I came to Lifetime’s YOU for the stellar cast and creepy story, but I am staying for the literary allusions.

Two books figure very prominently into the second episode of YOU: Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and L. Frank Baum’s Ozma of Oz. The former is quite well known, and the allusion is obvious: Joe says that it’s about how “the monster isn’t really the monster,” which speaks to his delusions of himself as the protagonist in a rom-com instead of the villain of a thriller. But I’m far more intrigued by the latter allusion, which also featured much more prominently in the episode.

Disclosure: before Harry Potter consumed my life at nine years old, my original fandom was Baum’s Oz books. I read them cover to cover more times than I could count, and every letter to Santa and birthday wish list consisted of more apocryphal Oz books (of which there is a mind-numbingly staggering amount). Ozma of Oz was always among my favorites: it puts the heroes in more genuine peril than most of the other books; and it’s the one where the two main protagonists of the franchise, Dorothy and Ozma, meet for the first time.

So I am thrilled about the incorporation of Ozma of Oz into the storyline, and must doff my cap to YOU’s writers for the brilliant allusion. Because of the 14 Oz books by Baum, Ozma of Oz is by far the most resonant. Obviously, spoilers ahoy for both YOU episode 2, and for Ozma of Oz.

The main plot of Ozma of Oz, once one gets past the usual fantastical travelogue in Baum’s books, is the liberation of the Royal Family of Ev from the Nome King’s clutches. The Nome King, Ruggedo, who debuts in this book and is the primary antagonist of the entire Oz franchise, rules over the underground kingdom of nomes. He holds the Ev royal family captive in his underground kingdom by transforming them into knick-knacks.

We see how the theme of underground captivity pervades YOU episode 2. We witness a flashback to Joe’s mentor imprisoning him underground precisely because Joe had not read Ozma of Oz at that point. And one of the main storylines is how Benji is imprisoned underground by Joe, casting Joe in a dual role as both Ruggedo and his victims in this parallel.

Ozma, the girl ruler of Oz, mounts a rescue mission for the Ev royal family; and Dorothy accompanies her. Ruggedo offers them (and all of their allies) a deal: they are allowed to wander through his domain and can select a number of objects to touch equivalent to the number of captives he has. If any of the objects selected are the transfigured people, they and the newly freed hostage are free to go. If they fail to identify any correct objects, they become knick-knacks themselves. Ozma, the gung-ho leader of the expedition, fails and is transformed into an emerald grasshopper. Dorothy, who stumbled upon the adventure, gets lucky and correctly identifies an Ev prince, so is free to go under Ruggedo’s terms.

The first clear parallel here is Paco, who happens to enter Joe’s underground domain on an errand. Very fortunately for Paco, he is the Dorothy in this adventure, not the Ozma. He just happens to be there, but is not deliberately trying to work against Joe. He is allowed to go free by Joe. He even receives a copy of Ozma of Oz as a gift – a representation of him choosing the correct knick-knack (a book) out of that basement, instead of an incorrect one (like, say, evidence of kidnapping).

Depending on how self-aware Joe is of this literary motif, the gift of Ozma of Oz may even be intended as a subconscious warning to Paco: don’t go snooping in scary underground places, lest it not end well.

As for a parallel for Ozma herself, there wasn’t one directly in the episode, but there is some really brilliant foreshadowing going on. Beck’s friend Peach is suspicious of Joe. She interrogates him with “detective eyes,” and definitely seems like the proactive sort… say, the kind who investigates Joe and stumbles upon something she shouldn’t in that basement. If I had to guess, Peach will run afoul of Joe, and end up imprisoned within that underground basement.

Her name is what cements this theory. I thought “Peach” was a rather odd name, until I cast my mind upon her potentially being a stand-in for Ozma in this story. In the 11th book in the series, The Lost Princess of Oz, Ozma is kidnapped and magicked into a peach pit! That’s right, there is a literary connection between Ozma and peaches, so it’s obvious that YOU’s Peach is going to be a parallel for Ozma. And I am awed by the sophistication of these allusions.

There are other connections between YOU and Ozma of Oz. Before all the business with the Nome King, Dorothy stumbles upon a Princess Langwidere: a spoiled and vain girl who has an entire cabinet of heads that she swaps for her own on a regular basis. The only way to recognize her is by means of “a pretty little key made out of solid ruby” that she wears.

Throughout the episode, Benji makes the accusation that Beck is just like Langwidere: that she changes herself and her image to suit her needs. He even makes a visual connection to Langwidere: “Right now, she’s got on red lipstick.” This seems an odd visual detail to point out, especially since red lipstick doesn’t say as much about Beck’s character as myriad other details might. But if it’s meant to be a visual callback to Langwidere’s ruby key, then it all makes sense. We are not far enough along in YOU to know if Benji’s assessment of Beck is wholly accurate (TV Fanatic has an excellent take on this), but the parallel is striking.

Speaking of Benji, his death is also right out of the pages of Ozma of Oz. In the climax of the book, Ruggedo is finally defeated by having eggs thrown at him – eggs are horribly poisonous to all nomes. So, with that book on Joe’s mind, it makes a really twisted kind of sense that Joe would choose to kill Benji specifically through a food allergy. Just as eggs are poison specifically to nomes, peanut oil is poison specifically to Benji.

What this essay has proven is that the writers of YOU are working on several levels, and that the choice of having Joe be a bookstore employee was a deliberate opening to employ classic books as literary scaffolding for the story they are telling. Going forward, I’m going to be paying very close attention to what books pop up in the TV show, because that may clue us in to where this story is going. I encourage you to do the same – and to pick up some of the Oz books in the meantime!