Spoiler alert: The following article contains details about the series finale for You.
You showrunners Michael Foley and Justin Lo always knew Penn Badgley‘s murderous and manipulative Joe Goldberg would have to face the music at the conclusion of the Netflix thriller series — but in one alternate supernatural ending, it wouldn’t be on the mortal realm.
In a new interview with the New York Post, the co-executive producers devised a “very early iteration” of the denouement that would feature Joe finding out he’s a ghost after he’s been shot by this season’s new love interest, Madeline Brewer’s Bronte.
“We went through many different options, one of which being that he did die at the hands of Bronte,” Lo explained. “I was even remembering a version where he was shot. And [the audience] didn’t realize that he [got] shot until the very last episode, and then he realizes he’s a ghost.”
Ultimately, Season 5 sees Joe behind bars and with his nether regions blown off by gunshot, with the majority of his remaining victims having survived his glass box, predatory cloying and delusional self-aggrandizement. In the finale’s last moments, the show’s signature voiceover alludes heavily to the fact that Joe still views himself as the victim of an unjust society, rather than a menacing serial killer.
“We liked putting him in a veritable cage [in prison]. We liked him not knowing the touch of a lover,” Foley explained, adding that “it was late in the season” when the writers’ room “finally locked that down.”
“Throughout the series, there was a shared belief among the writers and the creators that Joe wouldn’t get away with his crimes,” he said, adding that death would be “too easy” of an ending for the character. “We came into the season knowing that we didn’t want to redeem him, 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.”
It’s a sentiment echoed by star Badgley, who told Deadline recently that “the right choice” was made in terms of how the abuser is brought to justice: “What is best, not just for Joe, but the person who then has to do it? If somebody was to kill him — and it would be a woman, right — well then actually now what you’ve burdened her with is having committed murder, like that’s not just, I don’t think. Torture? Uh OK, same thing. Prison? Eh, feels a bit not enough. So what do you do? Take. His. Balls.”
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