Welcome back to the Big Apple, You. After three seasons of globetrotting — from the sun-dappled skies of Los Angeles, to the suburban hills of Madre Linda, and, finally, the cloudy streets of London — Joe Goldberg (Penn Badgley) has come home to New York City. And, in turn, so has You’s fifth and final season, which debuts April 24, bringing Joe’s story to a killer end.
“I do think that the show is at its best in New York,” Badgley tells Tudum. “It’s where it started. It’s where it’s ending — it’s fitting.”
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However, not all homecomings are simple. In a brand-new clip from the You Season 5 premiere (seen above), Joe is afraid of waking up old ghosts as he returns to his former stomping grounds, like Mooney’s bookstore. The last time Joe was there, he murdered his girlfriend Guinevere Beck (Elizabeth Lail) and maintained an elaborate cover-up before ultimately fleeing the city. Now, Joe’s billionaire wife Kate Lockwood (Charlotte Ritchie) has bought the shop for her husband. He’s left Mooney’s untouched, rather than use its basement to cage the latest object of his obsession. In fact, Joe is so ready to move past his old dark urges, he’s on the verge of selling Mooney’s altogether. Joe has put down the proverbial knife, and picked up a couture tux in its place.
“You don’t need to be haunted anymore,” Joe says to himself in voiceover. “You’re moving on.”
The hidden handprints in the Mooney’s window suggest someone might not be ready to let Joe walk away from his bloody past just yet. That’s inconvenient, as he has a lot on his plate beyond abandoned real estate. The new season picks up three years after the Season 4 finale. Kate is the CEO of the Lockwood Corporation and the duo have comfortably settled into their position as New York’s favorite “It” couple.
Technically, Joe and Kate are “pretty loved up in a very chilled out, not particularly passionate way, but just happily married,” Ritchie says. Especially since they’ve recovered Joe’s son Henry (Frankie DeMaio) and are raising him together. Yet, nothing is ever how it appears on You. “Kate has been struggling with redeeming herself for what she’s done in her past. Joe, as we all know, has done a fair few bad things, so he’s hoping to atone for that,” the actor says. “Things are good. So obviously that can’t last.”
Following the revelations of Season 4, Joe has “accepted his darker side,” says co-showrunner Justin W. Lo. As Joe “makes peace” with his murderous demons, some big questions will arise in Season 5. “He wants his life with Kate, with all the wealth and privilege, and a good life for his son. But Joe has also been repressing his darkest impulses. Is that tenable?” says co-showrunner Michael Foley. “Season 5 is all about bringing Joe home. He’s reconciling what he is, his nature, and whether he deserves love — when he’s his whole self and acts on his violent impulses.”
As part of his repression, Joe has become the “You” of Season 5. “He is the object of his narration and of his thought,” says Badgley. “Kate is spoken about in the third person. Everybody else is in the third person. That’s significant.”
Joe’s tug-of-war with his own essential tendencies is the core of the show — one that “should be pretty limited, right? He kills people, and that’s all he wants to do,” muses Badgley. “It’s a hard concept to keep reinventing, and a testament to the writers [that they do it]. Every single season, I am literally like, ‘Wow, you pulled that off.’ You managed to find new space within this concept.”
The clip hints at where Joe may aim his most bloodthirsty desires next. A hit piece threatens to destroy Kate’s reputation — and the article’s source might just be someone from the Lockwood Corporation. While Kate’s half-brother Teddy (Griffin Matthews) seems to be an ally, her sister Reagan (Anna Camp) is a dangerous adversary.
“He’s very much in a pit of vipers. They are every bit products of [their dad] Tom Lockwood, who was a Machiavellian, corrupt son of a bitch,” says Foley. “When he posthumously handed the throne to Kate, it stoked an enmity that she shares with her sister Reagan … So Reagan now gets out of bed every morning scheming on how to supplant Kate.”
So, could Reagan be the person behind the hit piece? Does her twin sister Maddie (Camp) have the answers Joe needs? Or, are there even more enemies hiding in the shadows of New York City waiting to strike? And, what does the unseen individual hiding out in Mooney’s have in store for Joe?
Get the answers to all of those questions and more — including the tantalizing mystery of how Joe’s story ultimately ends — when You Season 5 premieres on April 24. And keep coming back to Tudum for all your Joe Goldberg news.
Additional reporting by Chancellor Agard.
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