Why <i>You</i> Season 6 Isn’t Going to Happen, and Joe’s Story Has to End

It’s hard to believe Netflix’s You has finally come to an end and that Joe Goldberg’s reign of terror might actually be over. Throughout five seasons, Joe has killed a long list of people, moved from New York to California, fled to London to start a new life, and returned to the city he considers home. But why is You ending with season 5? Here’s why Joe’s story is wrapping up for good.

In March 2023, when announcing the fifth and final season of You, executive producers Greg Berlanti and Sarah Schechter said in a statement to The Hollywood Reporter, “Ever since our friends at Alloy shared Caroline Kepnes’ fantastic book we have always conceived it as a five-season journey.”

You: A Novel

Executive producer Sera Gamble—who served as showrunner for You’s first four seasons—also confirmed the team’s intention to meaningfully end Joe’s story. “Even in the early conversations with Penn [Badgley], the idea was not to crank out episodes forever; it’s to feel like we have told the complete story,” Gamble shared during an appearance on THR’s “TV’s Top 5” podcast in February 2023. “And though I feel like tonally, we’re very different and we are not trying to sell Joe as any kind of a hero with a straight face. This is a show that is in the tradition of these single-lead shows with a guy who does increasingly bad things. The beautiful thing about it is that when his arc is complete, so is the show.”

One of the best things of You’s fifth and final season is that Joe Goldberg finds himself back in New York, spending time at Mooney’s bookstore and getting back to his roots. Essentially, there’s nowhere else for everyone’s favorite fictional serial killer to go.

In an interview with Tudum, co-showrunner and executive producer Michael Foley shared, “We always said that we would stop after five and [that], in a perfect world, we would bring Joe back home to New York.” He continued, “We loved the idea of things coming full circle for him. We’re excited by the fact that Joe came home as such a different person than [who] we saw in season 1. At the core of our final story for Joe is this dichotomy of the old and the new.”

While filming You’s final season in New York, Penn Badgley revealed to Tudum that “coming back to where it started allowed” the twisted series “to just become grounded in the way that it needs,” while also setting up a “spectacular finish.”

Way back in 2019, Badgley made it clear that Joe Goldberg was never going to find his “happy ever after,” because as a serial killer, he simply isn’t capable of that. “Joe is not actually looking for true love,” the former Gossip Girl star told Entertainment Weekly. “He’s not actually a person who just needs somebody who loves him. He’s a murderer! He’s a sociopath. He’s abusive. He’s delusional. And he’s self-obsessed.” Badgley continued, “You can’t fool yourself into thinking that he just needs somebody who’s right for him. Nobody’s right for him!”

Speaking to IndieWire in March 2023, Badgley reflected on You being a prism through which to explore “some of our low-key toxic tropes about love and relationships and turning them on their head, or following them to their disturbing conclusions.”

Following the show’s return to New York at the end of season 4, Badgley expressed his desire to make one more season where Joe would finally face the consequences of his actions. The actor told IndieWire in 2023, “It feels to me like we need to do another season. It feels to me like Joe needs to get what’s coming to him, and now he has further to fall because he has all this power and wealth.” Rather than leaning into Joe’s romantic side, Badgley revealed he hoped the series would end in a “responsible” way, saying, “[I]t’s not just the kind of thing we can let keep going because it’s doing well.”

In an interview with The Guardian, Badgley opened up about the physical toll playing the serial killer had on his body. According to the outlet, while filming one of You’s final scenes during a night shoot, Badgley “found he couldn’t perform, and had a strange feeling of having to cough or vomit up the words.” Elaborating on the experience, Badgley said, “It was as though I couldn’t sustain the rage anymore, couldn’t sustain the levels of artifice with him, just all of it.”

As for whether or not there’s any sort of justice for Joe’s victims, he explained, “Nothing is really good enough. There’s levels to it; it’s not just like: Does he die? Does he go to jail? Is he tortured? Does he live and is he miserable alone? It’s really about how we get there.” Ultimately, Badgley believes the series reaches “truly the best resolution for him.”

Teasing how the series does come to an end, Badgley told IndieWire, “[I]t will probably be a spectacular resolution because it feels to me like something is in the works by the very end of [season 4].” Seconding Badgley’s sentiments, Gamble teased a “delightfully twisted conclusion” to the series in her statement to THR. Knowing Joe Goldberg, he wouldn’t have it any other way.