Sincerely, Saskia

Let’s talk about it…

The popular Netflix Original series wrapped up last month for its fifth and final season, and what an absolutely chaotic ride it was.

From season one through to the finale, we’ve seen Joe Goldberg kill his way through New York, the fictional Californian suburb of Madre Linda, and London, destroying the lives of pretty much everyone he comes into contact with – all the while convincing himself that he’s not the problem.

Sound familiar?

We follow Joe jump from obsession to obsession, killing – or at least trying to – all the women he meets along the way. From Guinevere Beck to Love Quinn to Brontë Louise Flannery, we watch Joe obliterate these women and dress it up as love. In the first season we see him as this hopeless – extremely unlucky – romantic, killing purely because of unfortunate circumstances. As the seasons progress, we see his body count increase, and with it the number of excuses he makes.

YOU literally forces you out of your romanticisation of Joe Goldberg.

‘Wrong place, wrong time.’

‘It was either them or me.’

‘I had no other choice.’

‘I was protecting you, I did it for you.’

If having an answer for everything was a person, it would be Joe Goldberg.

The fan obsession with the show that increased after every season has critics and onlookers begging the question as to whether or not YOU is glorifying violence against women – and I can see why people would think this.

They’ve chosen an attractive actor with alluring charisma that you cannot help but root for. Like, why am I stressed and upset that things aren’t working out for this ACTUAL serial killer? This question hanging over everyone’s heads was only amplified by that finale. I won’t go into too many details, but we see Joe essentially – once again – absolving himself from being the problem, promptly coming to the conclusion that it’s the women’s fault. How did he get there? Well, a “fan” wrote to him expressing her admiration and asking him to do all sorts of things to her – I’ll let you use your imagination.

It’s this final scene that has people riled up because how dare YOU end five seasons of misogyny and violence against women at the hands of Joe blame women for his actions. Women don’t ask for this, and here in lies a pertinent point: the show knows that violence against women is romanticised in entertainment and pop culture, be it books, films or music. Misogyny is never too far away, and the tropes of such male characters are commonplace. However, YOU literally forces you out of your romanticisation of Joe Goldberg.

YOU challenges your typical perception of a leading man… you’re waiting for a redemption that never comes.

One season at a time, you run out of excuses for this absolute psychopath, and this comes to a head patricularly in season 4. We’re made to believe there is another serial killer – a new YOU – running around London framing our soft boy, hopeless romantic lead. Joe wouldn’t do this, right? Joe wouldn’t actually trap Marianne and leave drugs in the cage knowing she’s an ex-addict. I was convinced she was hallucinating because he ‘loved her’, so it couldn’t be him. The delusion spills from the screen into our living rooms – of course, it was him all along.

For me, this is why the show is so good because it challenges your typical perception of a leading man. You’re waiting for a redemption that never comes and this is how the show steps up in the fight against romanticising toxic masculinity and drives home the fact that there is absolutely no excuse for such behaviour – so much so that they don’t even get a redemption arc. Yes, childhood trauma can fuel a person’s wrongdoing, but we see how much choice Joe had and how at every turn, he consistently chose to do the wrong thing.

Despite the discourse around how YOU ends, I took that final scene as the writers reminding us that he’s not going to change, so stop expecting him to. A notion that women would benefit from carrying into their reality. Even after everything he did, the people he hurt, he still had the absolute audacity to sit in his cell and lament on how women are the problem.

It’s laughable.

But the good thing about the final episode of YOU is that we are offered an alternative viewpoint: Bronte’s. Bronte’s ending shows us that the abuser doesn’t have to win. He can rot in a cell not taking accountability, while everyone else chooses to thrive in spite of his existence.

Does YOU romanticise violence against women? Well, no more than the rom coms we’ve grown up coveting. The lead is always manipulative in some way, threatening harm to himself if you don’t return his affection (Noah from The Notebook), and yet, we are meant to believe that this is love. A guy can call you a slag because he doesn’t get to have you, turn on you if he doesn’t get his own way and claim it’s out of love. Us girls are taught from a young age that if a boy pushes you over in the playground it’s only because he likes you. Like, wtf?! The difference between such rom coms and YOU is that these films are dressed up as something to aspire to. How many women still fawn over Ryan Gosling’s Noah in The Notebook?

YOU gives itself no such task of being aspirational and a big part of that is how Penn Badgley stays being Joe’s biggest critic. YOU is not meant to be something to aspire to; no matter how much you might have moments of weakness for Joe, YOU will shock you out of that haze. It constantly reminds us that no matter how much they dress it up or try and redirect you elsewhere, all roads lead back to him 100% being the villain.

Joe Goldberg is not something to romanticise – if you are ever unfortunate enough to meet a Joe in reality, he’s something to run away from.

Image Credit: Netflix