You's Final Line Highlights Penn Badgley's Long-Held Issue With Joe

It’s safe to say Penn Badgley’s feelings about playing a love-obsessed serial killer have been... complicated. Ever since he first put on Joe Goldberg’s nondescript baseball cap, Badgley has been vocal about the dangerous tightrope act of portraying the deadly romantic as convincingly alluring, but not too idealized. And in Joe’s very last moment, he got to send that message directly to fans in a perfectly-crafted line.

Spoiler alert: This post details the series finale of You.

Joe Goldberg’s killing spree finally came to an end in the last episode of You Season 5. After his final girl (in more than one sense) Bronte called the police on him, Joe was sentenced to life in prison for his years of murderous rampage. It’s a punishment that Bronte feels is worse than death for the conniving con-man, forcing him to actually face himself in solitude without the distraction of another romantic obsession to glom onto.

And it works as a deserving end for Joe... well, kinda. Despite his horrible murders finally being exposed to the world, Joe is still showered with love from a new group of admirers. He writes off the fan-mail he gets in jail as being from “crazies,” but the attention does give him one last chance to deflect, which he does in the series’ final line:

Maybe the problem isn't me. Maybe, it's you.

It’s a statement that works on several levels. On the surface, it’s the series ending with its favorite gimmick of having Joe’s inner narration ominously say the title. And it underlines Joe’s inability to change, always finding a way to shift the blame for his killings onto someone else.

But most notably, the message echoes Badgley’s core issue with the fandom around Joe. When You first premiered in 2018, Badgley went on a social media crusade to stop fans from romanticizing Joe. Ahead of Season 5’s premiere, Badgley reiterated that making Joe “too likable” has been his “concern throughout the entirety of this series.”

“Has he been too likable? I personally always struggled with that question,” Badgley told The Guardian on April 16. “I’ve always wanted to make him less likable at every turn that is possible and plausible, and in this moment, I actually don’t know what to say about that.”

Recent shifts in the cultural landscape have made Badgley more and more cautious about how Joe is perceived by fans, which is why he’s happy the series isn’t going any further. “The way this show plays with questions of how we reward bad people, that was a more playful question eight to 10 years ago. It’s not as playful a question now,” Badgley said. “I’m glad we’re not going to be playing with it any longer. And for that reason, I’m really glad it’s ending.”