End of You season 5: Joe Goldberg finally punished?

The Netflix series You concludes its fifth season with an unexpectedly brutal finale. Joe Goldberg, long elusive, finally comes face to face with his crimes – but not in the way you might imagine. Warning, spoilers!

Joe facing his demons, at last?

At the start of the final episode, Joe attempts another escape with Bronte. Their plan: to reach Canada with the help of Will Bettelheim, a hacker from the second season. But Bronte, underneath her air of complicity, hides a completely different plan: she wants to extract a confession from him about the murder of Beck, his first emblematic victim.

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In a tense, almost grotesque scene, Bronte forces him to admit his manipulations. Their confrontation is interrupted by a revealing call: his son Henry rejects Joe, aware of his past horrors. For Joe, this intimate betrayal marks the beginning of the end.

A deserved descent into hell

After a final confrontation, Joe kills Bronte, thinking he’ll get away with it once again. But Bronte – or rather Louise, his real name – had planned it all. The police intervene, Joe is arrested, tried and sentenced to life imprisonment.

Louise, armed with a pistol, makes sure Joe never forgets his fall: she shoots him between the legs, a highly symbolic gesture in this psychological warfare.

You, a fate worse than death for Joe Goldberg

The series does more than just physically punish Joe. It condemns him to a life of isolation, confronted by the gaze of his victims’ families. Yet in prison, Joe is never totally alone: female admirers continue to write to him, feeding his pathological narcissism.

Joe’s voice-over conclusion – “Maybe the problem isn’t me, maybe it’s you” – leaves a bitter taste. You reminds us that even a monster can find supporters in our troubled society.

A chilling ending, all the more terrifying for its deep resonance with our real world.

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