It’s one of the most breathtaking moments in YOU the third season: Still tense after Henry’s brush with measles, Love is visited in her bakery by Gil, who admits that his children were probably the ones who passed it on to her baby. (Neither knows that the real culprit is any closer to home.)
Plus, Gil confirms that he and his wife Margaret are anti-vaxxers, which definitely throws Love off the hook. As he tries to leave the bakery, Love hits him in the head from behind with a rolling pin – and as far as the public knows at the time, he could very well be dead. (He’s not yet…)
Given the timing of the new season’s release, you might be tempted to assume this storyline was inspired by the pandemic, but showrunner Sera Gamble says it’s not quite the case.
“Our writer’s room opened in February 2020,” she tells TVLine. “When we walked into the room, we thought, something crazy is happening abroad. We wonder if it’s coming here, because if it does, it won’t be great.” But that storyline wasn’t a response to COVID or the vaccine conversation that’s been going on, especially over the past few months. If anything came our way, we were all very struck by how much these conversations related to that conversation in the episode.
Gamble says the idea of making an episode about an unvaccinated child spreading a disease to a very young baby came from the writers walking around and talking about what really scared them.
“Nothing is scarier for parents than the helplessness of having a sick child,” she says. “In the case of our show, we had to ask, ‘What would cause Love to hit someone on the head and throw them in the cage?’ And it’s that he did something to harm her baby.”
