‘You' Season 5 Ending Explained—Who Dies, Who Survives, And What Happens To Joe?

Forbes

25-04-2025

Warning: Major spoilers ahead for You Season 5.
The fifth and final season of You, starring Penn Badgley, is now streaming on Netflix. Across 10 nail-biting episodes, the series delivers twist after twist, leaving viewers unsure whether Joe will make it out alive after everything he's done. Read on for a full breakdown of You Season 5's ending, including Joe's fate in Episode 10.
In Season 5, Joe Goldberg returns to New York City, where he's spent the past three years living with his wife, Kate Galvin. Following her father's death, Kate became CEO of the Lockwood Corporation, prompting the couple's move from London to Manhattan. It wasn't long before they became one of the city's most popular power couples.
But Joe is no longer living under an alias. With Kate's help, he's buried his past—along with the secrets and murders that came with it—and reclaimed his real identity from Season 1. Though Kate eventually realizes she doesn't know the full extent of Joe's dark history, he's found a twisted sense of happiness. He's been reunited with his son, Henry, who had been living with another family ever since Joe killed his mother, Love Quinn, at the end of Season 3.
At first, the biggest challenge for Joe in New York City is navigating the complicated family dynamics of the Lockwood family. He's strayed away from murdering anyone for an impressive three years, but he slowly slips back into his old ways when Kate is getting threatened by her Uncle Bob. (She has a complicated past, too, because in order to build a pipeline for her company, a lot of kids died from cancer.)
Joe's old instincts take over when he murders Uncle Bob and stages it to look like he killed himself. He continues to feel the need to protect his wife as she faces new threats—this time from her sister, Reagan, the ruthless CFO of the Lockwood Corporation. Against Kate's wishes, Joe plots to kidnap Reagan but mistakenly abducts her identical twin, Maddie, instead.
Joe then captures Reagan and locks her in his glass cage with Maddie. He forces Maddie to kill her sister using an insulin overdose. Maddie complies, not just out of fear for her life, but because she's finally had enough of Reagan's cruelty. Maddie pretends to be her deceased twin sister as Joe orchestrates a plan to fake Reagan's death. Maddie wants to start a new life with Harrison, Reagan's husband she's been having an affair with, and his daughter Gretchen, whom Maddie carried as a surrogate.
At the same time, Kate begins to notice Joe's behavior unraveling and decides to dig into his past and present. She eventually finds out about Bronte, an employee at Joe's bookstore who is spending more and more time with Joe. Joe and Bronte are having an affair, but it is only a matter of time until Bronte's secretive past comes to light.
It turns out Bronte isn't who she claims to be. The woman Joe thought had simply wandered into the bookstore and crashed there for a few nights is Louise Flannery, a catfish secretly plotting revenge for the murder of her friend, Guinevere Beck, back in Season 1.
After Beck's death, Louise read her posthumously published book, The Dark Face of Love, and found inconsistencies that didn't sit right with her. Her suspicions led her to a Reddit thread dedicated to uncovering the truth about Beck's death. There, she connected with others, including Clayton, the son of Beck's former therapist, Dr. Nicky, who also believes the real killer was never caught.
As Bronte slowly earned Joe's trust, she began to lose sight of her original mission to take him down, blurring the line between revenge and a romantic connection. But in Season 5, Episode 5, everything comes crashing down. When Joe rushes in to protect Bronte from a furious Clayton (Tom Francis), he ends up killing him in a fit of rage. 'We got him!' Bronte's friends shout as they live-stream Joe, finally caught in the act.
But Bronte becomes just another pawn in Joe's twisted game of love. While speaking to the police after Clayton's death, she convinces herself that Joe acted in self-defense and that he truly believed her life was at risk. Bronte is drawn to the idea that Joe was willing to kill for her, and her sudden change of heart only fuels Joe's delusion, making him believe that what they had was real the entire time.
Determined to protect their son, Henry, Kate decides the only way to end the vicious cycle is for Joe to die. She secretly contacts Nadia, gets her released from prison, and clears her name. Together, they enlist the help of Marienne, the woman Joe believes he killed last season, to lure him into a trap and finally get a full confession.
Kate uses a decoy of herself to lure Joe into a trap, ultimately capturing him and locking him in the glass cage beneath his bookstore. She and Nadia have no intention of letting him live—but they offer him a carefully crafted ultimatum. If Joe confesses to killing Reagan, they'll let Maddie and Harrison go free, and in return, he'll be sent to a remote island to start a new life. It's all a lie (but Joe doesn't know that).
Joe is shocked when Marienne shows up, as he was pretty sure killed her three years ago. As Kate and Nadia debate who should be the one to end Joe's life, Marienne speaks with Bronte. She urges her to see how Joe manipulates love and weaponizes his romanticism to justify violence. In the end, Bronte finally remembers why she came to New York in the first place: to stop Joe once and for all.
Plot twist: Joe had one last secret (literally) up his sleeve—a hidden key embedded beneath his skin. He uses it to escape the cage, sneaks up on Kate, shoots her in the stomach, and knocks her unconscious with a blow to the head.
Before Joe can make his escape, Maddie arrives at the bookstore. No longer trusting a word Joe says, she locks him back in the basement and sets the building on fire, ignoring his pleas that Kate is trapped down there, too. As flames begin to engulf the store, Kate regains enough strength to strike Joe unconscious. Both trapped in the basement, the former lovebirds share a heart-to-heart conversation.
Believing they're about to die, Joe finally confesses—admitting to killing Kate's father, poisoning Love, and destroying the evidence. But he doesn't know that Kate secretly records the entire conversation and sends it to Nadia so she can share it with the police.
But it's not over for Joe just yet. As the flames close in, Bronte shows up and pulls him from the burning basement after he pleads that he only hurt Kate in self-defense. But viewers quickly realize that this isn't a rescue out of love. In her thoughts, Bronte reveals she's had another change of heart after talking with Marienne. She now sees Joe for who he truly is and is determined to get justice for Beck.
Bronte and Joe head toward the Canadian border. But Joe knows it's only a matter of time before the police catch up with him, especially after his damning confession to Kate. In one last favor from his old friend Will, he asks for fake passports to help them cross the border. Joe also wants Will's help getting his son, Henry, back.
Meanwhile, Bronte is quietly strategizing her final move. She's still figuring out the best way to take Joe down, but it's becoming clear he's growing suspicious of her. When Joe secures an isolated, off-the-grid lake house as their temporary hideout, Bronte realizes time is running out. She knows she can't keep up the act much longer.
'We hear her thoughts, which is different from when we've heard thoughts from other characters in past seasons,' Badgley told Netflix's Tudum. 'The vantage point is shifting to Bronte and [Joe]'s becoming the object, which I love.'
While they're hooking up, Bronte pulls a gun on Joe. She demands he tell her exactly how he killed Beck. Then, she hands him a copy of The Dark Face of Love and tells him to go through and redact the lies he added to Beck's manuscript after murdering her.
During their standoff, Joe's phone rings and it's Will. He says he managed to get Henry on the line. Joe takes the call, but instead of the reunion he hoped for, Henry's asks why he hurt Mommy. He then proceeds to tell his dad that he's the monster, completely destroying Joe.
With nothing left to lose, Joe lunges at Bronte, trying to kill her, and the two struggle violently for control of the gun. Their brutal fight takes place in and outside the lake house. Joe eventually drowns Bronte in the water, believing she's dead.
Just as he flees into the woods, he hears sirens, and the police arrive. Bronte reappears from the shadows, soaked but very much alive. She points a gun directly at Joe.
As the police close in, Joe makes one last desperate move toward Bronte. She shoots him, and he collapses. For a brief moment, it seems like she was successful at killing him, but he stands up. (She actually shot him in the penis, which goes viral during his trial and helps the public turn on him.) The police move in and finally arrest him.
Co-showrunner Michael Foley told Netflix's Tudum that everyone involved in the series felt that Joe's fate in jail would be worse than simply killing him off. 'Death would be too easy,' he said.
Badgley added, 'I always thought somebody killing Joe wouldn't be justice. It would be vengeance. Anybody who kills him would be brought down to his level, which is not justice for them,' he said. 'He's a quandary in a way. What would justice for him look like? I think we get as close as we can.'
The next scene shows Joe at his trial, which, in a voiceover, Bronte describes as 'messy, the evidence horrific, and the truth undeniable.' He was convicted for the murders of Love Quinn and Guinevere Beck, which led to additional convictions—and life without parole—for the deaths of Benji and Peach. Dr. Nicky's wrongful conviction was vacated.
Nadia returned to writing and teaching, dedicating her work to helping women process their trauma. Harrison's charges were dropped in the murder of his wife. Maddie was tried for arson and her sister's murder, but avoided prison time due to the circumstances. Instead, she entered rehab for her pill addiction, and in a final twist, she's now pregnant with twins.
At the end of Episode 10, it's revealed that Kate miraculously survived the fire and her gunshot wounds. The Lockwood Corporation has since been transformed into a fully nonprofit organization, and Kate has returned to her first love: art. Hanging in her new studio is a painting by Marienne, who's back to creating and finally living without fear of being hunted by Joe.
As for Bronte, she removed everything Joe had added to Beck's manuscript and published a new edition featuring only Beck's original words, which proved to be even more popular. Now, Bronte is focused on writing her next chapter and finally finding herself.
In his final monologue from prison, Joe reflects on his isolation and loneliness behind bars. As he reads a letter from a fan, he clings to the belief that he's not the problem. In his mind, it's society that's broken.
'It's unfair putting all of this on me. Aren't we all just products of our environment? Hurt people hurt people. I never stood a chance,' he wonders. 'Why am I in a cage when these crazies write me all of the depraved things they want me to do to them? Maybe we have a problem as a society? Maybe we should fix what's broken in us? Maybe the problem isn't me. Maybe it's you.'
Foley told Tudum that it was very important the series ended with 'Joe having not changed,' despite everything he's gone through.
'I can see the whole arc of the series and I'm like, 'Man, I'm glad I got to do that,'' Badgley explained. 'But there's no amount of enjoyment or gratitude that can eclipse the brutal reality of what a man like Joe Goldberg is. And so, giving life to him for this long, I'm ready to lay that down … Hopefully, it just feels like a really good way to end it.'
You Season 5 is streaming on YouTube. Watch the official trailer below.