How Netflix’s You Seduced Us For Five Seasons — & Then Made Us Pay For It
The final season of Netflix's You gives us the ending we deserve—if not the one we wanted. By choosing karmic retribution over pulpy thrills, the makers deliver their final, deliberate blow. Swetha Ramakrishnan writes.
WHAT DOES IT SAY ABOUT US as an audience that we find the series finale episode of Netflix’s You predictable? A finale that finally decides to mete out justice for a psychotic, misogynistic and murderous protagonist, Joe Goldberg. A finale that decides, enough is enough. No more glorifying a serial killer who has killed more than 25 people and is delusional enough to assume he did all of it for love. This brings me to questions we’ve all asked ourselves with each season of You: How far will Joe go to maintain a sense of normalcy in his life? How many murders are too many murders? How can this character seem so compelling and addictive when, in reality, he is a dangerous murderer?
First things first, You is not a TV show one should associate with reality. And Joe Goldberg cannot be seen in shades of black or white. The fun of the show was how it went from introspective to provocative to downright campy. We went from assuming Joe Goldberg is just an old-school romantic who uses stalking, deep invasion of privacy and misogynistic ideals about “womanhood” as means to find his fairytale ending. Aww, how adorable. Surely we can support his darker endeavours if it’s all ultimately for love, right? Wrong. You takes that journey with audiences and proves us wrong with every subsequent season. And so there was only one logical way to end a TV series like this — Joe’s criminal acts finally catching up with him.
This season begins with Joe Goldberg returning to New York City after three seasons, and gaining massive media attention as husband to billionaire wife Kate Lockwood (Charlotte Ritchie). He’s gone from alleged killer to modern husband material in the eyes of the TikTok generation and seems to have kept his murderous instincts under control. His son Henry lives with them, and his wife has managed to scrub all his nefarious activities of the past from public memory. All good? Well, not so much. Kate’s family, including a shady Uncle Bob and twin sisters Maddy and Reagan (played brilliantly by actor Anna Camp), pose as roadblocks to their happily ever after. The murders, then, begin again.
Caught in this web is Bronte (Madeline Brewer): a stranger that Joe meets in his bookstore, Mooney’s, and falls for. Given there’s a new “you” in every season, this finale is about how Joe falls in love with Bronte and wrecks his happy family vibe for another adventure filled with catfishing, past traumas, pulpy thrill sequences, lots of blood, lots of gore and yes, a bunch of dead bodies. There’s also a renewed sense of passion for murder that Joe adopts in the final season. He even starts writing fiction around it, initially as a way to release his thoughts to not be a danger to society, but all that goes down the drain once the action starts to kick in and things start falling apart.
To reduce this season to “predictable” is doing it a disservice. Joe Goldberg, as a character, is written with nuance from the very first season, but as this series comes to its end, it’s very clear that the makers have chosen to explore justice as a way to get to closure. And they do so with a bang. It’s not a black-and-white writing of the end: there are plenty of twists before we get to the point of retribution. Bronte mirrors the viewers (of the show) as she goes through a roller coaster of emotions about the man she is falling in love with — is he a murderer, or is he just a man stuck at the wrong place at the wrong time? We’ve all felt the same through every season that Joe finds a new woman to obsess over, from Guinivere Beck to Love Quinn to Marianne. If you’ve ever wondered how far Joe is going to go to support his delusion, this season gives you that answer.
The women in Joe’s world serve not just as objects of his obsession but as mirrors to the cracks in (and dangers of) his personality. They’re not just victims, even though most of them suffer at his hands. With this season, we see that these women are the reason for Joe’s downfall. And it’s not just the women he has been involved with, like Beck or Marianne, but also the women who orbited him, like Nadia from season 4, who has always seen through Joe’s intellectual facade or the twins from this season (Anna Camp should get her own spin off show playing them), who pose as serious barriers to Joe getting what he wants. We also finally get to see Joe’s convoluted story play out from the women’s perspective, and Bronte is the one who brings all of this to light. The narrative shift is refreshing.
Throughout the series, Penn Badgley has been vocal about the dangers of romanticising Joe. He described Joe as "a murderer... a sociopath... abusive... delusional... and self-obsessed," emphasising that the character is not seeking true love but is instead driven by obsession and control. Despite his disdain for Joe's actions, Badgley has approached the role with a sense of responsibility, aiming to humanise the character without endorsing his behaviour. In interviews , Badgley has mentioned that playing Joe required significant emotional, spiritual, and physical energy, due to the character's unpredictable and manic nature. And so, the climax, while bereft of a big, slap-in-the-face twist, mirrors reality in that it finally tells us where men like Joe end up: lonely, and in prison.
Not everything about the fifth and final season of You is great, though. Some story arcs are brought in at convenience and abandoned when not needed. For example, Bronte’s journey through the series is somewhat clunky, and she keeps shifting between the woman who will finally save Joe to the woman who finally takes him down. It’s like the writers of the series were in a sense of urgency to get to the end, so a lot of the filler writing seemed forced. The twists were not twisting enough, even though each actor performed their role to perfection. Is this the best way to end a series like You? Maybe not. But it’s an ending we deserve, maybe not one we want. In choosing karmic retribution instead of pulpy thrill, the makers of You have delivered their final blow.
Watching You has always felt like leaning too close to a flame; it’s been equal parts thrilling, deranged, and uncomfortably reflective. What began as a slick thriller about a charming bookstore manager spiralled into a cultural fever dream that dared to ask: What if your romantic lead is actually the monster? As we went through Joe Goldberg’s kaleidoscope of justifications, seduced by slick voiceovers and slicker rationalisations, we inhaled the world of You like a make-believe romantic fantasy novel. But beneath the body count and plot twists lay the real hook: the uncomfortable intimacy of being inside the mind of someone we’d normally flee from. The show made us question our empathy, our taste, and our appetite for anti-heroes in artisanal packaging. And now, as it bows out, You leaves behind a legacy not just of viral memes and gasps, but a cautionary tale about the lies we swallow: especially the ones told in a soothing voice that swears it’s doing it all for love.
You is currently streaming on Netflix.
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