Penn Badgley as Joe Goldberg in the series finale of “You.” Netflix
In a full-circle moment for the series, Joe ends up in a different kind of cage: a prison cell.
During a violent confrontation in the woods with Bronte, who had been deceiving him all season long, Joe is captured by the police and is forced to take accountability for his wrongdoings in a messy trial.
He’s convicted of the murders of Guinevere Beck (Elizabeth Lail) and Love Quinn (Victoria Pedretti). Joe is also charged with first-degree murder and is sentenced to life without parole for the murders of season one characters Benji Ashby (Lou Taylor Pucci) and Peach Salinger (Shay Mitchell).
“One thing’s clear, Joe Goldberg will never be free again,” Bronte says.
The last scene of the series finale shows Joe behind bars, wearing an orange jumpsuit with his hair buzzed. Of course, his literature choice is on-the-nose: Norman Mailer’s Pulitzer Prize-winning book “The Executioner’s Song.”
“So, in the end, my punishment is even worse than I imagined,” Joe says in the narration. “The loneliness. Oh, my God. The loneliness. No hope of being held. Knowing this is forever.”
But even in jail, Joe is still deluded and refuses to take responsibility, saying that it’s unfair to place all the blame on him. It also doesn’t help that he gets validation from creepy fan letters written by people who believe him and want to act out their sexual fantasies with him.
“Why am I in a cage when these crazies write me all the depraved things they want me to do to them?” Joe wonders as he lays back on his prison cot and reads his latest unsettling fan mail.
“Maybe we have a problem as a society,” Joe concludes. “Maybe we should fix what’s broken in us. Maybe the problem isn’t me. Maybe… it’s you.”
Madeline Brewer as Bronte in season five, episode six of “You.” Clifton Prescod/Netflix
Bronte initially seems like a naive, unassuming woman who falls for Joe’s charming persona. But as the season progresses, it’s revealed that Bronte has been playing Joe the entire time. Her real name is Louise Flannery, and she’s a dental hygienist from Ohio. But more importantly, Beck was her college teaching assistant.
After learning about Beck’s death and searching online for closure, Bronte found that lots of people had questions about her murder and suspected that her then-boyfriend, Joe, was the killer.
Along with some internet friends, Bronte devised a plan to return to New York, get close to Joe, and catfish him by acting like a woman who needed to be saved.
Her plan encounters some hiccups, but Bronte is ultimately successful in duping Joe.
After Bronte rescues Joe from a fire at Mooney’s bookstore in episode nine, he proposes to her, and she says yes. In the finale, they leave the city for a remote cottage. Joe is delighted to start their new chapter together, unaware that Bronte is still intent on taking him down.
Joe and Bronte end up physically fighting inside the cottage, and it escalates into the woods as Bronte tries to call 911 for help. The police catch up to the pair, seconds after Bronte shoots Joe in the groin, and Joe is arrested.
Bronte also gets justice for Beck. Joe’s contributions are pulled from Beck’s posthumous book, and a new, redacted version is released.
In a voiceover near the end of the finale, Bronte says that in Beck’s honor, she’s going to make the most of her life and won’t let her existence be defined by Joe. Although Bronte isn’t sure who she wants to be in the world, she’s eager to figure it out without the weight of Joe looming over her.
Charlotte Ritchie as Kate Lockwood in season five, episode four of “You.” Netflix
Kate spends much of season five trying to do good through her position as the CEO of Lockwood Corporation and make amends for her past actions.
Unfortunately, Bob Cain (Michael Dempsey), Kate’s chief operating officer and father figure, leaks sensitive information to a reporter about the pipeline that she helped get approved years ago. He planned to initiate a no-confidence vote and get Kate booted from the company. Bob also dug into Kate’s time in London, knew that she helped cover up the murder of Rhys Montrose (Ed Speleers), and threatened to release that information to ruin her reputation further.
With Kate’s green light, Joe murders Bob. But killing Bob reawakens Joe’s lethal side, and he and Kate fail to see eye-to-eye. While Joe relishes murder and feels no remorse, Kate is haunted by what happened to Bob. She also learns new things about Joe’s time in Madre Linda and discovers his present-day affair with Bronte.
Kate teams up with season four character Nadia (Amy-Leigh Hickman) and Joe’s season three love interest Marienne Bellamy (Tati Gabrielle) in the hopes that they can take Joe down once and for all by killing him in his own cage at Mooney’s.
But Joe, already steps ahead, digs a spare cage key out of his arm and frees himself.
Kate and Joe tussle in the basement while Kate’s sister Maddie Lockwood (Anna Camp) sets Mooney’s on fire. Joe shoots Kate in the stomach, and she knocks him out by hitting him with a mallet.
While Kate and Joe are both on the floor, injured and exhausted, he admits that his first wife, Love Quinn (Victoria Pedretti), didn’t die in a fire — he poisoned her and started the fire to get rid of the evidence. Kate, relieved, reveals that she secretly took an audio recording of Joe’s confession to hand over to the police.
In response, Joe tells Kate that she can die happy now. She closes her eyes and seemingly dies, but in the finale, viewers learn that Kate survived the fire.
Kate leaves the C-suite life behind and returns to her love of art, championing Marienne’s work. She also becomes a full-time parent to Joe and Love’s son, Henry (Frankie DeMaio).
Griffin Matthews as Teddy Lockwood in season five, episode four of “You.” Netflix
For most of his life, Teddy has been an outsider in the Lockwood family because he’s the product of Tom Lockwood’s (Greg Kinnear) affair. Teddy became loyal to Kate because she hired him as her chief of staff and gave him a voice.
The finale shows Teddy and Kate celebrating, toasting him for transforming the family company into a nonprofit.
Anna Camp as Reagan Lockwood in season five, episode one of “You.” Clifton Prescod/Netflix
Reagan (Anna Camp) is Kate’s snarky half-sister and Lockwood Corporation’s CFO. She’s jealous of Kate’s position at the company and accuses Kate of being a killer, citing Bob’s “convenient” death. She also threatens to dig into Kate’s life and figure out what dirt Bob had on her.
Joe, wanting to protect his family, takes matters into his own hands and plots to kidnap Reagan, interrogate her in his cage in the basement of Mooney’s, and kill her. But his plan hits a major snag when he kidnaps the wrong twin in episode two.
Then, in episode four, Reagan tells Kate that she knows Joe killed Rhys in London and that Kate framed Nadia Fareedi (Amy-Leigh Hickman) for his murder.
Joe arrives at the conclusion that blackmail isn’t enough to stop Reagan, so she needs to be killed. He abducts Reagan, puts her in the cage with Maddie. Joe tells Maddie to kill Reagan with her insulin pen, because it’s the only way he can be assured that she won’t go to the authorities and snitch on him. If she doesn’t comply, he’ll just kill both twins.
Maddie is reluctant to murder Reagan, but after her sister repeatedly taunts and disrespects her, she does the deed.
In the finale, after Joe is caught by the authorities and put on trial, it’s revealed that Maddie gave Reagan a $2 million Viking funeral in the Long Island Sound.
Anna Camp as Maddie Lockwood in season five, episode seven of “You.” Netflix
Madison “Maddie” Lockwood is Reagan’s more timid twin sister. She works in PR, has a reputation as a party girl, and is a three-time divorcée. Oh, and she’s been secretly hooking up with Harrison Jacobs (Pete Ploszek), Reagan’s husband.
Years prior, Reagan also bullied Maddie into being her surrogate because she didn’t want to deal with the physical changes associated with having a baby.
After Joe kidnaps Reagan, he manipulates Maddie into impersonating her sister, promising that she’ll be with Harrison forever if she complies.
But Joe turns on Maddie in episode nine, framing her and Harrison for Reagan’s murder. Furious that he betrayed her trust, Maddie sets Mooney’s on fire, with Joe locked in the basement.
In the finale, Harrison’s charges for the murder of Reagan are dropped. Maddie was tried for arson and conspiracy to commit murder, but didn’t serve jail time because of the circumstances. Instead, she went to rehab for her pill addiction.
Maddie gets the happy ending she was promised with Harrison and Gretchen, Reagan’s daughter whom she gave birth to. Maddie and Harrison are also expecting twins.
Tom Francis as Clayton in season five, episode three of “You.” Netflix
Clayton (Tom Francis) is presented as Bronte’s ex, until it’s later revealed that he’s the son of therapist Dr. Nicky Angevine (John Stamos), who was framed for the murder of Beck.
Clayton listened to the recordings from Beck’s sessions with Dr. Nicky and suspected that Joe killed her. He also figured out that Joe was seeing Dr. Nicky as a patient under a false identity.
Clayton, Bronte, and their internet friends Dominique (Natasha Behnam) and Phoenix (b) spent years combing the internet trying to find evidence to expose Joe for being a killer.
Their initial plan was to get close to Joe to monitor him. Once Bronte met Joe and realized that he was a romantic with a white knight complex, she came up with the idea to get Joe to fall in love with her. Clayton played the part of the toxic guy that Joe could rescue her from.
As time wore on, Clayton started losing perspective and became solely focused on getting vindication, regardless of Bronte putting her life in danger.
Clayton was convinced that Joe had a pattern of killing all the women he fell in love with, so he wanted to use Bronte as bait. His plan was for Joe to think that Bronte got back with her toxic ex, and get so angry that he’d track Bronte down at a beach house and be ready to kill her. He intended to have the moment captured on camera.
But once he arrives, his confrontation with Bronte turns violent, and he shoves her to the ground. Joe fights Clayton and slams his head against the floor, killing him. Seconds later, Bronte and Clayton’s friends, Dominque and Phoenix, enter the house, livestreaming Joe in a compromising position. Their viral livestream has a snowball effect, leading the public to turn against Joe.
Although Clayton doesn’t make it out of the season alive, his dad’s conviction is vacated.
Natasha Behnam as Dominique and b as Phoenix in the season five finale of “You.” Netflix
Dominique and Phoenix are Bronte and Clayton’s friends who met through the internet.
Throughout the season, they work with Bronte and Clayton to ensnare Joe. Dominique and Phoenix also use TikTok to reveal the findings of their yearslong investigation into Joe, publicly accusing him of the murders of Candace Stone (Ambyr Childers), Benji, and Beck.
In the finale, they’re seen participating in a podcast interview and teasing what’s next.
“We didn’t do it alone,” Phoenix says, thanking Bronte, Joe’s survivors, and the internet sleuths. “And we’re not done.”
“Yeah, not to shock you, but there are other Joes out there,” Dominique adds.
