If the first three episodes of You Season 5 were about Joe trying to keep a lid on the chaos, "My Fair Maddie" is where it finally boils over. This episode is a frantic, sweaty descent into manipulation, delusion, and betrayal—and it’s You at its messy, compulsively watchable best.
Joe (Penn Badgley) is on a mission: he needs Maddie to impersonate Reagan convincingly enough to save Kate's seat at the Lockwood table. Problem is, Maddie is… well, Maddie. Chaotic, unpredictable, and utterly uninterested in playing Joe’s saviour.
After an awkward, almost comedic series of failed attempts to mold Maddie into Reagan, Joe finds a sliver of inspiration through a conversation with Bronte (Madeline Brewer). It's a telling moment—Bronte’s casual influence over Joe is growing, her encouragement nudging him deeper into his own worst impulses. Joe’s obsession with control—of people, of outcomes—is in full bloom, and Bronte, whether she realises it or not, is watering it.
Meanwhile, Kate (Charlotte Ritchie) meets Reagan (Anna Camp) in a bid to force her resignation. Predictably, Reagan has her own ace up her sleeve: proof that Joe killed Rhys Montrose and Bob. In a brilliantly tense scene, Reagan blackmails Kate into resigning. It’s not just business; it’s a personal dismantling. Anna Camp plays Reagan’s cold fury with lethal precision.
Kate, backed into a corner, confides in Joe. And here’s where the real rot sets in. Joe, with the calm logic of a man who has killed too often to blink at the moral weight, insists Reagan must die. But Kate’s reaction is layered. She admits she wanted Reagan dead, acknowledges the darkness inside her—but ultimately refuses to embrace it. It’s a stark contrast to Joe, who believes love and violence can coexist without contradiction. Their ideological rift is deepening.
Joe’s plan unravels with chaotic inevitability. He goes to Reagan’s house and fights her in a bruising, visceral scene. Badgley and Camp bring real physicality to the scuffle, and when Joe knocks Reagan out, it’s less triumph than grim necessity.
He locks Reagan in the cage with Maddie and—in one of the most chilling scenes of the season—tells Maddie to kill Reagan if she wants to survive. This is Joe at his most twisted: not killing directly, but orchestrating murder through someone else’s broken hands.
Upstairs at Mooney’s, the bookstore’s grand reopening acts as a grim counterpoint to the violence unfolding underground. Bronte’s ex, Clayton, continues his campaign of humiliation, culminating in Joe issuing a thinly veiled threat that’s as much for himself as it is for Bronte. Clayton has unwittingly lit the fuse under Joe’s crumbling self-control.
Meanwhile, Maddie and Reagan's confrontation inside the cage is brutal, raw, and inevitable. Maddie, pushed to her limit, kills Reagan in a burst of survival instinct. When she emerges, posing as Reagan to deliver her resignation, it feels almost grotesque—a puppet on broken strings.
Joe expects gratitude. Kate, haunted by the cost of his "help," offers none. And that’s it. For Joe, that’s the final betrayal. In his mind, the marriage fractures completely in that moment. The episode closes with Joe, freshly unmoored, giving in fully to his obsession. At the bookstore, in the shadow of a thousand unread books, Joe and Bronte have sex.
"My Fair Maddie" is a devastating, relentless hour of television. It strips Joe of his remaining pretenses and shows just how hollow his justifications have become. Love, loyalty, redemption—they’re just words he hides behind. At his core, Joe is an addict. Control is his drug, and in Bronte, he’s found a new fix.
Madeline Brewer continues to be a revelation as Bronte, her vulnerability weaponised into something dangerous. Charlotte Ritchie’s portrayal of Kate’s gradual horror at what she’s married into is beautifully understated. And Badgley remains a master of making you root for—and recoil from—Joe in the same breath.
As Season 5 pushes deeper into Joe’s final spiral, one thing is clear: whatever redemption arc some fans might have hoped for, You isn’t interested. Joe isn’t becoming a better man. He’s becoming a worse one.
And we can't look away.
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