and to go bigger and deeper with the story. If you’ve got a rocket, you want to aim it straight down into the darkest heart of the characters you’ve created in season 1.”

Simply by relocating Joe to sunny L.A., the season — and Joe — will have a different feel. “Los Angeles is full of people who are really trying to live their best life and self-actualize,” Gamble says. “When you put somebody who needs a lot of healing into a city that advertises itself basically as this Mecca full of cutting-edge healers, the alchemy is a little unexpected for him.”

And once he meets Love (played by The Haunting of Hill House’s Victoria Pedretti), he’ll be introduced to a new kind of relationship. “The thing that she sees in him is that he has endured great loss and heartbreak,” Gamble says. “Of course she doesn’t know the details of that, but she sees a kindred spirit in him because she lost her husband.” So yes, it’s safe to say Love is very different than Beck. Although, not everything about season 2 will be different.

Much like season 1, season 2 will cover the entire plot of its print counterpart, Caroline Kepnes’ Hidden Bodies. Although this time there will be a few more deviations from the source material. “We play a little looser,” Gamble says of adapting the second book for the screen. “We never try to slow down so the idea was to tell that book’s worth of story and as you can tell even just from Candace, we go some different directions than the book. But fans of the second book will recognize a lot of the greatest hits throughout season 2.”

YOU season 2 hits Netflix on December 26.

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