Well hello, You. After two years of anticipation, the fifth and final season of Netflix’s hit show You is set to be released on April 24th. The psychotic, murderous, and increasingly unhinged boy-next-store returns to his old stomping grounds in New York City, but this time as a loyal husband to millionaire and CEO of Lockwood Corporation, Kate Lockwood (Charlotte Ritchie), his love interest in the previous season. Dripped in money and media attention, Joe Goldberg (Penn Badgley) navigates life as the public’s newly appointed Prince Charming.
Unfortunately, this prince has never been very good at keeping one princess. Worse, this prince isn’t a prince at all, but a wolf in sheep’s clothing. Here’s hoping that Joe is finally ripped out of his fairy tale and dropped into a revenge tragedy. Bring on the hunt of Joe Goldberg — if only Beck, Peach, Delilah, Candace, and Love were there to see him mounted on a wall.
A Fleeting Fairytale in New York
Picking up three years after season 4, Joe’s back in New York and, judging from the trailer, back where we first laid eyes on him: Mooney’s bookstore. With his new rapid change in tax brackets, I’d assume Joe’s bought his old sanctuary and killing grounds, and, of course, wherever Joe goes, so does his signature cage which too is back to its original home in the basement of Mooney’s. Joe has always thrived in the margins, in his ability to become no one and see everything, however, this season presents him a new challenge. Thrust from the protection of facelessness and namelessness and into widespread fame and social media attention, Joe Goldberg has nowhere to hide.
We catch a glimpse of Joe’s fairy tale ending — or what he gaslit himself into believing was his ending. He has the perfect and successful wife, fancy red carpets where he’s praised globally for his devotion to and infatuation with Kate, a stunning home in New York City, all the money he could dream of, and a little boy that, based on the You Instagram, is Joe and Love’s son Henry whom he had abandoned on his coworker Dante’s doorstep in season 3 (with all his money and influence, I’m sure Joe easily pried his son away from the hands of the couple who had been raising him for years). However, much to the danger of any woman who gives him a second glance, Joe is never satisfied with what he has. In the trailer, we hear the familiar lull and deluded thinking of Joe’s inner monologue:
“To live happily ever after, you had to bury your old self. You have a great life, it’s just not worth the risk.”
– Netflix, You Season 5 Trailer
Old Patterns and Loose Ends
Much like the ghosts of Joe’s victims, he’s never been able to evade his true self for long. Unwilling to leave his past behind him, we see a new love interest appear, Bronte (Madeline Brewer), a woman who, judging by the trailer, broke into Mooney’s late at night for a book. With flashes of Joe garbed in his signature stalker hat, lingering and menacing glances, and four seasons of history to back it up, it’s safe to assume Joe couldn’t quiet the compulsions in his head. Let’s hope the name “Bronte” is a symbol for the story to come: a powerful legacy of intelligent women contributing to societal good by exposing the danger within it.
The trailer seems to suggest so with Joe looking down at a newspaper being sold on the streets of New York entitled: “JOE GOLDMURDER: Humanitarian or Homicidal Maniac?” The showrunners have made clear that this season won’t be a tale of Joe’s narrow avoidance of suspicion; this will be a season of justice. The walls of Joe’s glass castle are shattering. We hear a frantic Joe stress that “They’ve made me the most visible man in New York”. Who is this “they” we might be wondering? Beck’s old friend Anika appears to have taken to social media exposing Joe as the man who killed her best friend Peach Salinger, we see a screen voicing a plea for anyone with information on Joe Goldberg to reach out, and then a dejected Nadia (Amy Leigh-Hickman) in prison looking up from a table in recognition of the name.
Joe may have been able to evade arrest and suspicion when he was a nobody, but things have changed. He’s left a litter of people who can aid in his downfall: Lynn and Anika from season 1, Ellie from season 2 whose life was destroyed after the death of her sister Delilah (please, please gift us with a Jenna Ortega cameo), Love’s remaining family and friends from seasons 2 and 3, the now public speakers and influencers Sherry and Cary who escaped from Joe and Love’s cage in season 3, Juliet from seasons 3 and 4 who has a mountain of testimony she could provide, Nadia from season 3 sitting in prison for a crime Joe committed, and his wife, Kate, who aided in some of his crimes in the previous season. Also, let’s not forget that jar of urine Joe left in Peach’s house before he murdered her.
You Can’t Outrun Yourself
Kate is starting to fear her husband. We hear the familiar line of Joe’s that there isn’t a line he wouldn’t cross to protect her, and Kate refuses: “No. You want us to kill everyone who is suspicious of us for the rest of our lives?” Joe, more in touch with his darkness than ever before, replies, “Is that so wrong? If it’s for the right reasons?” Anna Camp joins You as Kate’s twin sisters, Maddie and Raegan, and one, possibly both, of these in-laws seems to be hot on Joe’s trail. Kate’s half-brother Teddy (Griffin Matthews) appears to be warning Kate about her husband’s true nature and urging her to get out. We see a flash of Joe being dragged out of his home as his son calls for him from the stairs. The trailer is short, but it gives us so much to be excited about. It’s time for Joe Goldberg to face the music.
One of the showrunners for season 5, Michael Foley, describes the final season as a confrontation of the self:
“We always said that we would stop after five and [that], in a perfect world, we would bring Joe back home to New York. We loved the idea of things coming full circle for him. We’re excited by the fact that Joe came home as such a different person than [who] we saw in Season 1. At the core of our final story for Joe is this dichotomy of the old and the new.”
– Michael Foley, Tudum
This season of You sees the end of a long cycle back to where it all began. Joe has protected himself with bedtime stories of heroic men who would do anything for the one they love, of fatalistic romances, of the misadventures in fairy tales that ultimately bring you to your one true love. Let’s turn the lights on in his dark room and have him find himself surrounded by mirrors reflecting the monster he truly is. Bring us the ghosts of Beck, Peach, Delilah, Candace, and Love to finally see justice done. This is no longer the scared young boy who was abused and discarded as a child; this is a compulsive and insatiable killer, and it’s time to put a stop to him for good.
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