Netflix's uncharted territory in season 2: Los Angeles. For someone like Joe, who is the antithesis of a typical Angeleno, it's the last place anyone could've imagined him going to. But there's a good reason why YOU changed locations.
In the first episode of season 2, Candace vowed to make Joe's life miserable, with the promise of torturing him to the point where he'd feel compelled to confess his horrific actions to the police. Joe explained it best in his narration, saying "When you're running from someone who thinks they know you, the best place to hide is the city they think you hate." And Joe really hates Los Angeles.
The location change also appears in author Caroline Kepnes' sequel to YOU, titled Hidden Bodies. The circumstances as to why Joe moved there are different, since Candace is dead in the books and he moves to the West Coast to seek revenge on a new lover, but his discomfort is the same. In an interview with Los Angeles Times, Kepnes mentioned that taking Joe to a new city was based on her own move from New York to Los Angeles.
While Kepnes chose the location because of her own journey, it's also the perfect vehicle for Joe's story in YOU. This new location is testing ground for him. Instead of a regular bookstore, Joe ends up working at a hybrid café-bookstore-grocery store called Anavrin (Nirvana spelled backwards). He lamented that there aren't any Ralph Waldo Emerson novels in sight. Instead, the shelves are lined with books about chakra clearing.
Los Angeles also is the perfect place to test Joe's tolerance of those who are different from him. He's surrounded by vapid people who he barely has anything in common with. When Joe's new romantic interest, Love, planned an impromptu group date so her friends could meet him, his discomfort was apparent when they talked about blood cleanses and reiki. Love told Joe that her friend Gabe came up with a theory: Los Angeles has seven totems, and if you see them all, you become a true Angeleno – and can never leave. One of Joe's biggest trepidations throughout the season was being stuck in the new city. After seeing all seven totems, he realized that no matter what he did, he'd be trapped there, thanks to his past haunting him.
There's plenty of horror in YOU, but for Joe, nothing's more terrifying than sipping the Angeleno Kool-Aid and losing his identity.