The final ever episode of You, simply titled "Finale," brings Joe Goldberg's long, bloody saga to an end — not with the redemption he fantasized about, but with the brutal, fitting downfall he so richly deserves. It’s a tense, darkly ironic sendoff that captures everything twisted and brilliant about the series.
Joe (Penn Badgley) and Bronte (Madeline Brewer) are on the run, trying to escape the growing storm after Kate's (Charlotte Ritchie) recorded confession threatens to blow up Joe's carefully constructed life. The eventual reveal of Kate's survival and her final act of rebellion — leaving her empire behind to help Marienne and raise Henry — is quietly triumphant, a quiet victory after seasons of trauma.
Meanwhile, Joe dreams of a new start across the Canadian border, using forged papers provided by Will Bettelheim (a fantastic callback to earlier seasons). With Henry in tow, he hopes to vanish into yet another fake life, another blank slate.
But Bronte, ever patient, is simply biding her time.
Their night at a safehouse sets the stage for one last game of illusions. They take a romantic boat ride, and in one final, devastating betrayal, Bronte points a gun at Joe mid-coitus, demanding to know the truth about Beck. Joe's refusal — his inability to confront his own monstrosity — triggers the beginning of his true collapse.
Joe’s failed attempt to kill Bronte after she contacts 911 leads to an escalating spiral of violence. He kills a police officer while trying to flee. But for once, his luck finally runs out. Cornered, emasculated in the most literal sense when Bronte shoots him in the groin, Joe is arrested.
There's something deeply poetic in how Bronte finally defeats him: not through brute force, but by turning Joe’s own illusions of control and invincibility against him.
The epilogue is satisfying in its quiet dismantling of Joe's delusions. Bronte edits Beck's novel, stripping away Joe's manipulative additions. Nadia, freed from prison, becomes a writing teacher — a survivor forging a better path. Teddy takes over the Lockwood empire and makes it fully non-profit. Kate dedicates herself to real, restorative work, a redemption arc Joe never truly deserved.
And Joe? Joe is sentenced to life in prison, right where he belongs.
In his cell, he reads fan mail, still clinging to the belief that he's the victim. That society, not he, is the real villain. The series’ final gut punch is that even after everything — the bodies, the lies, the destruction — Joe remains Joe. Unchanged. Unrepentant. Alone.
He's not the one with the problem. It's you.
It’s a finale that leans hard into the tragedy of Joe’s character. Not that he’s misunderstood, but that he’s understood all too well. His charm, his self-pity, his grand delusions — they were never tools for survival. They were weapons.
"Finale" ties up the show’s loose ends with a blend of brutal honesty and dark satire. It’s not a happy ending. It’s not a redemptive ending. It’s the ending You needed: one final, undeniable statement that Joe Goldberg was never the hero of his own story.
Joe was, and always will be, the villain.
As the camera lingers on Joe’s smirk behind prison bars, the message is clear: monsters don’t always see themselves for what they are.
But we do.
As Bronte states, in one of the best lines of the series, "the fantasy of a man like you, helps us cope with the reality of a man like you."
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