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Does Joe Goldberg die? You Season 5 recap & ending
Joe Goldberg has had many close shaves, but does he die in You Season 5? Find out with our recap of the Netflix show’s ending.
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Joe Goldberg has lied, stalked, gaslit, and murdered his way around the world, and somehow, we’ve followed him through it all. You Season 5 is here, putting an end to this saga for good.
This twisty final season of the hit Netflix series leans hard into fantasy, delusion, and – let’s be honest – full-on suspension of disbelief. But isn’t that why we keep watching?
Across five chapters, Joe (Penn Badgley) has slipped through the cracks with ease. He’s reinvented himself so many times, and yet one thing has never changed: there is always a “You.” By the end of You Season 4, that special someone happened to be Kate Lockwood (Charlotte Ritchie).
However, as the series wraps up with a bloody blowout, one question hangs in the air like a London fog: does Joe finally meet his maker? Warning: spoilers ahead!
Does Joe Goldberg die?No, Joe doesn’t die by the end of You Season 5. Instead, he gets a far more fitting punishment: life in prison without parole. What’s more, his latest “You” shot his penis off. No, really.
You see, after falling for a new woman named Bronte (more on her shortly), Joe commits a string of new murders. But all of the survivors from the past make her see the truth: Joe is a monster.
However, she knows that simply killing him won’t be justice. Instead, she goes along with his plan to cross the border and start a new life under false identities.
In Season 5 Episode 10, simply titled ‘Finale’, they break into a house for the night and start to hook up, at which point Bronte pulls a gun from under the pillow. They get into a struggle, leading to a chase through the surrounding woods.
Joe thinks he has the upper hand after seemingly drowning Bronte (Madeline Brewer). Little does he realize that she’s already called the police.
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NetflixSoon enough, an entire SWAT team shows up. Joe still thinks he can escape, but Bronte jumps out of nowhere holding a gun to his face. He begs her to kill him, saying, “You’re more like me than you want to admit.”
She refuses to stoop to his level, and delivers a belter of a line while questioning what it is that made her and so many other women fall for his deception: “The fantasy of a man like you is how we cope with the reality of a man like you.”
Finally, she tells him he’s going to have to deal with the consequences of his actions, saying, “You are going to have to see yourself.” Realizing he’s out of options, he lunges towards her and she shoots… at his groin.
In the following scenes, we see the story wrapped up, with Joe facing an avalanche of murder charges, from Beck and Love Quinn to Benji and Peach.
Joe still can’t face the truth NetflixEven in prison, faced with nothing but himself and his books, he still finds a way to place the blame elsewhere. This time, he takes a jab at society (and us as the viewers), saying, “Maybe the problem isn’t me. Maybe it’s you.”
Prior to this, Joe reflects on his miserable life of loneliness ahead when suddenly he gets a letter delivered to his cell from one of his many fans, who fantasize about what they’d let him do to them.
FYI, these people really do exist – they’re called hybristophiliacs, and they genuinely fangirl over serial killers like Ted Bundy. But I digress.
Joe reads the letter, ironically describing his fans as “crazies” and “depraved.” He goes on to narrate, “Maybe we have a problem as a society. Maybe we should fix what’s broken in us.” And then he delivers that final line.
Who is Bronte? NetflixLouise is an aspiring writer who presents herself as a woman named Bronte – this is the version Joe “falls in love” (aka becomes obsessed) with.
The truth is that she was a student of Beck’s. After Beck’s death, she joined a group of cyber sleuths, including Dr Nicky’s son Clayton (Tom Francis), as well as Phoenix and Dom (Natasha Behnam), to track down Joe and expose him.
This isn’t revealed until You Season 5 Episode 5. At this stage, Joe and Bronte have grown close, bonding over their love of books and writing. Joe even reopens Mooney’s after Kate bought it for him, allowing Bronte to run it and live in the apartment upstairs.
Clayton poses as Bronte’s abusive ex partner, and things come to a head when Joe tracks them both down and finds them arguing. Joe murders Clayton there and then, at which point Phoenix (b) and Dom emerge – and they’re live-streaming everything.
Their plan was never for Bronte (aka Louise, but we’ll stick to Bronte to keep it straightforward) to infiltrate Joe’s life, and it definitely wasn’t for Clayton to get killed. But this is how things unfold, landing both Joe and Bronte in the interrogation room.
It would have been time up for Joe, if it weren’t for the fact that Bronte has already started to fall for his manipulation. She has doubts about her friends’ theories and genuinely believes Joe killed Clayton in defense of her.
This, coupled with some begrudging help from his partner-in-crime Kate and a social media campaign, means Joe gets off the hook… for now. However, she finally sees the light thanks to the women from Joe’s past.
Joe faces the cageNetflixEven though Kate has done many things wrong in her life, she owns up to them in You Season 5. Realizing she’s married to a monster, she starts plotting to bring him down – even if that means bringing herself down with him.
Firstly, she gets Nadia Farran (Amy-Leigh Hickman) out of prison. If you remember, in You Season 4, Nadia was a literature student who helped Marienne Bellamy (Tati Gabrielle) fake her own death to escape Joe.
Joe framed Nadia for the murder of Edward, with Kate helping Joe evade capture and continue living the high life.
As such, Nadia isn’t quick to trust Kate, but she eventually comes round when she realizes her true intentions. The pair set up a ruse and manage to drug Joe, before finally giving him a taste of his own medicine: locking him in his infamous book cage.
Marienne also decides to make an appearance to see it for herself, calling Joe a “f**king abuser.”
NetflixLater, she heads into the main bookstore alone while Kate and Nadia deal with Joe. Bronte shows up, and it’s here that Marienne opens her eyes to the truth, even if it doesn’t seem like it at the time.
When Bronte leaves, Marienne’s unsure if she got through to her, leaving Kate and Nadia worried she’ll just call the police. After a back-and-forth, Kate volunteers to kill Joe and take the fall.
However, Joe has a secret key (sewn inside of his arm, of course), and Kate goes to the basement to find the cage empty. He jumps out and attacks her but she fights back, leaving both of them injured and locked in thanks to Kate’s half-sister Maddie (Anna Camp).
Maddie, who has her own issues with Joe, then sets the place on fire, unaware that Kate’s in the basement. And so it seems Kate and Joe are set to die together.
But as the fire closes in, Bronte shows up. She gets Joe out, not because she wants to save him, but rather to enact her plan to get answers – and deliver the justice he truly deserves.
Louise gives Beck her voice backNetflixIn the finale of the Netflix series, Bronte makes Joe mark all of the lines he wrote in Beck’s posthumous book, ‘The Dark Face of Love’, while holding him at gunpoint, highlighting how he works to erase the women he becomes obsessed with.
“The least I can do is erase you,” she says. Once Joe is in prison, she has the book republished, this time without Joe’s contributions – and it actually does better the second time around.
“But like so many others, she still won’t get the chance to make what she wanted to make her life,” Bronte continues. “Joe stole that from them. In their honor, we make the most of ours.”
Does Kate die?NetflixAmazingly, no. Kate survives the fire at Mooney’s, presumably having been saved by Bronte. As penance for her own mistakes, she hands her father’s company to Teddy (Griffin Matthews), her brother and someone who truly deserves it.
In the final sequence, they celebrate as Teddy announces that he’s made the Lockwood company a non-profit. As for Kate, she’s returned to her true passion: art.
She’s championing the work of none other than Marienne, who’s now the successful artist she always should have been, and is living happily with her daughter. Similarly, Joe and Love’s son Henry (Frankie DeMaio) finally gets a stable home, living with Kate as his mom.
As for Nadia, she returns to writing and teaching, using her gifts to help other women process their own trauma.
You Season 5 is streaming on Netflix now. If you’re wondering what to watch next, check out our roundup of the best Netflix thrillers, TV shows coming to streaming this month, and the best series of 2025 so far.
