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The Netflix You season 5 ending was originally very different (and a lot more final for Joe), teases showrunner
The show's final season is on the streamer now, but the Netflix You season 5 ending was once very different. Read to know more, but beware of spoilers
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After five seasons of being an absolute creep (that the world lusts after, nonetheless), Joe Goldberg is finally done with You. At the end of Netflix’s last chapter of the stalker thriller, Joe (AKA Penn Badgley) finds himself in jail for his many, many crimes, imprisoned like he imprisoned so many others beforehand. But if the show's writers stuck with their original plan for the You season 5 ending, Joe wouldn’t have wound up in jail - but in the ground.
It was You showrunner Michael Foley that revealed the scrapped plans for Joe’s demise in an interview with The New York Post published April 28. “We hadn’t landed on [the ending],” says Foley, “until very late in the season. Throughout the series, there was a shared belief among the writers and the creators that Joe wouldn’t get away with his crimes.”
“We came into the season knowing that we didn’t want to redeem him,” the showrunner continues, “that he would get his comeuppance, that he was going to face some of those whose lives he ruined. And most importantly, we knew he was going to be made to face himself.”
Naturally, Joe being made to face himself would be pretty difficult if he was, well, dead, so when that idea was pitched in the writer’s room, it was ultimately scrapped. Foley says that ending in death would be “too easy” for a creep like Joe.
“We liked putting him in a veritable cage,” Foley concludes, “We liked him not knowing the touch of a lover.”
Just saying, if they really wanted to stick it to him, the writers could’ve taken the mirror out of his cell. Imagine having Penn Badgley’s face and not being able to look at it.
You season 5 is streaming now on Netflix.
Fade to credits, then a pop-up of what to watch read next - just like Netflix:
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