Why Netflix's You Season 5 Was a Disappointing End to a Once-Great Thriller

Netflix's psychological thriller You began as a compelling exploration of obsession, identity, and the masks people wear in the age of social media. Led by Penn Badgley’s eerily charismatic performance as Joe Goldberg, the show hooked viewers by turning them into complicit voyeurs—inviting them to listen in on Joe’s twisted inner monologue as he rationalized stalking, manipulation, and murder under the guise of love. You once held viewers captive with its blend of psychological suspense, biting satire, and the complex paradox that is Joe Goldberg—a murderous romantic who somehow elicited sympathy even as his body count rose.

From Season 1’s urban gothic romance with Guinevere Beck in New York to Season 2’s chaos with Love Quinn in Los Angeles, and Season 3’s suburban unravelling in Madre Linda, You cleverly reinvented itself. Even Season 4, with its London-based whodunit format and the introduction of a split-personality storyline involving Rhys Montrose, attempted something new—if a bit over-the-top.

Unfortunately, by the time Season 5 rolled around, the series that once gripped audiences with tightly woven plots and unexpected twists felt more like a ghost of itself. From character missteps to glaring omissions, the final season faltered in nearly every aspect, leaving fans underwhelmed and frustrated.

A New Cast That Lacked Depth

Season 5 introduces Brontë—who seems like she was engineered in a lab to be Joe’s next obsession. Madeline Brewer famously known for playing Janine is the handmaid's tale does a great job as Bronte, but her mishap can only be blamed on the writers and showrunners. Played with mild charisma, Brontë is positioned as an intellectual equal to Joe, yet their dynamic lacks the electric tension that fueled his previous relationships with Beck and Love Quinn. Brontë’s circle of friends—Dominique, Phoenix, and Clayton—were intended to form a new “elite” social group akin to the ones from previous seasons, but none of them possessed the layered menace or intrigue of past characters like Forty Quinn or Sherry Conrad. Instead, they feel like cardboard cutouts placed around Brontë to fill screen time, lacking any meaningful arcs or chemistry with Joe. All in all they were extremely forgettable and their insertion felt forced and extremely unrealistic. Bronte knew Beck very briefly, and someone became obsessed with her death convinced that some guy she was calling was the murder. Honestly, it was all so far fetched. There was so much material from previous seasons like Delilah's death, Candice's death, all the rich people Joe killed in season 4, Loves death and even Peach's death that we could have gone back to. Yet, a bunch of randoms somehow figured out who who Joe truly was with very little evidence.

Where Are You's Love Quinn and Ellie Alves?

One of the most glaring issues with Season 5 is who isn’t in it. Love Quinn, portrayed by Victoria Pedretti, was arguably the show’s most fascinating character. Her presence loomed large over Seasons 2 and 3, with her unpredictable blend of maternal instinct and murderous rage creating some of the series’ most memorable moments. Although presumed dead at the end of Season 3, You has never been a show that shies away from a character resurrection or flashback. We even see Love Quinn in Season 4 so why not bring her to the final season, when characters like her Mother were there, characters we forgot and added nothing to the storyline. Yet Love is relegated to a brief mention, as though her history with Joe has been swept under the rug. Furthermore, her child is there during the whole show and we couldn't even get a single flashback. Her complex impact on Joe’s psyche—her ability to mirror his violence and force him to confront himself—is missing, leaving a gaping emotional hole in the story.

And then there's Ellie Alves. Played by Jenna Ortega, Ellie was a bright young woman with a sharp tongue and a sense of justice, and her storyline with Joe had unresolved threads that Season 5 could have explored—especially given Ortega’s rising stardom. Ellie was the conscience Joe never listened to, a symbol of the innocence he continually corrupted. Ignoring her in the final season feels like a missed opportunity, especially as Joe spirals deeper into moral ambiguity.

Beck’s Return: A Hollow Echo

Bringing Guinevere Beck back was an obvious attempt to recapture the magic of Season 1, but instead of a triumphant callback, it played more like a desperate retread. Elizabeth Lail’s return as Beck could have added psychological tension or helped Joe confront his demons in a meaningful way. Instead, her appearance felt superficial—more style than substance. Beck returns in flashbacks, serving as a narrative crutch rather than a fully formed character. Her presence tries to create the Bronte plot that was so unbelievable and honestly made due seem stupid. Cheating on his rich wife who basically allows him to get away with everything, and continues to stay. Joe had literally won the lottery and flashed it down the toilet for Bronte. To be fair he did kind of the same thing with Love Quinn.

Joe Goldberg: A Man Without a Mission

Perhaps the most damning flaw of Season 5 is Joe Goldberg himself. Gone is the sharp, self-deluding predator who rationalized every murder with twisted logic and literary references. In his place is a man who has seemingly given up on the very compulsions that made him compelling and now rather makes stupid decison. What the hell was that last episode and what was Joe doing? He was just making bad decision after bad decision.

Joe’s lack of obsession with Brontë is baffling. We are told he’s drawn to her, yet he doesn’t stalk her with the same meticulous attention we saw in previous seasons. With Beck he stalks everyone in her life. There are no hidden corners of bookstores, no journal entries, and no spine-chilling voiceovers as he studies her from afar. The cat-and-mouse game that once defined the series has been neutered. Joe stalked every single friend and family friend Love Quinn had and we are supposed to believe Bronte met with her friends in broad daylight and that was that. He didn't even know wheere she lived and he knew the address of Beck, Love, Marienne and Kate and suddently he so lazy he forgets to stalk Bronte and whether shes lying of now. Bullshit! Joe’s passivity toward Brontë is completely out of character. It’s almost as if the writers were afraid to let him be Joe—afraid to let the darkness that made him captivating take the spotlight one last time.

The brilliance of Joe Goldberg in earlier seasons lay in his complexity. He was disturbed, yes—but also introspective, self-aware, and at times genuinely charming. In Season 1, his obsession with Beck felt scarily relatable in a social media-saturated culture. Season 2 explored his effort to become "a better man" in LA, only to be outdone in manipulation and violence by Love. Season 3 raised the stakes with marriage, fatherhood, and domestic disillusionment. Season 4 just unravelled him completely and we see him enter into the life of super elites and win the lottery with Kate.

Season 5, however, gives us a Joe who has gone from a complex antihero to a directionless plot device. Instead of deepening his psychological torment or holding him accountable, the show opts for an unearned narrative where he gets everything he wants then looses it because he is now so stupid. He’s now in New York, once again, living under the protection of Kate Galvin-Lockwood (Charlotte Ritchie), the wealthy heiress and CEO, who accepts him despite learning the truth about his murderous past.

This is a Joe with no real remorse, no growth, and no punishment. The internal conflict that made him interesting is gone, replaced by entitlement and smug justification.

The Rise (and Fall) of Kate Galvin-Lockwood

Season 4 introduced Kate as a cold, calculated art dealer with a dark past and little patience for nonsense. She was one of the few characters who could match Joe’s intensity and see through his facade. Besides Love Quinn of course.

Season 5 turns her into a contradiction. Despite learning that Joe has a long history of murder—including the truth about Love, Beck, and Marianne—Kate not only stays with him but partners with him in running the Lockwood Foundation, a massive philanthropic organization. This decision feels deeply unearned. The Kate we were introduced to in Season 4 would never tolerate someone like Joe, let alone fall in love with him, marry him and raise his child. This is not season 4 Kate.

The show tries to frame her choice as a pragmatic acceptance of "darkness" in the world, but it comes off as narrative convenience rather than character development. Her arc, like Joe’s, is flattened to serve a neat—but hollow—ending.

Recycled Plotlines, Lazy Twists

By Season 5, You have become a victim of its formula. The structure is painfully familiar: Joe meets a group of upper-class elites, kills a few of them, manipulates his way into their trust, and evades justice through a mix of coincidence and charisma. While earlier seasons made this formula feel fresh, Season 5 makes no effort to hide the recycling.

The Rhys Montrose alter-ego twist from Season 4 was already divisive, but at least it dared to be weird. Season 4 was not my favourite and it felt very drawn out but season 5 felt out of place and Joe was not `Joe. He was loud and sloppy with his murders and kidnappings. I mean how ridiculous was Season 5 just shrugs it off. Joe "accepts" that he’s capable of terrible things, and then... nothing changes. There’s no unravelling, no self-destruction, no reckoning. Instead, he’s rewarded with wealth, status, and immunity.

Even Marienne Bellamy (Tati Gabrielle), whose harrowing arc in Season 4 involved being drugged and imprisoned by Joe, makes a brief return—only to offer vague warnings and then disappear again. Also, why was she there. Its a dangerous situation with no guarantee that Joe isnt going to kill her and she comes in for a quick, "Hey Joe, I am still alive moment." No rational person who was that scared and wanted to protect her daughter in the previous season would do that. Nadia (Amy-Leigh Hickman), who uncovered Joe’s secrets and was one of the few characters who posed a threat, is conveniently erased from the equation through legal and social manipulation. Every loose end is tied up not through clever writing, but through convenient silence. It was all about money.

A Tonal Identity Crisis

Part of what made You work in earlier seasons was its tonal balance. It managed to be horrifying, funny, romantic, and tragic all at once. Season 1 was a dark critique of millennial narcissism; Season 2 toyed with redemption and duality; Season 3 tackled marriage and parenthood through a disturbingly bloody lens; Season 4 played with the murder mystery genre, albeit unevenly.

But Season 5? It doesn’t seem to know what it is. One moment, it tries to offer Joe a redemption arc. The next, it wants us to believe he's irredeemable. Subplots are introduced and dropped without resolution. Characters are inconsistently written. Themes—like the price of guilt or the impossibility of change—are hinted at but never meaningfully developed.

The Final Betrayal: Joe’s Redemption Arc

In trying to redeem Joe Goldberg—or at least let him ride off into the sunset—the show betrays its entire premise. Joe was never supposed to be a hero. He was a monster disguised as a romantic, a killer who justified his crimes through delusion. To wrap up his story with a vague suggestion of peace and forgiveness feels not only unearned but insulting to viewers who stuck through five seasons waiting for a satisfying reckoning.

What made You addictive was the tension between who Joe thinks he is and who he is. Season 5 avoids that tension, softens his edges, and makes him digestible. But Joe Goldberg was never meant to be digested. He was meant to disturb us.

A major frustration with Season 5 was the end. We wanted a trial with EVERYBODY. A clear mirror whould have been raised in front of Joe and he should have been aware of how gruesome he really was. Instead the final episode is him running wround naked, begging to die and then being arrested.

You Season 5 should have been a high-stakes, emotionally charged conclusion to a show that once redefined psychological thrillers. Instead, it felt like a rushed, shallow epilogue to a story that deserved a better ending. By abandoning compelling characters like Love Quinn and Ellie Alves, misusing Brontë and her forgettable entourage, and defanging Joe Goldberg, the show betrayed its own identity.

For longtime fans, it wasn’t just a disappointment. It was a heartbreak.

You Season 5 had every opportunity to end the series on a powerful, thought-provoking note. Instead, it doubled down on its worst habits: glorifying its protagonist, discarding its most interesting side characters, and choosing convenience over consequence. Kate’s partnership could have been complex and tragic rather than bafflingly loyal. Joe could have faced a reckoning—not just legally, but emotionally, spiritually, and narratively. But the show blinked.

In trying to let Joe win, You lost what made it special.