You season 5 finally arrived on Netflix on April 24th, serving as the series finale to a several years long series, and I definitely had thoughts about its conclusion. From the amazing acting to ending with Joe’s reckoning, it’s a great conclusion to his story.
Obvious spoilers ahead for season 5!
We experience a three year time jump where Kate (Charlotte Ritchie) and Joe (Penn Badgley) are together in New York City with his son, Henry, whom he got back from two loving fathers that adopted him. Things are going well for Joe until he gets up to his own serial killer shenanigans. He meets Bronte, his You of this season, and ultimately, the one person who ends up taking him down for good.
The Beginning of the End
I really enjoyed Kate’s story this season. I definitely didn’t like her last season, being complacent with Joe’s past crimes, and even when new details come to light about him this season that she was unaware of, she still tries to shield him, as it would implicate her past actions. The fierceness we see from her this season was incredible and how she goes from complacent and protective of her husband’s actions, to slowly changing her ways and vowing to help take him down. She can’t undo everything, like how she helped send one of Joe’s previous students to jail, but she was able to free her and right her wrongs that way.
I also have to commend the actress, Anna Camp, who played the twins, Reagan and Maddie. She cleverly plays two very different characters and has convincing arguments between the two of them. I always find it funny when people have to play twins, like The Parent Trap with Lindsay Lohan. When there’s a scene with the twins, it must feel strange to basically be talking and arguing with yourself.
But anyway, during the height of Reagan and Maddie arguing when Joe has them both in his notorious cage, Maddie kills Reagan and Joe forces her to be Reagan. I already thought the performance was well done, but she takes it up a notch as she pretends to be Maddie pretending to be Reagan and Maddie’s personality was slipping through. Camp was a standout to me this season and I enjoyed all of her scenes.
The Final You
And of course, we can’t forget about the You in the room, Bronte/Louise (Madeline Brewer). Bronte starts as a squatter with a private, tough life and Joe ‘falls’ for her (I mean that lightly, Joe doesn’t love anybody). In the heat of the moment, Bronte is arguing with Clayton, who we think is an ex of hers, and Joe goes to kill him when he hurts Bronte. In a crazy twist, Bronte’s friends come out with a livestream and expose Joe for who he really is, catching him in the act of murder. It would turn out that Bronte and co knew about some of Joe’s history, and Bronte knew Gunievere Beck (Elizabeth Lail), his first You all the way back to season one. What’s more, Clayton’s dad is the therapist that Joe framed for Beck’s murder. Wild stuff!
However, Bronte has second thoughts as she gets to know Joe. At first, she got him spot on and knew the monster he truly is and wanted justice for Beck. As she gets entangled in him and his life though, she begins to doubt that he killed Beck and did all the things she and his friends knew deep down that he did. So she goes back to him, but once she runs into one of Joe’s past victims, Marienne (Tati Gabrielle), and talks to her, Bronte realizes she fell for him and his act and vows to stop him once and for all.
It all culminates into a final showdown where they’re planning to flee but before she would turn him in, she holds him at gunpoint to get him to confess how he killed Beck and to remove all of the excerpts he put in Beck’s book to reclaim her true voice. They have a rough fight in which Bronte almost dies but police finally apprehend the two.
While I’m not the biggest fan of Bronte, I found her frustrating at times, as is probably intended, I really enjoyed the symbolism at the end where instead of hearing Joe’s monologue, we hear hers instead and giving the viewers an update on the women’s lives he hurt and how they recovered. I almost wish they left it at that and didn’t give Joe the final say, but I also appreciate the ending where he got fan mail and basically says he’s not the problem, but you are, directly looking at us. It’s an interesting ending, suggesting that we as a collective society do have issues with revering serial killers, but it’s also one final thing in which Joe still doesn’t take responsibility for his actions, and given that he’s in jail forever, he may never do so.
Final Thoughts
Another small plot point I neglected to mention is Henry. In the beginning, Henry showed a potentially violent side of himself when he hurt Reagan’s daughter, Gretchen, at school. There’s concerns that he would basically grow up to be like Joe, perpetuating the generational trauma of violence that Joe experienced as a child through his abusive family and Mooney and his father’s current violent streak. Henry’s story, while not highlighted much in the season, has a very hopeful and satisfying ending when Joe gets through to Henry secretly and tries to talk to him. Henry tells him that he’s the monster and ends his call with his father, essentially cutting him off. I thought that was a very well done scene and a clear showing that Henry will not continue the cycle of abuse and grow up in stability with Kate, who he considers his mother.
This was an overall satisfying ending to the show, which I followed since the very first season. I really enjoyed all the cameos at one point, where victims and people who knew Joe speak out for or against him when he was publicly caught killing Clayton. It was a satisfying scene that Joe’s past actions were being broadly aired out for anyone to see, by the people who hurt him or may have been helped by him throughout the series.
One character I did really hope to see was Ellie Alves, played by Jenna Ortega. Joe screwed her over in season 2 when Love Quinn (Victoria Pedretti) killed her sister, Delilah (Carmela Zumbado). Ellie is left to fend for herself as a teenager, and Joe weakly making up for it by sending her money. This entire plot point is forgotten about and it’s said that Ortega couldn’t do it because of shooting for Wednesday season 2. Many fans speculate that they simply couldn’t afford her time anymore since many cameos were very brief videos anyway.
I’m sad to see this show end, as I really enjoyed following it throughout the years. Joe couldn’t have been given a more deserving ending to his reign of terror and misogyny. It wouldn’t have been nearly as well done if Joe simply died, never facing true consequences for his actions. It would’ve been easy to, as many serial killers in history died or took their own lives before facing justice. I’m glad they went this route anyway, giving Joe the life he truly deserved, locked away and forgotten.
