The fifth and final season of YOU is something I’ve been waiting for. This Netflix Original, based on Caroline Kepnes’s books, became a pop culture staple when it first aired, and showrunners Greg Berlanti and Sera Gamble have continued that momentum, raising the stakes each season with Joe (Penn Badgley) escaping the consequences of his actions. Now, in YOU Season 5, it’s all come home. Quite literally.
Directed by Marcos Siega and written by Neil Reynolds, Justin Lo, and Mike Foley, You Season 5 starts happily. After Joe completed his stint as the “Eat the Rich Killer” in the UK, he returned home to New York City. And he does it with his real name. Joe Goldberg is back, he has Mooney’s Bookstore again, his son Henry is back living with him, and he’s married to Kate (Charlotte Ritchie).
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Having convinced Kate that they both have the same burdens to carry, the two are living happily ever after. Or at least, they have money, a kid, and a house. In reality, the unraveling family squabbles and hatred ultimately push the couple to a breaking point. Twins Maddie and Reagan Lockwood (Anna Camp) slowly start unraveling the curated life that Kate and Joe have built, to the point that neither can ignore it. Meanwhile, Teddy (Griffin Matthews) tries his best to ground the terrible family, only to leave Joe even more on the outs.
Like every season prior, Joe’s love fades. With Kate in the limelight making the decisions, giving him money, and keeping him kept, Joe isn’t the one in control. And if there is one thing we know about Joe Goldberg, and that he learns about himself in YOU Season 5, it’s that he doesn’t want to love; he wants to own.
YOU Season 5 follows the same path as other seasons, but that’s the point.
That’s when he starts to look elsewhere. When a new woman named Brontë (Madeline Brewer) enters the picture, Joe begins to stray. Ultimately, though, even as the old rumblings of obsession start to manifest and the flame begins to dwindle with Kate, their life is still perfect. But then the dark desires bubble up, and Kate has to choose if Joe’s penchant for murder is something she can live with.
The romantic entanglement is only part of Joe Goldberg’s problem. The other part is that all the ghosts of the past have started to make appearances. For all of the running that Joe did, he somehow finds himself grappling with the exact moment it all began, with Guenivere Beck (Elizabeth Lail).
Brontë walks into Joe’s life as the perfect manic pixie waiting to be swept away by him. Her love of literature immediately reminds him of Beck; it lights a fire in him, and soon, she becomes his “you.” It’s a moment in every season of the series that’s always met with apprehension. The moment where Joe picks his prey and the audience watches her be wooed, only to meet her demise, like a chess piece being moved through no will of her own.
Brontë is the central character of the season, moving the story and twisting it too.
Brontë is the same. At least, until she isn’t. With Brontë, twists come like a storm and leave the audience and Joe thrown for what may be too many loops. But even in the twists in YOU Season 5, Brontë stands as a character who knows Joe as intimately as the audience. The more she spends time with him, the more she figures him out. And at a certain point, it’s hard not to see her as an insert for the audience, for better and a little bit for worse.
You Season 5 is very aware of its fanbase. For all the times Penn Badgley tells his fans not to fall in love with Joe— someone who is a legitimate sociopath who kills his partners—people still love him. And thanks to his manipulative charm, Joe can use his destructive and manipulative charm on the women in his orbit. He wears his murders on the outside and still finds a woman to love him and to trust him.
In the first season of the series, I was horrified by how it was shot, imbuing romance into Joe’s stalking and the murders that followed. However, as the series continued, I couldn’t stop watching. More importantly, I couldn’t stop finding joy in the moments where Joe’s mask slips and the series’ writers put him face-to-face with himself, cutting out his charismatic legs from under him.
While You Season 5 offers more of the same in terms of building Joe up as someone who has found love and whose sins have been forgiven, it executes his fall with a stronger hand than last time. Where past seasons of the Netflix Original series have used a scalpel to carve away parts of Joe’s charm, revealing the sociopathy beneath, You Season 5 uses a sledgehammer.
Joe Goldberg lets his mask slip in YOU Season 5, and those moments are his best.
With 10 episodes, Joe’s ending feels like it’s dragging on forever. Each twist and turn of the story starts to weigh on the pacing. By Episode 7, I was close to being entirely over the situation. Joe is going to get away with it again. Joe is going to be loved again.
However, the final trio of episodes lifts a mountain of transgressions and delivers a satisfying ending. Despite each episode feeling like an eternity stuck with a man I have hated but kept coming back to, the payoff in You Season 5 is thrilling and pulse-pounding, ultimately making it all worth it.
Penn Badgley’s Joe was already going to go down in pop cultural history. If not for the simple reason that so many people fell in love with this literal murderer, or the series being one of Netflix’s longest-running, it will be Joe’s consistency. Joe is charming, romantic, evil, and manipulative, and You Season 5 goes to great lengths to show you that none of those characteristics are mutually exclusive.
While Badgley’s skill as an actor is largely to thank, it also owes a great deal to the unreserved way the showrunners allowed this last season to progress. Joe’s deeds don’t just catch up to him. The skeletons erupt from his closet, and each and every one tells a story.
The final season of YOU understands that the audience is enamored with Joe, and it’s judging you.
Making small choices throughout a series feels like a forgotten art as episode counts decrease and renewals beyond Season 2 become rare. For You Season 5, though, every single choice, conflict, victim, lie, and even side character comes back into focus.
This isn’t about Joe paying for his crimes. It’s about the crushing weight of the evil he’s done and the remorse he doesn’t feel, compounding on a crumbling man. You Season 5’s biggest strength is how much goes into making Joe into a weak, sniveling man. His misogyny, which was once disguised by romance, is laid out as plain as day.
You Season 5 isn’t entirely perfect. Its melodrama often brushes against its more thrilling elements in awkward ways. Still, situations that begin as “that’s not going to work” do frequently, in fact, work more often than not, changing eye-rolls into gasps. I would even go as far as to say that this You finale threads the needle through absolutely uncalled for and “damn, okay.”
As a series, it’s challenging for me to round up. Each season has become increasingly more unhinged, and this final season of You is no different. Yet, Penn Badgley’s smooth voice, which deepens into an annoying anger, is too good not to keep coming back to. Every choice Joe has made has become increasingly unhinged, and as an audience, that’s a good thing. As the series closes, You Season 5 knows that it’s trapped all of us, and that will always be its success.
YOU Season 5 is streaming now, exclusively on Netflix.
Catch up on YOU with our season reviews
Season 2 | Season 3 | Season 4 Part 1 | Season 4 Part 2
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Rating - 8.5/108.5/10
TL;DR
Every choice that Joe has made has become increasingly unhinged, and as an audience, that’s a good thing. As the series closes, You Season 5 knows that it’s trapped all of us, and that will always be its success.
