<i>You</i>’s Finale Reminds Us Joe Is a Serial Killer, Not Your Dream Boyfriend

Spoilers ahead.

Throughout four seasons of Netflix’s You, Joe Goldberg terrorized almost everyone he met. From Guinevere Beck (Elizabeth Lail)’s shocking season 1 death, to the murder of his first wife Love Quinn (Victoria Pedretti) in season 3, to season 4’s “Eat the Rich” killings, Joe has left an extensive list of victims in his wake. Yet, despite his extremely dangerous nature, Joe’s charm and good looks allowed him to lure plenty of women, many of whom believed his proclamations of love. The audience, too, developed a somewhat unhealthy obsession with You’s handsome murderer, much to actor Penn Badgley’s chagrin. But the season 5 finale refuses to let Joe—or his fans—off the hook. Join us as we break down what happens in You’s series finale.

Joe goes on the run with Bronte.

At the end of season 5, episode 9, Bronte (Madeline Brewer) rescues Joe from the basement of Mooney’s after the building catches fire, leaving Kate (Charlotte Ritchie) wounded and left for dead. “I should leave you, run away, and never look back,” Bronte says in her narration. “But then there’d be no justice, no answers. I’m the only person in the world that can stop you.” Kneeling on the pavement outside of his burning bookstore, Joe proposes, and Bronte accepts.

Episode 10 begins with the pair driving in the country. Joe reveals that Kate sent evidence of his alleged guilt to the police, so they need to hide out somewhere until the furore dies down. They break into a remote yet luxurious cabin by a lake, where they have a romantic dinner. After kissing in the moonlight at the dock, Bronte and Joe head to the bedroom. When they’re about to have sex, Bronte points a gun at Joe and says, “Tell me how you killed Guinevere Beck.”

Bronte makes Joe confess to killing Beck.

While holding Joe at gunpoint, Bronte demands the truth about Beck’s death. He asks who got in her head—“Marienne? Nadia?” (alluding to women he encountered in previous seasons)—to which she responds, “And Kate? Kate, who you tried to poison me against. You tried to convince me she was crazy.” Once again, Joe plays the victim, shouting, “She tried to imprison and kill me, in actual fact.” Trying another tactic, Joe placates Bronte, saying she’s “way too smart for [him] to pull something like this over on,” but it doesn’t work.

“You finished Beck’s book after you murdered her, right?” Bronte asks Joe. “I could spot your clumsy rewrites before I even met you. It wasn’t enough that you took her life, you had to take her fucking voice, too?” She commands him to erase every word he added to Beck’s book. Joe starts reminiscing about Beck writing her story about Bluebeard, and he tries to undermine Bronte in the process. “I think you’re more scared of the absence of me, because if I’m gone, then no one will ever love you like I do, ever again,” Joe says, before outrageously adding, “...Bronte, I think I love you more than you love yourself.”

Joe’s phone starts to ring, and he begs Bronte to let him answer in case it’s his son Henry. “I need him to know that he didn’t do anything wrong,” he explains. Joe tells Henry he loves him. However, Henry asks his dad, “What did you do to mommy?” When Joe claims to have done nothing to Kate, Henry asks him, “Do you remember when you used to tell me there were no monsters in my room?...You lied...It was you. You’re the monster.”

Joe hunts Bronte in the woods (in his underwear).

The most terrifying part of the season 5 finale occurs when Joe overpowers Bronte. After Henry hangs up, Bronte says it’s time to call the police, but Joe is resolute in his privilege. “What makes you think this time will be any different?” he asks her. “I killed your friend on camera and here I am.” Bronte tells him this time will be different because she’s “turned” on him; “If I can wake up, so can the world,” she explains. When Bronte reaches for the phone, Joe lunges for her gun, and the pair start physically fighting. While wrestling over the gun, it goes off, and Bronte gets shot, but she manages to escape from the house. And that’s when serial killer Joe comes out in full force.

Joe is wearing a tiny pair of black boxer shorts when he follows Bronte out of the house. She sends him in the wrong direction by dropping her necklace on the ground. While Joe searches for her in the woods, she runs back into the house to retrieve the cellphone. With blood all over her hands, Bronte can’t dial 911, and from the window, she can see Joe start to sprint back to the house to find her, his determination truly chilling.

Bronte jumps out of the window, the cellphone connecting to 911 as she falls to the ground. “When I fucked up your ankle, it was just to keep you around long enough so we could talk,” Joe says, starting to follow her towards the lake. “I didn’t actually think it would help me kill you one day.” After Bronte says, “It was always going to end this way, wasn’t it?” Joe snaps, “No, it didn’t have to. But you’re ungrateful! You’re spiteful! I made you special, Bronte, and you’re too selfish to know how good you’ve had it.” Joe’s outburst prompts Bronte to point out that the “real” him is a “pathetic misogynist.”

After an altercation in which Bronte stabs Joe in the side, he throws her into the lake and drowns her. Sirens start approaching, so Joe runs into the woods, where he hides from officers searching with guns and torches. Joe is able to stab the first officer that discovers him, using the pink self-defense tool Bronte purchased from a gas station. But before he can escape, Bronte, who miraculously survived Joe’s attempt to drown her, appears with a gun. He begs her to kill him, but Bronte refuses, telling him he needs to face the consequences of his crimes.

Waiting for law enforcement to find them, Bronte tells Joe, “I have been asking myself over and over, ‘Why?’ And I finally, I see it clearly now. The fantasy of a man like you is how we cope with the reality of a man like you.” On his knees, Joe begs for death once more. “No, no, no,” Bronte tells him. “You are going to live the rest of your life alone.” Desperate to die, Joe lunges at Bronte, so she fires her gun, shooting him in the genitals. U.S. Marshals drag Joe away in the rain, bleeding.

Bronte helps get justice for Beck and Joe’s other victims.

As Joe exits court, Bronte narrates, “The trial was messy, the evidence horrific, and the truth undeniable. Although I suspect the real reason the public turned on him is that I accidentally turned him into a walking dick joke.” A series of social media posts mocking Joe are shown on screen, including one from known You superfan Cardi B. “He WAS a 10 now he’s a 2...inches,” the rapper jokes.

It’s revealed that Joe was convicted of murdering Beck and Love, after which “allegations snowballed [and] turned into more convictions.” He’s later found guilty of killing Benji and Peach, and Dr. Nicky’s conviction for murdering Beck is vacated. Following her wrongful imprisonment, Nadia becomes a writer and is shown teaching in a prison. Despite being tried for Reagan’s murder, Maddie doesn’t “have to serve time,” and is seen happily embracing her twin sister’s husband Harrison while pregnant—with twins.

Viewers also learn that Kate didn’t die in the fire at Mooney’s. Instead, as Bronte explains, “She wears her scars like a badge. Not pride. Penance.” Kate’s brother Teddy announces that The Lockwood Corporation is now “100 percent non-profit,” and they celebrate. Having left the business world behind, Kate is now championing a new artist’s work. “With Joe behind bars, Marienne Bellamy stopped fearing exposure,” Bronte narrates. “The world sees her talent, loves her.” Kate is raising Joe’s son, Henry, and it’s made clear that she’s having a positive influence on him.

Meanwhile, Bronte achieves a sense of justice by aiding in the re-release of Beck’s book after erasing all of Joe’s words from it. “My life doesn’t boil down to before and after him,” Bronte says in her narration. “Every day that passes, he shrinks. Eventually, he’ll just be some asshole I dated. I still have no idea who I want to be. But I can’t wait to find out.”

Joe holds a mirror up to the audience.

In the final moments of You’s series finale, Joe is shown reading The Executioner’s Song by Norman Mailer in his prison cell. “So, in the end, my punishment is even worse than I imagined,” Joe narrates. “The loneliness...No hope of being held. Knowing this is forever.” He then claims it’s “unfair,” asking, “Aren’t we all just products of our environment? Hurt people hurt people. I never stood a chance.”

Joe’s thoughts are interrupted by the arrival of a letter from a fan, and he asks, “Why am I in a cage when these crazies write me all the depraved things they want me to do to them?” Alluding to actor Penn Badgley’s horrified response to finding out viewers were lusting after Joe Goldberg, his character says, “Maybe we have a problem as a society. Maybe we should fix what’s broken in us. Maybe the problem isn’t me.” Looking dead at the camera, Joe addresses us, the audience, and says, “Maybe...it’s you.”