Joe Goldberg is hanging up his blue cap — and, this time, it’s for good. With the return of You season five on Netflix, the Penn Badgley-fronted drama has a near impossible task: how to end the most repetitive series of all time, while serving up the correct amount of justice to a simultaneously beloved and derided main character?
The answer is: with little success. You season five picks up three years after season four left off: Joe Goldberg is back in New York following his Made in Chelsea-style stint in London, and he’s now the proud trophy husband of Kate Lockwood (Charlotte Ritchie), a British heiress with a dirty secret (she gave a bunch of children cancer due to her family company building a dodgy pipeline of some sort, don’t ask).
This makes Kate his fourth big love, following in the footsteps of fallen heroes Guinevere Beck, Love Quinn and Marienne Bellamy, who nearly all died at the hands of the murderous, “hopeless romantic” Joe Goldberg (Marienne escaped). His other great love, his son Henry, is also back, extracted from his foster family with convenient ease thanks to Kate’s substantial (and seemingly law-bending) fortune.
All is grand with Kate until, you guessed it, it’s not. And need I tell you why? Her inner circle becomes distrusting of Joe, with someone threatening to out their past in London (where Joe committed a fair few murders, then framed someone else, and Kate covered up her cancer scandal). Oh, and a new lucky lady has entered this life. This time she’s called Bronte (Madeline Brewer), and she might just be the most grating love interest yet.
Same old, same old. It’s like watching the first episode of Love Island at this point — you know it like the back of your hand. You’re mainly waiting to see this season’s “USP” or whatever it does to differentiate itself from previous storylines. We’ve had love interests turn murderous, love interests come back from the dead, and even Fight Club-style plot twists where Joe Goldberg creates his own Tyler Durden version of himself. But this season we get… twins.
That’s right, the majority of the season is taken up by Joe’s quest to rid himself of his pesky sister-in-laws, Reagan and Maddie, played by Anna Camp. It is a long and arduous task, full of Freaky Friday rug pulls and truly terrible dialogue. The storyline seems to go on forever, laughably independent of Joe’s budding romance with Bronte, which is equally tiring until it hits a twist. The performances are middling, mainly due to what feels like cringeworthy writing, though Badgeley does well to carry the show, and Charlotte Ritchie is honestly just too good to be there.
Once the twin drama is finally resolved, after what feels like forever, the show eventually sets about solving the matter at hand: what will happen to Joe Goldberg? Does he deserve to die? To go to prison? To be killed by one of his ex-lovers? Or yes to all of the above?
I won’t tell you that, but I will say that what happens is so incredibly on the nose that it would make you laugh if I told you it to your face. That being said, the finale is by far the best episode, even if it does lean heavily on 2014’s Gone Girl for inspiration. It brings out all the stops, from the music to the performances to the cinematography, to the point where it feels like it’s shot more like a feature-length film than an episode of television.
It’s almost as if the finale was written as a bottle episode entirely independent from the events of the rest of the series — so much so that I’d honestly advise those who are considering giving up midway through season five to skip to the finale so they can bid a proper farewell to Joe Goldberg. A scene soundtracked by Billie Eilish’s Happier than Ever proves to be a highlight, and Penn Badgley remains a strong and steadfast performer to the bitter end. But by god did this series need a mercy killing already. I’m just glad it’s finally been put out of its misery.
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