Penn Badgley’s Joe Goldberg has worn many different hats, but he hasn’t changed much since he first formed an obsessive attachment in You Season 1. Instead it’s the world around him that shifts, bending almost to his will as he runs from one relationship to the next, leaving countless bodies in his wake. It’s no different in the next (and final) chapter of his twisty life story. You Season 5 brings Joe back to his old stomping grounds, and face-to-face with the same problems he’s spent years running from. There’s a sense that Joe’s story has come full circle... and that makes this conclusion feel more like a remix of You’s greatest hits.
You Season 5 picks up after what may be Joe’s most daring (and ridiculous) escape yet. Some years have passed since Joe first fell in love with reluctant billionaire Kate Lockwood (Charlotte Ritchie) across the pond. After surviving a vaguely homoerotic/semi-Freudian struggle with his dark alter ego (Ed Speelers), Joe came clean about most of the crimes he’d committed, pledging to keep his murderous urges in check to live happily ever after with the woman he unironically calls “my queen.”
