'You's' Ending Was Literally The Only Possible Conclusion For Joe Goldberg — And Penn Badgley Has Been Telling Us For Years

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02-05-2025

Needless to say, there are some *serious* You Season 5 spoilers ahead.
Last month, the much-anticipated final ever season of the hit Netflix series You finally hit our screens, and viewers couldn't be more excited to find out what will become of one of TV's most beloved serial killers, Joe Goldberg — played by Penn Badgley.
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And murder is far from the only crime that Joe has in his repertoire, with the entire premise of the show hinging on the fact that he is an obsessive stalker who manipulates women into being in a relationship with him, and will stop anyone who gets in his way. If those women see through him and decide that they don't want to date him? Well, that's when the killing comes in.
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Oh, and he also masturbated on the street a lot during Season 1.
Despite all of this, many of You's viewers have been completely on Joe's side throughout the show — largely due to him being the narrator, which allows him to manipulate fans with his charm in the same way he does his love interests on-screen.
Andddd as a result, many people hoped that the show would end with Joe getting away with all of his crimes and running off into the sunset, but they should have known that this was never going to happen.
If you're wondering, the explosive final episode sees Joe go head-to-head with his Season 5 love interest Louise 'Bronte' Flannery, played by Madeline Brewer. The episode starts with the two attempting to flee the country after Joe was secretly recorded confessing to two of his murders. However, Joe is unaware that Bronte is only still with him because she wants him to confess to killing her friend Guinevere Beck, who was the focus of the show's first season.
She ends up pulling a gun on him and demanding answers when they're in the bedroom together, and it is at this point that Joe's facade starts to break. At first, he berates Bronte — warning her that nobody will ever love her the way that he does. When this doesn't land, and after a call from his young son, Henry, who calls him a 'monster,' Joe plays the victim; sobbing about how unlovable he is and asking Bronte if this is what he deserves.
Bronte doesn't fall for this either, and that is when Joe turns overtly nasty, boasting about how he got away with murdering her friend on camera before physically attacking her, including punching her in the face.
An anxiety-inducing chase ensues, and, rather cleverly, this is the first time in five seasons that viewers are explicitly exposed to the reality of just how terrifying and powerful Joe is, without any of his trademark charm.
Joe shoots, strangles, and even drowns Bronte on camera, which she (inexplicably) survives, pulling a gun on him to stop him from leaving as the police arrive. At this point, Joe begs Bronte to kill him, clearly choosing death over facing justice, but she refuses to give him what would be the easy way out. She does, however, accidentally shoot him in the penis as he is arrested, after warning him: 'You are going to live the rest of your life alone.'
Which is exactly what happens. Joe ends up being sentenced to life in prison without parole, and in his final voiceover, he still refuses to take accountability for his actions, saying: 'My punishment is even worse than I imagined. The loneliness, my god, the loneliness. No hope of being held, knowing this is forever. It's unfair, putting all of this on me, aren't we all just products of our environment? Hurt people hurt people.'
Meanwhile, all of Joe's survivors are thriving and free — even Beck gets some form of justice after Bronte redacts all of the edits that Joe had secretly made to her posthumous book, and releases an edition containing only Beck's words, not those of her killer.
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And, if you think about it, this was literally the only possible resolution for Joe Goldberg. After all, throughout the entire show, nobody has been a bigger Joe hater than Penn, who plays him, and he has made it abundantly clear throughout the show's run that he would not be satisfied if Joe did not get his comeuppance.
While getting away with everything was clearly not an option, dying is undeniably too good for Joe, which means that, realistically, he was always going to end up in prison.
And Penn affirmed this mindset in a recent interview with Extra TV, where he said: 'The concept needed to come to a close, the writers, me, everybody involved — the fans — we needed to bring this man to his rightful end, and I think we did so.'
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But he did deny having any direct involvement in what happened, saying: 'If I had any input, it was only through years of being the way I've been about him. The writers, I've always left them to their own devices because they do what they do best… I think we ended it very well.'
Speaking to the Guardian about Joe's ending, Penn added: 'It was as though I couldn't sustain the rage anymore, couldn't sustain the levels of artifice with him, just all of it. Nothing is really good enough. There's levels to it; it's not just like: does he die? Does he go to jail? Is he tortured? Does he live and is he miserable alone? It's really about how we get there.'
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He reiterated that he believes they 'reached truly the best resolution for him.'
In the same interview, Penn shared his concern that he'd made Penn 'too likable,' something that he has publicly grappled with for years. Speaking to EW back in 2020 about the way some viewers defend Joe, Penn exclaimed: "He's a murderer! He's a sociopath. He's abusive. He's delusional. And he's self-obsessed. You can't fool yourself into thinking that he just needs somebody who's right for him. Nobody's right for him!"
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'I don't think redemption is possible for [Joe],' Penn added in another interview. 'I mean, maybe theoretically it's possible for all people, but he's among the worst.'
That same year, he said during an appearance on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert: "I struggled greatly with the conflict of playing such a guy and him being partly so likable and having such a, as we say, thirsty response to him."
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A sentiment Penn had expressed in 2019 when he quote-tweeted a fan who'd written: 'the amount of people romanticising @pennbadgley's character in YOU scares me," and added: "Ditto. It will be all the motivation I need for season 2."
And perhaps the most poetic part of You's series finale is the self-referential way it addresses viewers' love for Joe Goldberg. In the episode's very final moments, Joe receives fan mail in prison, and asks: 'Why am I in a cage when all these crazies write me all the depraved things they want me to do to them?'
Perhaps anticipating that some fans may be left disappointed by Joe finally facing justice, the show then holds a mirror up to viewers as Joe continues: 'Maybe we have a problem as a society. Maybe we should fix what is broken in us. Maybe the problem isn't me… Maybe it's you.'
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