“You” ends well, which is more than we can say for Joe Goldberg’s many relationships. Yes, our favorite serial killer’s story is coming to an end, which is honestly for the best. It’s been almost seven real years since we first met the romantic with a murderous savior complex and even more in his fictional universe. Season five starts with Joe’s usual monologues, replete with his many self-delusions. Lying and fooling yourself as a lonely and struggling young man is one thing, but it’s entirely another for the now middle-aged Joe, married and reunited with his elementary-school-age son.
Some things are just harder to stomach as we get older, and sadly, neither Joe nor Penn Badgley has evolved. The “Gossip Girl” favorite has a hard time playing the more complex emotions of his now domesticated character, although, to be fair, the script asks him to toggle between serial killer madness and layered quotidian dramas, which isn’t exactly an easy task. Needless to say, Badgley doesn’t pull off the nuanced affect of, say, Michael C. Hall as Dexter Morgan, another serial killer, arguably with a heart of gold.
In this final installment, Goldberg is back in New York, living the dream with wife Kate (Charlotte Ritchie) and son Henry (Frankie DeMaio). She’s a mogul, having won the game of succession and become CEO of her family’s multi-billion-dollar, corrupt and corrupting company. When we reunite with him, Joe’s by her side, supporting her power moves and enjoying fame as part of a golden couple fawned over by the press. Of course, Joe’s pension for killing is always there, lurking in the corner and threatening to ruin whatever good thing he’s started.
The tension in “You” has always been how the show draws its audience through a combination of repulsion and attraction to our leading man, and then back again. That’s on full display here, continuing the legacy that made the Netflix hit so evocative. The violence against women – and there’s a lot of it, viscerally depicted – is on full display. Each time one of the women takes a blow, it remains shocking; it still feels like a gut punch. But amid the horrors, it’s also imminently believable that all these smart, dynamic women fall for Joe. After all, we’re one of them, still watching and being at least somewhat charmed by him, despite or because of his atrocities.
The final season honors “You’s” women, rehashing the objects of Joe’s many ill-fated romances. I’m not going to promise justice – because there is no righting Joe’s many crimes – but there is at least closure, a turning of the tables, complete with hearing someone else’s internal monologue towards the end. It’s a smart move, reminding us that Joe’s perspective is just that, and a gruesomely distorted one.
Yes, the season can drag at points with perhaps one or two more plot twists than are needed. But “You” has earned the right to take its time, with the ten-episode season giving due space to Joe’s previous victims.
The long run time also lets Anna Camp shine as Kate’s twin sisters, Reagon and Maddie. Alpha Reagon is essentially a bitch-on-wheels stereotype, but Maddie is less predictable, able to kill with kindness, as they say, and surprise multiple times. As both of them, Camp toys with the show’s and the audience’s ideas about what busty, beautiful, blond women can be to great effect.
Madeline Brewer as Bronte, the wounded ingénue, is likewise strong, further proving that for all of the questionable themes in “You,” this was always a show that gave meaty parts to women.
And it ends by reminding us that Joe’s survivors—if tragically not his victims—are the true heroes of this story. Through them, we get a glimpse of Joe as he truly is, outside of his tainted view of himself, before it all ends. It’s refreshing, even as “You” is clear that Joe will never join us or gain any meaningful amount of self-knowledge for all his pretty, seemingly self-reflective words. Of course, the audience has been complicit in allowing him his fantasy, rewarding it to some extent with our attention, if not outright attraction. The show sees and names our guilt, giving us perhaps a better ending than we deserve.
Full season screened for review. Season premieres April 24 on Netflix.
