The new season of You was an emotional rollercoaster. You is a five-season show about New Yorker Joe Goldberg in his daily life as a stalker, serial killer and sexual predator. Each season follows Joe’s new obsession, in order: Candace, Beck, Love, Natalie, Marienne, Kate, and finally Bronte.
Joe initially lives in New York and then moves to California, France, and England before moving back to New York for the final season. The beginning of the season starts with Kate as the CEO of her family company and Joe as the perfect trophy husband. This season to me, portrayed the same Joe, but heightened.
He is more violent, sensitive and intense. Penn Badgley, who plays Joe, explained in an interview with Netflix, how he wanted people to clearly understand that Joe is a predator rather than a romantic icon. In the final episode, Bronte’s words before getting drowned by Joe ended the season perfectly with what women should take away from the series.
She said “The fantasy of a man like you is how we deal with the reality of a man like you”. This line emphasises the consequences of our tendencies to romanticise men like Joe. It reflects the lengths to which individuals will go to maintain a relationship they deem attractive but is toxic.
Essentially, the show’s premise is encapsulated in the final episode. Bronte is conflicted between still being in love with Joe and also knowing he is a murderer. I liked this premise for Bronte’s character, as it’s very realistic to victims of abuse from their partner who still believe they are a good person.
There were some missed opportunities for plot twists. The first is when Joe wants to kidnap Reagan Lockwood, twin of Maddie Lockwood, due to her scheming against Kate. Accidentally, Joe kidnaps Maddie as she is dressed as her twin to have an affair with Reagan’s husband.
He ends up kidnapping both of them and ordering Maddie to kill her sister with her insulin. Maddie executes Joe’s orders, and we can then see Reagan with the syringe’s needle in her neck. When I first watched this, I was almost certain that the twins set up a trap for Joe and faked Reagan’s death or that Reagan impersonated her sister and killed Maddie instead.
I thought that side plot twists like this one, could have added a bit more to the show. Overall, this season of You got to the core of modern society’s faults and the normalised masculine toxicity present around us. The final episode ended with Joe in a prison cell receiving fan mail of a girl fantasising about him and his murderous tendencies.
Like most narcissists, Joe views himself as a victim of society rather than an abuser. “Maybe we have a problem as a society. Maybe we should fix what’s broken within us. Maybe the problem isn’t me. Maybe it’s you,” Joe ends the show by breaking the fourth wall and putting the opportunity for reflection onto the viewer. The ending catalyses us to think about what narratives we perpetuate on social media. If Joe isn’t “that” bad, then maybe all abusive, manipulative murderers aren’t either.