{"id":665762,"date":"2025-04-27T19:08:12","date_gmt":"2025-04-27T16:08:12","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2025-04-27T19:08:12","modified_gmt":"2025-04-27T16:08:12","slug":"penn-badgley-explains-you-ending-says-goodbye-to-joe-goldberg","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/penn-badgley-explains-you-ending-says-goodbye-to-joe-goldberg\/","title":{"rendered":"Penn Badgley Explains ‘You’ Ending, Says Goodbye to Joe Goldberg"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\n\t[This story contains MAJOR spoilers from\u00a0You<\/em>\u00a0season five, including the series<\/a> finale, \u201cFinale.\u201d]<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n\tHaving known Joe Goldberg the best after playing the tortured-yet-desired character for five seasons of You<\/em>, Penn Badgley wanted one thing in the final season: to deconstruct Joe as a romantic icon.<\/p>\n

\n\tWhile his character has captured audience attention each season, Joe has also questionably captured some hearts, on and off screen, and that\u2019s exactly what Badgley didn\u2019t want as Netflix\u2018s hit show came to a close with season five. \u201cWhat I believed was critical was that Joe finally be undeniably and very viscerally perceived and felt as a sexual predator, because that\u2019s what he is,\u201d he tells The Hollywood Reporter<\/em>.<\/p>\n

\n\tEach season typically starts as a love story \u2014 and season five was no different \u2014 though they each take a turn, with Joe killing almost every one of his love interests (plus others) in the name of, well, love. In the final season, what starts as a happ<\/a>y marriage with Kate (Charlotte Ritchie) quickly switches as she starts to unravel who Joe truly is. At the same time, Joe\u2019s new obsession, Bronte\/Louise (Madeline Brewer), ultimately becomes his downfall as she\u2019s secretly out to avenge Guinevere Beck\u2019s (Elizabeth Lail) death from season one.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cIt was really important that in the end, we all understood and agreed that he\u2019s not gonna be taken down in the box, he\u2019s gonna be taken down in the bedroom,\u201d Badgley tells THR<\/em> of delivering Joe a brutal ending \u2014 his savage attempt to kill Bronte backfires when she shoots him in the genitals and he is arrested, convicted and sentenced to life in prison with no parole. \u201cIn the box he\u2019s actually transparent about who he is, or at least he\u2019s the most transparent about who he is, it\u2019s everywhere else where he\u2019s able to create a fantasy that even if it\u2019s not convincing, it\u2019s charming and seductive enough that people are willing to be convinced.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tBelow, Badgley breaks down the fifth season and series finale, including his storylines with Bronte and Kate, why \u201cthis show has been something of a touchpoint culturally,\u201d his preparations for that intense ending, if he\u2019s really satisfied with Joe\u2019s punishment and what he will take away from You<\/em>.<\/p>\n

\n\t***<\/p>\n

\n\tAre you looking forward to not saying, \u201cHello, You,\u201d anymore or will you kind of miss it?<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n\t(Laughs<\/em>) Yeah. There\u2019s, of course, things about it that I\u2019ll miss, but only in time. I haven\u2019t had enough time to miss it yet.<\/p>\n

\n\tAs this journey with Joe comes to an end, what do you make of your whole experience?<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n\tThere\u2019s a few aspects. One is an uncommon part of this show, which is how central and somewhat alone Joe is as a figure. Every season is a new cast, and practically for me, it\u2019s a new crew because we move cities. That\u2019s rare, it\u2019s a show called You<\/em> starring me, and I\u2019ve never had something like it before. I\u2019ll never have something like it after. For it to go this long and for it to be this popular and hinge so much on this guy\u2019s thoughts and unspeaking face\u2026 it\u2019s a technical role, so I really have enjoyed getting to flex my of technical proficiency. It\u2019s just fun to lift something up like that as an actor. Then on the deeper thematic side, it\u2019s been really interesting to see such a\u00a0figure like him garner so much attention and be a part of that cultural conversation.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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\t\t\t\t\tPenn Badgley in \u2018You\u2019 season 5. <\/span><\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tClifton Prescod\/Netflix<\/cite><\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

\n\tDo you feel proud of what you accomplished with the series and bringing Joe to life?<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n\tDefinitely, absolutely. Is it 50 hours of television? Across the 50 hours, there are a few points where I could have been a bit more on my A game<\/a>. But I do feel good, particularly in the end. I think a show like this has to stretch the audience\u2019s capacity for belief and disbelief, it has to go to new and absurd places every time in order to find something new. And the camp and absurdity is part of what makes it an enjoyable ride. <\/p>\n

\n\tIf it was a more clinical portrayal of a serial killer, I think it would be insufferable. We don\u2019t need 50 hours of that. So the thing has really been more about a deconstruction of romantic tropes, and what we all think about love and when desire turns it into something else that feels and looks like love, but really isn\u2019t at all, and how we all experience that in much smaller ways and relationships. We participate in that and we even do it ourselves. <\/p>\n

\n\tSo I\u2019m proud that this show has been something of a touchpoint culturally. It\u2019s been fun, and it\u2019s also something that has been a part of an interesting conversation over the last eight years or so. A lot has been happening in the world where the conversations and themes of this show are so relevant, and it\u2019s interesting to be a part of something like that.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tWhen you started filming for this final season, returning to New York where it all began, what was going through your head as you prepared to say goodbye to this character?\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n\tJoe is, for better or worse, very second nature for me. I was glad that it was in my home. I live in New York, or at least I\u2019ve been here for a long time. The writers promised me it would be a return to form, and I don\u2019t think that it left its form. I do think that the show, the latter half of every season, does something that\u2019s very different from the first half. The first half is telling the love story that on the surface it\u2019s meant to be about, which draws people in \u2014 using all of the tropes of romantic stories at the pop culture level. <\/p>\n

\n\tThen the second half is deconstructing that and revealing him to be who we say he is from the outset, which, of course, somehow people either forget or overlook, or just are willing to tolerate all throughout. Every season they do the impossible; they take it to some crazy places and then\u00a0stick the landing, and so I trusted that they would do it again. I trusted them enough that it was like, \u201cAll right, it\u2019ll be difficult at points, it will be crazy, but we\u2019re gonna do it.\u201d And by the time I saw the final episode, I thought it was really gratifying. It\u2019s like, \u201cWe did what we came to do and we put this man to bed in the right way.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

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\t\t\t\t\t(L-R) Madeline Brewer and Penn Badgley in \u2018You\u2019 season 5. <\/span><\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tClifton Prescod\/Netflix<\/cite><\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

\n\tI spoke with co-showrunners Michael Foley and Justin W. Lo, and they said they had conversations with you about \u201cmaking sure Joe was at his most horrific this season.\u201d Can you expand on what that meant for you, and if you feel you succeeded in doing that?<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n\tWhat I believed was critical was that Joe finally be undeniably and very viscerally perceived and felt as a sexual predator, because that\u2019s what he is. The first episode, he\u2019s masturbating in the street outside a woman\u2019s apartment, who nine episodes later, he strangles. When you say it like that it\u2019s awful, and I\u2019m sorry to say it like that. It\u2019s jarring, right? But it\u2019s like, guys, that\u2019s what happened.<\/p>\n

\n\tThat\u2019s actually what is happening in this show, while a number of other things are happening. And it isn\u2019t even so much the sleight of hand of a magician \u2014 we\u2019re showing you exactly what we\u2019re doing from the get-go. But the sleight of hand part \u2014 whether it\u2019s right or wrong, it just is the way the show has chosen to be from the outset \u2014 is we withheld the viewer from seeing those most visceral moments where we didn\u2019t see him actually murder Beck. He didn\u2019t kill Candace (Ambyr Childers). We saw him kill Love (Victoria Pedretti) but in self-defense. The people that you really saw him murder were all men for the most part. I\u2019m not exactly sure, but I think that when a woman dies, if it\u2019s at Joe\u2019s hands, we never see that moment. We only saw Candace with Love. Season four, we didn\u2019t see any of them happen at first, because it was all happening while he was Tyler Durden-out [referencing the 1999 movie Fight Club<\/em>].<\/p>\n

\n\tIt was really important that we not only see him in the act of abuse, but in seduction and manipulation, and that\u2019s really the proverbial bedroom. And this wasn\u2019t my idea in the terms of the specifics, but to me it was really important that in the end, we all understood and agreed like, he\u2019s not gonna be taken down in the box, he\u2019s gonna be taken down in the bedroom. In this house, in this fiction, this fantasy that he\u2019s trying to create. Because in the box he\u2019s actually transparent about who he is, or at least he\u2019s the most transparent about who he is, it\u2019s everywhere else where he\u2019s able to create a fantasy that even if it\u2019s not convincing, it\u2019s charming and seductive enough that people are willing to be convinced. <\/p>\n

\n\tSo it was important that was where he\u2019s sort of frozen and caught in his most vulnerable state, and that, for better or worse, our female protagonist, Bronte or Louise, played by Madeline Brewer, I think brilliantly, she was as dangerously close to a moment of nonconsensual sex. For the first time we\u2019re seeing really the true colors of this man and what he\u2019s doing, and for the first time ever we see him in the act and we don\u2019t want it to happen. It was really important to me that he\u2019d be deconstructed as a romantic icon. I was singing that song since season one, but I was really explicit with it with the writers throughout this season.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tWhen you first read the script and learned that Bronte (Madeline Brewer) was actually playing Joe, seeking revenge for Beck\u2019s (Elizabeth Lail) death from season one, what was your initial reaction?<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n\tI was into it. The funny thing about this show is it never goes where you think it\u2019s gonna go. I mean, it\u2019s following a form which it\u2019s meant to, but the way that they do it every time, it\u2019s always like, \u201cWow, this is bananas, OK, all right.\u201d I still feel every time I\u2019m reading through a season, I\u2019m always disappointed when Joe continues to be Joe and it\u2019s not going to work out between him and his romantic interests; it\u2019s still disappointing. It\u2019s a dark, kind of awful feeling. And when I found out what was happening with Bronte, I remember feeling a bit of his sense of betrayal, because again, I talk about it in a certain way, but it feels good to tell a love story I think (laughs<\/em>). <\/p>\n

\n\tYou want these people, no matter what\u2019s happened, to be in love and you want it to be real. So I remember feeling this sense of betrayal, but also knowing like, \u201cOh this is great, this is really what needs to happen.\u201d But even I couldn\u2019t tell exactly where it was going before I read episodes eight, nine and 10, and that\u2019s when I felt like, \u201cOK, it\u2019s a bit of a slow burn at first, but where they bring it in the end is really satisfying.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

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\t\t\t\t\tMadeline Brewer in \u2018You\u2019 season 5. <\/span><\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tJocelyn Prescod\/Netflix<\/cite><\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

\n\tJoe\u2019s dynamic with Kate (Charlotte Ritchie) changed throughout the season, where she goes from the love of his life to one of his toughest rivals yet. Can you talk about what it was like filming those really heated moments and scenes with Charlotte this season?<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n\tFirst of all, I love Charlotte. I think she\u2019s a unique figure in the show. You can\u2019t have every kind of narrator, and I think something about her character has this quality, and it literally might just be that she\u2019s very English, that threatens to render Joe irrelevant or just less powerful, less of a menace. There was something about season four and what she did\u00a0that I really loved and in this one too, she does something that\u2019s different. It\u2019s like the record skips with him, and he doesn\u2019t quite know what to do with her. By the time he just has this unbridled hatred for her, it\u2019s always intense to do no matter how used to it I get, but it was also fun because of how confidently he hates her by the end (laughs<\/em>).<\/p>\n

\n\tCharlotte and I have a lovely rapport and\u00a0those scenes to me were like the evolution of the season three marriage therapy scenes with Love, which I also really liked. Kind of the closest thing to theater this show ever gets, where I have the longest scenes and the most lines and can really just sort of like play and go.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tIn the episode where Joe becomes \u201cthe most visible man in New York,\u201d he has social media<\/a>, once a tool for him, used against him. Penn, I feel like you love a good TikTok trend or viral sound, so do you think Joe would have a favorite social media trend?\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n\t(Laughs<\/em>) Hmm\u2026 maybe just like the rest of us, he would get distracted by cute kitten videos. Maybe the cat POV TikToks, where they put a GoPro on a cat\u2019s collar and then the cats\u00a0go around all day and you can see them climbing up trees and walking across fences. It\u2019s really amazing, so maybe he would like that. There\u2019s something about Joe that\u2019s feline.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tIn the finale, we see Joe truly turn into this monster, and this animalistic nature comes out, especially when he\u2019s running through the woods. How did you prepare for that sequence, and what was going through your head<\/span> at the time?<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n\tIt was a sequence with a lot of levels to it. It was partly fun, it was partly exhausting, it was very intense, some of it was quite disturbing. I was finally having to do the things that we don\u2019t see him quite do with\u00a0the woman he claims to love. I\u2019ve done a lot of strangling with men, and fight scenes and all kinds of intensity, but some of that was really just a little bit of a deeper and newer layer. <\/p>\n

\n\tIt was really important to me that he\u2019d be as naked as possible because that\u2019s the state in which he\u2019s at his worst. Killing is the obvious atrocity, but the more insidious and subtler and more invisible atrocity is the way he manipulates people, and that\u2019s the way he uses himself romantically and sexually. So to me, that\u2019s the state he had to be frozen and the one time in my life I\u2019ll ever vie with the writers to have me in a state of undress (laughs<\/em>). Never before have I done that and may not again, but it was really important.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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\t\t\t\t\tPenn Badgley in \u2018You\u2019 season 5. <\/span><\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tCourtesy of Netflix<\/cite><\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

\n\tDo you feel satisfied with Joe\u2019s punishment in the end? Mike and Justin had also mentioned there was an idea thrown around at one point of locking Joe in a cage and burying him underground.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n\tLet\u2019s make this man real for a second and make all of his victims real. There is no end that\u2019s satisfying. It\u2019s a tragedy. To imply that anyone could be satisfied by his end is to say that we want retribution and vengeance, and that\u2019s not the same thing as justice. Nothing is satisfying when people are being killed and abused and manipulated, because of their trauma. <\/p>\n

\n\tThe show\u2019s not meant to be real. It\u2019s never been a clinical portrait of a man like this, but even then it\u2019s still about real things. In the end, I don\u2019t think anyone could be 100 percent satisfied, no matter what happened with a character in a show like this. But if you think about it, it wouldn\u2019t be right to be satisfied. To me, the most satisfying thing would to see him be tortured by all the women he\u2019s hurt before, but that that would satisfy bloodlust. It\u2019s not satisfying our our need for justice. I think the only kind of satisfaction that comes with true justice in a case like this is just time. <\/p>\n

\n\tI think we ended it 100 percent in the right way that it needed to be, and then in time I think it will become more satisfying. I\u2019ve been sitting with the ending longer than anyone who\u2019s watching. All of us who made it have been sitting with it for a year longer than anyone else, and I would say a year later, I feel really confident that it\u2019s a great finale, because the missing piece is just time. To whatever degree anybody really takes this stuff to heart and feels the reality of these characters, especially his victims, it takes time to heal. Otherwise, yeah, I think we did all the things we needed to do. We checked all the boxes.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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\t\t\t\t\tPenn Badgley in \u2018You\u2019 season 5. <\/span><\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tClifton Prescod\/Netflix<\/cite><\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

\n\tAs this You<\/em> chapter comes to a close, is there anything you take away from Joe personally?\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n\tIt\u2019s hard to say exactly what, because I think in time I\u2019ll know a bit more. If anything, I\u2019ve just been reflecting on who not to be as a man and a father and a husband, and not the obvious things, like don\u2019t manipulate and murder people. That\u2019s clear. It\u2019s far more about the ways in which desire makes love a\u00a0self-centered\u00a0thing and then it\u2019s no longer love. It\u2019s no longer a mutually empowering experience but something where you\u2019re just concerned with your own gratification, your own needs, and we all do that at different points all throughout any relationship in subtle ways and ways that are not so subtle. So I\u2019ve just really had to think about that. Those are the places where I connect with him and try to understand the best I can. I think that\u2019s the only thing that\u2019s enabled me to ground his performance all throughout, and that\u2019s the most relatable part of him to me.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\t***<\/p>\n

\n\tSeason five of You, along with all previous seasons, is currently streaming on Netflix. Read THR\u2019s finale postmortem with co-showrunners Michael Foley and Justin W. Lo.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

If you liked the article, do not forget to share it with your friends. Follow us on\u00a0Google News<\/a><\/span>\u00a0too, click on the star and choose us from your favorites.<\/span><\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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If you want to read more Like this articles, you can visit our Social Media category.<\/a><\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Source<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

[This story contains MAJOR spoilers from\u00a0You\u00a0season five, including the series finale, \u201cFinale.\u201d] Having known Joe Goldberg the best after playing the tortured-yet-desired character for five seasons of You, Penn Badgley wanted one thing in the final season: to deconstruct Joe as a romantic icon. While his character has captured audience attention each season, Joe has…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-665762","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-social-mediaa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/665762","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=665762"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/665762\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=665762"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=665762"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=665762"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}