After Season 4’s Perfectly Twisted Finale, Is You Brave Enough to End?

After killing his wife Love (Victoria Pedretti), faking his death, and abandoning their young son, Joe Goldberg (Penn Badgley) continued his misadventures across the pond in Netflix’s You Season 4. Unfortunately, the new life Joe hoped would be free from murder and the mistakes of his past life didn’t last long, as he quickly became entangled with a new woman and a series of gruesome murders. While we won’t rehash every detail, the fourth season ultimately came together with a spectacle of a twist that Joe’s foe, the nefarious Rhys Montrose (Ed Speleers), was a figment of Joe’s imagination. 

Joe had been responsible for the deaths of those closest to his new love interest, Kate (Charlotte Richie), and he had kidnapped Marienne (Tati Gabrielle) instead of her returning to her daughter in Paris as he believed. To stop his hallucinations and recall the memories he had blocked out of his mind, including where he stashed Marienne, Joe had to embrace the darkness within and admit what he had spent the previous three and a half seasons denying: He is a monster. Once he admitted the truth, after killing Kate’s father and surviving a suicide attempt, he confessed everything to Kate about his past. Then, following a time jump and framing Nadia (Amy-Leigh Hickman) for his crimes in London, Joe reclaims his life and son and returns to New York, creating a false narrative about Love—with Kate and her billion-dollar company and its resources supporting him.

This ending, though likely not the end for Joe Goldberg and You, feels like the perfect way to end this series—and not just because You becomes more tedious to watch with each passing season. The story is basically the same cycle repeating itself with a few changes and twists thrown in to keep viewers on their toes. In the end, though, it’s just Joe escaping the consequences of his actions after ruining or taking the lives of those unfortunate enough to find themselves in his company. His infatuation with Kate is sure to quickly shift to another unlucky woman, much as it did with Love in the third season. How many times can we watch Joe narrowly escape the end and restart his life with his sights set on a new target? But now, Joe will have no qualms about what he has to do to insert himself into this woman’s life.

In a haunting and bittersweet way, there’s no better ending for Joe Goldberg’s story. He has, at this point, everything he has ever wanted. Kate has seemingly accepted Joe knowing his entire history, and he has the chance to raise his son free of Love’s influence with the wealth he never had while growing up. To Joe, everything he’s done has earned him this beautiful life. He’s no longer plagued by the darkness within him, finally embracing the truth about who he is and what he is capable of. It is Joe’s happy ending in every sense. And, considering what has happened in the series, isn’t this the ending that the writers have always been building to? On such a twisted show, there’s beauty to an utterly twisted conclusion such as this.