Source : the age
Warning: This story contains major spoilers for You season five.
For seven years, we have willingly engaged in a love affair with a serial killer. Joe Goldberg, the charming face of Netflix’s romance-thriller You, swept us up with his hopeless romanticism and Abercrombie good looks. No matter how many girlfriends he strangled, innocent women he framed, or ex-boyfriends he trapped in cages, the smooth-talking Casanova kept pulling us back in.
During season one’s first four weeks on Netflix, about 40 million users watched Joe stalk and eventually kill a woman he meets at the New York bookstore he manages. From then on, the more evil Joe became and the trashier the show got, the more interest the show generated. Just a week after season four’s release, users had already watched more than 92.07 million hours.
Joe Goldberg is scum of the earth. But for five seasons, we haven’t been able to look away.Credit: Netflix
But, like every flawed love affair, it must eventually come to an end. Season five, the final instalment of the so-trashy-it’s-good show, sees Joe (Penn Badgley) return to New York with his now-wife, billionaire Kate Lockwood, who has seemingly convinced him to reform his deadly ways. However, as soon as he meets Bronte (Madeline Brewer), a quick-witted writer, his worst instincts return with full force.
After several twists, including some catfishing and Kate’s attempt to kill Joe herself, he’s finally imprisoned, but not before being oh-so-poetically shot in the genitals by Bronte.
Madeline Brewer as Bronte and Penn Badgley as Joe Goldberg in the final episode of You. Credit: CLIFTON PRESCOD/NETFLIX
His comeuppance is long overdue. This globetrotting killer has slain more than a dozen people. Yet a twisted part of many of us probably still wishes he could somehow escape, allowing him to adopt another fake identity and keep this sick joyride going. Our continued fascination with Joe is almost as perverse as his lust for blood.
We’ve felt this with others too. Take the eponymous antihero of Dexter, who only killed other killers. Or Rhiannon in Sweetpea, who we can’t blame for turning violent given the unfair lot she was afforded in life. Elsewhere, there’s Bates Motel, Based on a True Story and American Horror Story – all shows that feature weirdly likeable serial killers.
What is it about murderers like Joe that keep luring us in? Well, like Dexter, he’s a layered character sprinkled with some redeeming traits. He’s chivalrous (however misguided), and kind towards young people. He’s also intelligent, made painfully obvious by his constant reference to classic writers. A man who can accurately quote Emily Dickinson on request surely can’t be that terrible, right?
Add that to the fact that the show is filmed like a romcom, and it’s clear how we became ensnared in this man’s web. You is a collection of romantic slow-motion shots, scenes lit with an amber glow, and boppy pop songs. The actual murder scenes are grittier, but everyone looks better in the radiant light of day – even a serial killer.
Importantly, Joe is also at the centre of this story. He narrates every season, manipulating the audience as much as the women he lures into his creepy underground cage. His objectively atrocious crimes are overlaid with his non-stop rationalising – “I’m killing for love, I’m killing to protect her, blah blah”.
When he isn’t rationalising, he’s expressing regret. After moving back to New York, Joe repeatedly hints at his “changed ways”, attempting to convince himself that he is redeemable. It’s difficult not to sympathise with someone who expresses a desire to improve. After all, we’ve seen enough romance movies to believe it’s possible to “fix them”.
Many of the scenes in You look like they’re straight from a Nicholas Sparks novel. Then Joe goes and kills someone.Credit: CLIFTON PRESCOD/NETFLIX
Joe, however, is far beyond fixing. By the mid-point of season five, this becomes apparent. His narration is less apologetic, instead embracing and justifying his violent tendencies. But even when Joe is running around the woods half naked and growling, tracking Bronte down to murder her, he’s somehow still just as enthralling.
This is because we constantly romanticise, even fetishise, violence. Sexualised killers like Basic Instinct’s Catherine Tramell (Sharon Stone) have long titillated us, along with some real-life killers such as Ted Bundy. When Zac Efron played Bundy in the 2019 film Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile, Netflix had to remind viewers to stop lusting after a character who was in reality a convicted serial killer.
Casting someone like Penn Badgley – known as Dan Humphrey, the romantic lead from Gossip Girl – as a man who kills “for love” was bound to excite. And excite it did. The lustful response to Joe reached such a fever pitch at points that Badgley himself took to social media to remind viewers that Joe is a murderer.
“You’re supposed to see past my face to the crazy shit,” he wrote on X in 2019.
Romanticising a serial killer is ethically dubious at best. But that has always been the point of You. It’s not endorsing murder, but forcing us to question why we’re so easily convinced to ignore it.
This is hinted at through the final series, especially when Joe is accused of multiple crimes on social media. He’s able to escape the allegations relatively unscathed largely due to his diehard supporters, those still referring to him online as their “Prince Charming” and thirsting over his good looks. The show may as well have been showing snapshots of real tweets and TikToks.
To really drive the point home, creators Michael Foley and Justin W. Lo then fully lifted the curtain. By shifting some of the narration to “final girl” Bronte, the show finally presented Joe as the full-throttle maniac he has always been. And the shot to the crotch left him stripped of his power, deprived of the thing that drove his every sick decision.
Penn Badgley in the final season of You.Credit: Courtesy of Netflix
By the final scene, we’re forced, once and for all, to question why we’ve been so transfixed by this man for five seasons. Joe, locked away in a prison cell, tells us what we’ve been avoiding all along: “Maybe the problem isn’t me. Maybe it’s you.”
The final season of You is on Netflix now.
Find out the next TV, streaming series and movies to add to your must-sees. Get The Watchlist delivered every Thursday.
