The 9 Netflix Series Characters Crazier Than You's Joe Goldberg

Joe may kill for love, and even jump off a bridge in a suicide attempt over his guilt, but he would never inject himself with a strength-building toxic drug just to manipulate a society into using it and build himself an army of unstoppable fighters. That’s where tyrannical revolutionary Silco (Jason Spisak) from Netflix’s animated series Arcane comes in. He’s tested the drug, known as Shimmer, on children to refine its manipulative powers, groomed a young girl into becoming an unhinged walking weapon named Jinx (Ella Purnell), and likely killed more people than Joe has ever met.

I wouldn’t say Jesse Plemons is type-casted to play emotionally stunted sociopathic characters, but he’s mastered those roles in a disturbingly realistic way. As digital captain and lethally awkward computer programmer Robert Daly on the Black Mirror episodes “USS Callister” and “USS Callister: Into Infinity” you forget he’s not a masochist. Don’t talk to me about Joe trapping people in cages that they usually talk their way out of when Daly is stealing people’s DNA from coffee cups to trap their digital clones with full consciousness in a video game that he controls. The man once erased someone’s face causing them to perpetually suffocate but not die for as long as he wanted. What’s a serial killer to a digital god?

I’ve never had a nightmare about Joe Goldberg. Eddie Kempler (Cameron Britton), unsettingly articulate serial killer from Netflix’s drama series Mindhunter, has terrorized my nights many times. Based on a real killer of the same name, Kempler would describe killing his grandmother just to know what it was like to kill someone with the type of methodical tone usually reserved for explaining a casserole recipe. Joe also had chillingly pragmatic reasonings for his murders, but he’s lost his cool on a number of occasions, showing the vulnerable humanity submerged under his psychosis. Kempler came across less as a sane human and more of a body that only exists to fulfill its murderous desires.

This isn’t really a fair fight. How much evil can a simple human like Joe do compared to an animated vampire goddess who can turn blood into deadly weapons like Erzsebet Báthory (Franka Potente) in Castlevania: Nocturne? Joe is perpetuating incel behavior and toxic masculinity masked as love at a murderous level. Erzsbet is channeling ancient dark energy, usually from the blood of towns she’s had massacred, with the intent on bringing the apocalypse. She once burned a priest in front of his congregation just to prove she was more powerful than the god they prayed to. That’s evil on a biblical scale.

It doesn’t matter if you’re talking about Pablo Escobar the man or Pablo Escobar (Wagner Moura) the character in Narcos, he’s a maniac who would do anything to feed his power addiction. I wouldn’t say one life is more valuable than another, but the deaths of certain people do come with different consequences than the death of others. So, when Pablo had the depraved confidence to assassinate politicians knowing the governmental battle that would follow, it showcased a thirst for control that was dangerously blinding. If we’re talking evil, I would say flooding the home country you claim to love with a deadly drug, and even deadlier foot soldiers enforcing your rules to protect that drug empire is pretty evil. Joe’s killings were one at a time. Pablo bombed an entire flight that killed over 100 people, including children, without blinking an eye.

Similar to Castlevania: Nocturne’s Erzsebet Báthory, Joe is no match for a telepathic, otherworldly demon that can kill you without touching you. Stranger Things baddie Vecna’s (Jamie Campbell Bower) killings were disturbing because of how inhumane they looked. He had an innocent cheerleader psychically paralyzed and floating in the air before he had her bones twisted into ways no human body should ever be twisted in. Joe’s a monster in the disturbed criminal sense. Vecna is a monster in every sense you can and don’t want to think of.

Penn Badgley once called out Netflix for inspiring viewers to love Jeffrey Dahmer when watching Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story. Although he admits You does the same with Joe Goldberg, he implies the difference is Joe’s a fictional character, whereas Dahmer did unspeakably evil acts that should never be given any love. In the show, Dahmer dismembers bodies and kept skulls as weird keepsakes. The man stored body parts in a freezer like frozen blueberries, and even admitted to eating some of them. Killing was a science and an art to Dahmer. It was a tool for Joe. It’s the killer who revels in the murder long after its served its initial purpose that has hit a depth of evil Joe hasn’t even scratched.

Life and death are not games, unless you’re as evil as Squid Game’s Front Man (Lee Byung-hun). In the series centered on a gruesome winner-take-all competition between destitute and desperate people, The Front Man monitored and orchestrated every nuance like a sadistic god entertained by the torture of his subjects. He shot his own brother in cold blood after the man uncovered the truth, choosing loyalty to a murderous system over family. This sicko loved the thrill of murder so much he disguised himself as a contestant in his twisted game only to shoot the same contestants he endeared himself to. Joe romanticized his killings almost as narrative tropes in a trashy romance novel, a perspective that led to further delusions. The Front Man saw human life as expendable as that of a video game character.

Netflix’s early dominance was built on Frank Underwood’s (Kevin Spacey) blood-soaked hands that were probably just getting done with strangling a journalist. Joe Goldberg was a sadistic serial killer, stalker, and terrible erotica writer, but at least he didn’t have the governmental power to gut Social Security funds for millions or almost started a war with Russia to improve his public approval. Frank would probably be jealous of Joe trapping people in a soundproof cage, but what made Frank crazier than Joe was his willingness to treat millions of lives with reckless abandon and emotional indifference. Joe was a serial killer who confused obsession with love. Frank was a monster who knew the difference and relished in every death he caused.