Warning: The following article contains spoilers for theYouseason 5 finale.Youseason 5 brought a number of familiar faces back for the show’s dramatic conclusion, but one returning character was especially central to ending Joe Goldberg’s story. Based on the series of novels written by Caroline Kepnes, Netflix’s hit serial killer drama has repeatedly seen Penn Badgley’s homicidal Joe Goldberg escape justice for his many crimes. However, in theYouseries finale, Joe is finally arrested and tried for his crimes, with Madeline Brewer’s Louise Flannery (aka Bronte), the close friend and former teaching assistant of his season 1 victim, Guinevere Beck, delivering him to justice.
Speaking withVarietyfollowing the recent streaming release ofYouseason 5, co-showrunner Michael Foley explained why making Beck’s character a central figure in Joe’s comeuppance was so important. Foley said thatBeck’s murder was the“original sin”in which the show’s audience became complicit, despite Joe’s earlier murders. In posthumously rewriting Beck’s book,The Dark Face of Love, Foley also explained that Joe had stolen her voice, and it was important to have Louise return it to her. Check out his comments below:
Because we asked the most of the audience when Joe kills Beck, and we asked everybody to return for Season 2. Nothing against Peach or Benji, but ultimately, that was the original sin that we, the audience, became complicit in by sticking with the show and rooting for Joe.
It felt right to us that if he’s back in New York, we would come full circle, going back to that original sin of not just killing Beck, but stealing her voice. Then we got into the idea of using “The Dark Face of Love,” of having Louise bring her voice back by having him redact what he had done to the book.
What These Comments Mean For The You Series Finale
Beck Reminds Audiences That Joe Is Not To Be Admired
Over the course ofYou’s five-season run, Badgley’s character has racked up an impressive body count in his warped bid to maintain his deluded vision of a perfect romance. WhileYouseason 1 also saw Joe kill Beck’s friends, Peach Salinger (Shay Mitchell) and Benji Ashby (Lou Taylor Pucci), the audience was largely invited to view those murders as a necessary sacrifice to win over the object of Joe’s romantic obsession.
However, it wasBeck’s murder in theYouseason 1 finalethat truly began to strip away any pretensionthat Joe’s actions were in any way justified. Even right up untilYou’s final moments, Joe remained unrepentant as ever, even attempting to deflect the repugnant nature of his actions on the audience.
Louise, however, was at least able to restore the appropriated voice of her murdered friend, forcing Joe to redact everything he had written inThe Dark Face of Loveat gunpoint. In doing this,Louise essentially forces the audience to revisit the same story where they had first become complicit in Joe’s crimesand strips any last vestiges of Joe’s delusions and warped self-justifications away from his version of the events.
Our Take On Joe’s You Season 5 Fate
The Show’s Finale Shows Him As The Monster He Really Is
Having been forced to retell the truth of Beck’s story,theYouseason 5 finalereveals Joe as the monster that he truly is, and his subsequent brutal attack on Louise is one of the most frightening moments of the show’s run. Stripped of all his pretensions,the frightening and truly monstrous reality of Badgley’s character is revealed before his manhood is also taken from himby Louise’s well-aimed gunshot. Denied the death he begs for, and forced to be ridiculed and locked behind bars with no hope of release, is a fitting and poetic ending to his bloody rampage.
You
Cast
You is a psychological thriller that follows a dangerously charming and intensely obsessive young man who manipulates his way into the lives of those he fixates upon, using extreme measures to pursue his unsettling aims.
