Spoiler alert: This article contains major spoilers for Season 5 of You, including key plot points and the series finale.
After five seasons of stalking, scheming, and self-justifying inner monologues, You finally forces Joe Goldberg (Penn Badgley) to face himself, sort of. The Netflix thriller closes out its run with a season that leans all the way into Joe’s delusions, exposing the narcissist he’s always been underneath the bookish charm. He’s not a tortured romantic. He’s not a misunderstood intellectual. He’s a murderer who thinks he’s the main character in everyone’s life story— and somehow still expects sympathy.
From the jump, Season 5 makes it hard to be on his side. Joe is entitled, disrespectful, manipulative, and sees therapy as beneath him. His go-to tactic is playing the victim, but it doesn’t work anymore— not when his crimes have piled up and he’s surrounded by people just as cold and calculating as he is. Even Kate (Charlotte Ritchie), his wife, is okay with killing for business, but Joe? He enjoys it. For him, murder isn’t strategy— it’s a twisted form of self-expression; a hobby.
Then there’s Bronte (Madeline Brewer), the latest woman caught in his orbit, who becomes the stand-in for every literary fantasy Joe has ever obsessed over. She plays the part well— she knows he’s a literary fanatic, and their entire relationship leans into tired tropes like, “forced time together,” and, “enemies to lovers.” Joe romanticizes it all, positioning himself as the white knight saving the damsel by eliminating any threat. He genuinely believes killing people makes him a protector — a better man. But that delusion starts to crack when Bronte calls him out for exactly what he is.
In Episode 8, we get one of the season’s most revealing lines: “A life with me means no one would ever hurt you again.” It’s not sweet. It’s chilling. Joe doesn’t want love— he wants control, devotion, and someone who won’t run. And when Bronte suggests he kills to earn love, we see just how deep his need for validation goes. His mom abandoned him, his past relationships have imploded, and now he’s desperate to find someone who can live with— or excuse— the monster he’s become.
Still, Joe never tells Bronte the full truth. He lies about his past, hides the people he’s killed, and paints a selective picture of who he is. That’s what makes their dynamic so frustrating, because even when she tries to “fix” him, he’s already ten steps ahead, manipulating the narrative. Kate outsmarts him in Episode 9, but by then, Joe is so deep in his own mythology that he doesn’t even realize he’s lost control.
But Joe’s downfall isn’t just about his unraveling— it’s about the people who survived him. In Season 4, we saw how far his obsession could go when he kidnapped Marienne (Tati Gabrielle) and locked her in a glass cage after she refused to love him back. Her escape— orchestrated with the help of Nadia (Amy-Leigh Hickman), Joe’s sharp and courageous student during his time posing as a professor in London— was one of the most empowering turns in the series. A lover of mystery novels herself, Nadia used her knowledge and instincts to piece together Joe’s secrets and take a stand against him.
He didn’t let them go easily, though, of course. After discovering Nadia had been collecting evidence against him, Joe framed her for murder, effectively silencing one of the only people willing to stand up to him. Still, both women return in Season 5 and, with Kate’s behind-the-scenes help, join forces in the mission to take Joe down once and for all. While Bronte ultimately gets him arrested, it’s the combined efforts of Joe’s survivors that make his reckoning possible. Their resilience is a quiet but powerful counter to Joe’s fantasy of control— and a reminder that survival is its own form of justice.
The final episodes toy with the idea of Joe as an unreliable narrator. He’s literally writing his life like a novel, turning his sins into prose, convinced he’s crafting an immortal protagonist arc. But the fantasy slips. His pen gets taken away, people start seeing him clearly, and in Episode 10 — the series finale — Joe is finally caught and put on trial. Except… we don’t see the trial. We see him sitting alone in his jail cell, talking directly to the audience.
And here’s the twist: even now, with nowhere left to hide, Joe is still deflecting. Still blaming others. Still blaming us— the viewers— for enabling him, for rooting for him, for following his story all these years. It’s a bold, fourth-wall-breaking moment that forces a final question: Were we complicit all along?
Season 5 doesn’t offer redemption. It offers clarity. Joe Goldberg was never the hero. He was just good at convincing us he might be. Now, the fantasy’s dead— and he’s still too far gone to know it.
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