YOU Season 4 Wanted to Bring Back Jenna Ortega but Wednesday Caused Conflicts

With each season of Netflix’s YOU featuring Joe Goldberg killing off multiple people, he often has to relocate for subsequent seasons and assume new identities, but according to showrunner Sera Gamble, Season 4 of the series had initially hoped to bring back Jenna Ortega’s Ellie Alves from Season 2, but her commitments to Netflix’s Wednesday prevented that from happening. Ellie’s older sister Delilah was killed in Season 2 of the series, which is one reason why Penn Badgeley’s Joe left Los Angeles, so were Ellie to return to the program, it would clearly cause some complications for Joe. YOU Season 4 Part 1 is now streaming on Netflix.

“We wanted to bring Ellie back and we heard, ‘Oh, Jenna is doing some show,’” Gamble shared with IndieWire. “It’s been just such a pleasure to see Jenna this year. We have ideas for Ellie if her schedule allows her to visit us again.”

It’s unclear how substantial Ellie’s role would have been and how much that involvement would have altered the overall trajectory of Joe’s life, so it’s possible that the series reworked that role into another character’s connection to him or that those elements were scrapped entirely. 

Ellie might not be the only character who could potentially return, as Gamble expressed, “Any character who’s not dead who knows anything about Joe, it’s fair game to try to exert any justice. And any character who is dead, he has a really active imagination.”

Last year offered Ortega a number of breakout opportunities in the world of horror, though it was arguably her role in Season 2 of YOU that kicked off the wave of horror projects. After that TV show, Ortega went on to star in projects like The Babysitter: Killer Queen, Scream, and X, as well as the massively popular Wednesday. A Season 2 of Wednesday is on the way, which could cause more complications for her schedule, but Ortega herself expressed her interest in a possible return.

“It would be amazing to see Ellie come back and take control of her life,” Ortega shared with Teen Vogue back in 2019. “I just want her to be an even bigger badass. I don’t want her to come back and be extremely vulnerable and sad. We have to remember that even though people still find Joe somewhat charming, he’s evil, he does terrible things, and he gets away with them because of his gender and race and his position in society. [Ellie] has so much potential and so much talent that she shouldn’t waste because of him.”

YOU Season 4 Part 1 is now streaming on Netflix.

Would you like to see Ellie return to the series? Let us know in the comments!