You season 5 spoilers follow.
After five seasons and countless more deaths, Joe Goldberg's story is finally ending. And that means his killing spree is also ending, one way or another.
But does Joe survive the show? And does he get away with literal murder? Or does TV's sexiest (and most problematic) killer finally get his comeuppance?
Only You has the answer. Well, not "you" – you wouldn't be reading this if you did.
So join us here at Digital Spy as we reveal how Netflix's You ends and if this was really the killer season that fans deserved.
You season 5 ending explained
With more twists than corpses to Joe's name, the previous nine episodes of You took us on quite a journey.
What to Read Next
But in short, Joe and Kate's marriage fell apart as the true extent of his lunacy came to light. It didn't help that he cheated on his wife with Bronte, a new employee at the bookstore (who it turns out actually hunted Joe down to get revenge for the death of her friend, Guinevere Beck). Remember her? She's the woman Joe obsessively tortured and murdered all the way back in season one.
Oh, and Joe also sewed the key to his cage into HIS ACTUAL ARM this season. So there you go.
The final episode starts off a tad more romantic, however, as Joe and Bronte drive off, leaving their troubles behind in New York City. All their cards are now out on the table, except Bronte did sort of accept Joe's bizarre marriage proposal at the end of the last episode so she can secretly get close enough to kill him.
It's just a normal day for Joe then, who's loving life, guilt-free, as his insipid voiceover complains about the women who wronged him again.
Bronte considers killing Joe with a gun she's smuggled into the car, and that's without even hearing the voiceover. But she still needs answers, and the world needs to know the truth about what Joe did.
"How do I give you the ending you deserve?" she muses, in one of many hilariously direct moments aimed straight at the viewer.
They stop off for gas where Bronte picks up a self-defence keychain and a copy of Beck's book that'll come in handy later. The police show up and do absolutely nothing, as the police so often do on this show, and then Taylor Swift's "Guilty As Sin" plays in the background because this show is a kitsch mess.
They eventually rock up to an empty rental in the middle of nowhere. While Joe arranges passports to help them cross the Canadian border, Bronte decides tonight is the night. But then the night turns romantic as Joe uses his curly locks and deep brown eyes to woo Bronte yet again on a romantic boat ride. She knows everything he did, but even then, a part of her is drawn to him still.
But then Bronte comes to her senses and, while they're making out, she pulls a gun on Joe that was hidden under the pillow.
"Tell me how you killed Guinevere Beck!" demands Bronte.
Yep, that original sin has rightly come back to haunt Joe, "The one I can't outrun," which is fitting because that's where it all began. And because of Beck's kindness towards Bronte, this is also where it's going to end.
Joe backtracks, as per usual. Bronte doesn't stop though. While waiting for answers, she throws Becks's book at Joe and demands he redact every line he wrote to finish it and cover his tracks following her death.
"It's not enough you took her life, you took her voice too... Since the day we've met, you've been erasing me," Bronte adds. "The least I can do is erase you."
Along with Marienne's outrage a few episodes prior, You is finally prioritising the voices of the women Joe hurt over Joe himself, which is exactly where this show needed to go. Could it have got here a bit sooner? Absolutely, but it's exhilarating to see Joe's world crash down around him all at once.
He doesn't listen to these women, however, because he's far too narcissistic for that. But then Joe's son Henry calls and destroys him entirely in just a few short sentences:
"Do you remember when you used to tell me there are no monsters in my room? You lied. It was you. You're the monster."
Joe blames Kate at first, because nothing is ever his fault, but then his ego falters and what look like real tears fall as he realises what a monster he has become. It's all still a sob story for his own benefit though, a pity party we've all been invited to against our will.
"You're not the f**king victim," says Bronte before deciding to call the police.
Joe lunges for the phone then and the pair fight as lights flash and we see glimpses of a bite, some choking, a punch to the face, a knee to the balls, and then a gun firing into Bronte's stomach.
She runs outside and Joe gives chase, still in his underwear mind you. Bronte circles back into the house and grabs her phone, only to realise the "1" is broken so she can't call for help. That wouldn't have been a problem in the UK, just saying.
Joe catches up to her, thanks in no small part to her dodgy ankle which he deliberately broke while she was unconscious a few episodes prior.
"It was always going to end this way," says Bronte. "Wasn't it?"
"No," replies Joe. "You're spiteful, too selfish to know how good you had it."
There he is, the "pathetic misogynist," finally showing his true true colours.
Joe chokes Bronte then, just like he did Beck. But You is gonna You, so yet another twist comes when Bronte stabs Joe in the side using that keychain from earlier. She runs towards the lake, but Joe quickly catches up and knocks her in the water, holding her down as she loses air and drowns.
Once again, Joe has won. Except, he hasn't, actually, because Bronte did manage to get through to the police before her death and officers are now in the woods searching for him.
Let's not talk about how hot Joe is here because that would be inappropriate... Ok, fine. He looks amazing in his underwear, drenched in the rain with wet hair and big doe eyes, but this description is integral to the ending at hand. Promise.
Upon meeting the first cop, Joe stabs him and hides his body behind a log. More police arrive, slowly closing in on him, and then Bronte somehow reappears, despite her injuries, like a goddamn superhero.
Realising that he is well and truly buggered, Joe begs her to kill him to avoid prison.
"You get to kill me," says Joe. "This is how our story ends."
But no, Joe doesn't get to decide how things end. Not anymore. Instead, it's Bronte who gets to make that choice in what might be the best writing we've ever seen on this show.
"I see it clearly now," she says. "The fantasy of a man like you is how we cope with the reality of a man like you."
It's a low bar admittedly, but still, what a line. And it gets even better.
"You're gonna live the rest of your life alone," laughs Bronte. "It's scary for you isn't it?... They're all gonna see you and you're gonna have to see yourself."
Joe lunges at her then, forcing Bronte to shoot. Because even at the end, he's that desperate for control, no matter how fleeting.
But Joe survives, despite his best efforts not to. The police close in very slowly — where were you while this all went down? — and then You cuts to Joe leaving court after his sentencing.
What happens to Joe and the other characters?
Bronte's voiceover takes the lead at this point, breaking down Joe's breakdown following a messy trial and all the horrific evidence that made the truth of what he did undeniable at last...
"Although I suspect the real reason the public turned on him is because I turned him into a walking dick joke."
Yep, Bronte shot his dick off, as we learn from viral jokes online.
And here's some further context for the previous description. It's fitting that Joe's manhood, a potent symbol of his toxic masculinity and weaponised charm, was destroyed by one of the women he tried to destroy first.
Following convictions for the murder of Love and Beck and plenty more, Bronte's podcast buddies continue to search for other men like Joe who deserve convicting for similar crimes. Meanwhile, Nadia has returned to writing and teaching to help other women process the same kind of trauma Joe put her through.
Harrison, who got a prison tattoo after just 48 hours, and Maddie, who went to rehab for pill addiction, are soon reunited in the outside world where they send Reagan off with a two million dollar Viking funeral. They're now expecting twins and also get to raise Maddie's daughter — who Reagan adopted previously — as their own, so everything worked out for the dumb, happy couple.
After surviving "Joe's Inferno," as the New York Post described it, Kate was reborn. The scars from the fire are a badge of penance, not pride.
At the end, she makes a toast to her brother Teddy who has taken over the Lockwood company and changed it into a non-profit. His boyfriend doesn't speak, which is not great when it comes to positive LGBTQ+ representation, but he's hot, so there is that at least.
Free to do what she wants, Kate returns to art and goes on to champion Marienne who has become a famous artist in her own right, no longer afraid of exposure.
Bronte, being the omniscient narrator she's suddenly become, also reveals that Henry doesn't grow up to be a psycho like his father. In doing so, Bronte ends centuries of speculation and research around the nature of man, proving once and for all that nurture is more important than nature.
Also thanks to Bronte, Beck's book has also been re-released without Joe's rewrites. It's "more popular, more praised, more cutting, more imperfect," and most importantly of all, "more Beck." Bronte smiles at her then in a daydream where we get to see Guinevere thriving as she should be, so we can remember her like this rather than just as one of Joe's victims.
Bronte acknowledges this, pointing out that Beck "won't get a chance to make what she would want to make of her life" because Joe stole that, so we have to make the most of ours in her memory.
But what of Bronte herself? "My life doesn't boil down to before and after Joe," she says. "Every day that passes, he shrinks. And eventually he'll be just some asshole I dated. Still, I have no idea who I want to be, but I can’t wait to find out."
It's a touching way to end the series, to show that these survivors are stronger than a sick, evil man like Joe. But the show doesn't end there. Joe loves to have the final say, after all.
In prison with a shaved head and very tired looking eyes, Goldberg's narration suddenly kicks in one last time.
"So in the end, my punishment is even worse than I imagined," says Joe. "The loneliness, my god. The loneliness. No hope of being held. Knowing this is forever."
After everything Joe has done, this is absolute music to our ears.
But, of course, it's not Joe's fault things turned out this way. It's never Joe's fault, right? That's what he still thinks, anyway.
"It's unfair putting all this on me. Aren't we all just products of our environment? Hurt people hurt people... I never stood a chance."
So Joe has learned absolutely nothing whatsoever from all this, which sounds about right. In revealing that, it just confirms how irredeemable he is as a character, how utterly depraved and horrendous he truly is. This is the real Joe, and it's not a sexy look.
Joe digs himself an even deeper hole then after a letter arrives from a deranged fan who's fallen in love with him, despite everything he's done. Sound familiar?
"Maybe we have a problem as a society," says Joe. "Maybe we should fix what's broken in us. Maybe the problem isn't me. Maybe it’s You."
And with that, Joe stares directly into the camera, at us, as the credits roll.
Throughout much of the show's run, critics have lambasted it for romanticising its subject matter and many have pointed to the 'sexy Joe' or "Team Joe" narrative that's surrounded the show. He's always been the focus, deemed far more important than the women he kills, and the writing has often been sympathetic to him in the wake of that.
Does a finale which acknowledges this, and even points an accusatory finger at thirsty fans, make up for all this? That's up to you to decide, but at least the show ended where it should have, with Joe locked up while the remaining women in his life thrive on the outside, despite and not because of him.
You season 5 is now available to stream on Netflix.
After teaching in England and South Korea, David turned to writing in Germany, where he covered everything from superhero movies to the Berlin Film Festival.
In 2019, David moved to London to join Digital Spy, where he could indulge his love of comics, horror and LGBTQ+ storytelling as Deputy TV Editor, and later, as Acting TV Editor.
David has spoken on numerous LGBTQ+ panels to discuss queer representation and in 2020, he created the Rainbow Crew interview series, which celebrates LGBTQ+ talent on both sides of the camera via video content and longform reads.
Beyond that, David has interviewed all your faves, including Henry Cavill, Pedro Pascal, Olivia Colman, Patrick Stewart, Ncuti Gatwa, Jamie Dornan, Regina King, and more — not to mention countless Drag Race legends.
As a freelance entertainment journalist, David has bylines across a range of publications including Empire Online, Radio Times, INTO, Highsnobiety, Den of Geek, The Digital Fix and Sight & Sound.
