What degree would the characters from You take at different London unis?

You don’t have to be a Joe to take English, but if you’re Joe, you’re taking English.


Sometimes, it’s a little hard to relate to the characters from You, what with the murder and all. It’s difficult to remember that they are also normal people who may have gone to uni in London in another life, staring blankly at a UCAS screen as they wait to hear back. Here is our attempt to humanise them – what degree the characters would take if they went to a London uni.

Natalie: Law

Let’s face it, Natalie was kind of irrelevant. What we know is that she started out young and idealistic and ended up with a bit of a drinking problem, so law at LSE makes sense, right? One minute you’re ready to join an NGO and battle The Man, next up you’re in a law office with your head buried in paperwork trying to figure out copyright claims, realising that you now are The Man, or in Natalie’s case, you married him.

The look of regret as you realise you’re going to have to pull a third all-nighter.

Love: Arts and sciences

Indecisive, a desire for it all, parents wealthy enough to own Anavrin and give you a job guarantee post-graduation… that sounds just like… you. Love can bake, manage a business, be a mother, and also kill people and dispose of evidence at the same time. Now that’s what I call a versatile girlboss. She also needs to take that biochem lab module to learn how to poison husbands properly, so it all adds up. UCL is lucky to have her.

Murder, muffins, marriage with a sociopath – what can’t she do?

Forty: Environmental science

Forty only loves three things: Love, trees, and drugs. He probably has exclaimed several times that he wished he was alive when Woodstock was happening and that he was “born into the wrong generation.” You can just picture him sitting on Hampstead Heath with a joint packed with hydroponic weed, listening to Father John Misty, claiming it’s “studying.”

Point is: he thinks he’s way cooler than everyone else, and definitely goes to City.

Forty making eye contact with his dealer at the student centre.

Sherry: Politics and IR

Sure, Sherry’s taking Politics and IR, but she’s never in class because of her influencer lifestyle. While students are trapped in lectures, she’s at a cafe in Mayfair having a valet park her car which is worth four years of tuition. During reading week, she’s simultaneously on vacation in Antigua and campaigning to save the Bornean Orangutan. It’s no biggie – she’s working for daddy after she graduates anyway.

Sherry uploading her paid Insta post for Juicy Couture.

Cary: Geography

I bet you were thinking sports science, right? Wrong. There’s something incredibly pure about Cary’s bond with nature – you can almost imagine him trekking across a hill with a map in his hand, going to inspect rocks by a river. Sure, there’ll be some testosterone-fuelled screaming, wild kale juice, eating raw meat and assorted shirtlessness. But hey, at least he’s got colour pencils.

Guys, look! It’s the real GI Joe!

Peach: Interior design

Her parents are loaded and Peach is at the crucial stage of her development in which she wants to redecorate the house (to UHaul with Beck, of course). It wouldn’t hurt to have a rich husband who went on a lot of business trips and mysteriously disappeared a couple of months into their marriage. At UAL she fits right in. Nothing encapsulates all of that like a perfect shag carpet that matches the curtains!

The look of hate that Peach reserves for carpeted flooring.

Theo: Gender studies and philosophy

Theo has openly declared that he takes gender studies, but he definitely does some philosophy on the side. It’s not because he actually cares about Kant’s categorical imperative or Nietzsche’s eternal recurrence, it’s because those words will get him into people’s pants (or so he thinks). He goes to Kings and definitely frequents Guy’s bar every week.

Can someone please tell him that Simone de Beauvoir was a paedophile before he quotes her again???

Go easy on him – he just realized that Heidegger was a fascist nazi.

Candace: Official dropout

Candace probably started wide-eyed and bushy-tailed at LSE. Two years of her degree radicalised her to the point where she joined either an anarchist group or a cult and mysteriously disappeared for a year without informing anyone where she went. A year later, she resurfaces and becomes the physical manifestation of the voice in your head quietly chanting drop out, drop out, drop out…

Candace pulling up after her Eat, Pray, Love year in India.

Marianne: Comparative literature

Marianne is a twisted personification of the Cool Girl, and that would probably interest her. Flashback to ten years ago and she definitely would have been the original alt-girl that idolised Sylvia Plath, Jeanette Winterson, and somehow also Lana del Rey. Also, Girl, Interrupted is definitely her favourite film. You will have found her in the club smoking section, asking you (only slightly ironically) “rah, where’s my baccy?”

Marianne just found out that you don’t know who the Arctic Monkeys are.

Joe: English

I mean. Duh. His affinity for sexy librarians and mysterious girls ducking into bookshops will definitely be satiated in London. You will find him in English class staring scornfully at your modern vintage copy of the assigned reading, and god forbid you have an original paperback because then he’s definitely following you home. Likewise, if you recommend YA lit to him, you’re going to be the next to end up in a body-bag.

Joe walking past Waterstones, trying to figure out where his death chamber would go.

 

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