Peach (Shay Mitchell) may be the GOAT, but the Salinger heiress isn’t the reason You fans are talking about a certain stone fruit. A new theory from season 2 of You suggests that Love (Victoria Pedretti) killed her husband James (Daniel Durant) and that the murder weapon may, in fact, have been a peach.
After killing his former girlfriend Beck (Elizabeth Lail), stalker/murderer Joe Goldberg (Penn Badgley) leaves New York City for Los Angeles, where he meets Love, a pastry chef whom he thinks could be his perfect match. Oh how right he is: In the final episode, Love reveals that she’s just as terrible as Joe, having killed her former nanny to “protect” her brother Forty (James Scully) as well as the two women who threatened to bring Joe to justice for his previous crimes.
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One question that some viewers were left with at the end of the season was the truth behind the death of Love’s first husband. In flashbacks, we saw that James did not want to have children with Love — at least not right away — specifically because he didn’t want Love’s parents’ help with money or raising their kids. Shortly after, James died of a mysterious illness. Love appeared heartbroken over the loss, but now that we know Love is a psychopath who isn’t exactly above murder, it’s worth wondering...did Love kill James because he dashed her hopes of a perfect family?
Love’s black widow status has been speculated about ever since season 2 dropped on Netflix, but one theory suggests that there’s a pretty poetic way Love could have gone about murdering her former husband. Redditor Smuggertonn noted that Love, a baker, could have easily slipped something into James’ food and poisoned him slowly over time. This would track with how no one seemed to know what specifically killed James. The poison of choice, the Redditor writes, could very well be...a peach.
Rather, the pit of a peach. The pits of peaches contain cyanogenic compounds, which the human body converts to cyanide, a poison, when consumed. A ground-up peach pit (as well as the pits of cherries, apricots, and plums) could theoretically cause someone to get really sick, and if enough is consumed, even die.
The theory is further explained in this video from Flicks and the City:
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When Love first meets Joe, she hands him a peach and asks him if it “looks like a butt.” Most people saw this as a wink to Peach, the woman Joe murdered back in New York, but what if it was also a hint that Love was a killer all along? If this theory is correct, she literally handed Joe a murder weapon and asked him his thoughts on it.
There are also multiple references to Love potentially poisoning Joe that make this theory plausible. When she learns about Candace (Ambyr Childers), she bakes Joe cinnamon rolls made of salt instead of sugar. When she locks Joe in the glass cage, she bakes him muffins, and when Joe looks apprehensive, freaks out over the fact that Joe thinks she would ever poison him. Maybe her freak out wasn't because Joe would think such a horrible thing of her (I mean, she did just slash two women's throats!) but because she wanted to make sure he never found out the truth about James.
If this theory is the real deal, then peaches are truly having a moment. There’s poisoning-by-peach in Bong Joon-ho’s Parasite. There’s a NSFW scene featuring one in 2017’s Call Me By Your Name. Where is the award show love for this fruit?! Clearly, it is capable of wearing as many faces as Love herself.