3 Behaviors of Psychopaths in Netflix's You's Joe Goldberg Final Season 5 (Spoilers)
The television show You is a great look into how psychopaths deceive their victims.
Written by Shahida Arabi, MA
This article contains major spoilers for the final season of the television show You.
Written by Shahida Arabi, MA
After four seasons of hearing the romanticized and unreliable narrative Joe presents to viewers of his actions (with the exception of the brief perspective and insight we get from Beck’s narrative in Season 1), Netflix’s You finally gave us a disturbing, unfiltered look at the truth of Joe Goldberg’s brutality with its season finale. This is a departure from the idealized version of Joe viewers of the show have been persuaded to root for, bearing an uncanny resemblance to romanticized unreliable predatory narrators in fiction and literature, most famously in Humbert Humbert of Nabokov’s Lolita. However, viewers will certainly argue that Joe is different from such a character in his rare incidents of becoming a protector of the innocent, like young Paco or as embodied in the love he seems to display for his son.
Here are some lessons about psychopaths we can learn from Joe Goldberg’s character throughout the show and from the survivors and victims who have encountered him.
The Love Bombing of a Psychopath Can Disarm You
The season finale of You first begins as a caricature of itself. The first meeting between Joe and his latest target Brontë (whose real name is Louise Flannery) feels staged, rehearsed, over-the-top, a bit performative when it comes to seducing Joe with literary tropes: and that’s because, as we find out later, it actually is. As we learn, Bronte is a makeshift undercover agent from social media, trying to hunt down the psychopath who is suspected of murdering her best friend, Beck. With her team of fellow true crime “investigators” which includes the belligerent son of Dr. Nicky, the therapist framed and convicted of Beck’s murder, she uncovers a trail of mysterious murders that all seemed to be linked to Joe: from Beck’s best friend Peach to Joe’s wife Love Quinn to the disappearance of Joe’s ex-girlfriend, Candace Stone.
As Brontë famously says in the final episode, “The fantasy of a man like you is how we cope with the reality of a man like you.”
Yet even with all of these red flags, the show doesn’t shy away from the uncertainty of Bronte’s fixation as an enabler of Joe who falls in love with him. She knows deep down that Joe Goldberg is likely culpable of these murders. As she famously says in the final episode, “The fantasy of a man like you is how we cope with the reality of a man like you.” The shift into the survivor perspective during the season finale allows us to finally look at Joe’s history of murders without sugarcoating all the horrific acts Joe has engaged in against women and understand that misogynistic privilege has allowed him to get away with so many of his crimes. Bronte acknowledges that, had it not been for the fantasy of love and romance women are fed from a young age to cope with the brutal reality of predators out there, such a fantasy would likely not be believed in to the point where it overrides this reality.
Yet this fantasy of “love” is enough to sway her in the moments where she is doubtful, as is the case for many targets of a psychopath’s love bombing as they are conditioned to look away from the red flags. In the final episodes, we witness Joe and Bronte travel to gorgeous lush green landscapes, go on romantic boat rides (a scene that will be juxtaposed with the terror of Brontë later appearing to be drowned in the same water), and Brontë being (quite literally) swept off her feet by romantic gestures and their upcoming engagement.
This is common in a relationship with a psychopath or a narcissist: the target finds it difficult to penetrate the ambiguity of these grand gestures, to discern them as intentional grooming and conditioning, rather than as heartfelt and genuine displays of authentic love.
This is common in a relationship with a psychopath or a narcissist: the target finds it difficult to penetrate the ambiguity of these grand gestures, to discern them as intentional grooming and conditioning, rather than as heartfelt and genuine displays of authentic love. Targets of psychopaths can become unwitting enablers due to the gaslighting of the relationship as they try to resolve the cognitive dissonance of these relationships by minimizing the red flags and framing the long-standing suspicions surrounding these individuals as complex misunderstandings, dubious unwarranted accusations from so-called “bitter exes,” or mistakes and errors of judgment that don’t speak to the true character of the perpetrator. They become mired in the psychopath’s “one man cult.” Yet the deeper a victim delves into a psychopath’s world, the more evidence they receive regarding the psychopath’s true, callous sadism when they attempt to hold them accountable.
We are shown the brutality of Joe’s violence without any censorship in the final episodes for a reason: after four seasons of carefully crafted personas and justifications, the psychopath finally drops his mask and unleashes the “monster” as his son has dubbed him. He strangles and chokes Brontë with ruthless fervor, attempts to drown her in the same body of water where they went on a romantic boat ride, and chases after her like a predatory hunter seeking its next meal at full speed, ready to devour her. It is bloody, cruel, and straight out of a psychological horror film in its depiction of violence. And we are called to remember that all of Joe’s previous victims also likely faced the same fate, even the murders of women we did not get to witness fully.
Narcissistic “Nice Guys,” Consent by Deception and the Madonna-Whore Complex
In this season, something is different: when the women fight back, they begin to gain leverage. We see this with Reagan’s powerful martial arts moves when Joe first attacks her and Bronte’s own seeming “play dead now, resurrect yourself later,” emergence from the water. Brontë later physically guns down and injures one of Joe’s “deadly weapons” that happens to be the body part he relies on to engage in intimacy with his victims (perhaps a subtle allusion to the Lorena Bobbit domestic violence case). And in the end, it is a survivor, Brontë, who finally takes him down so he can go to prison, facing a fate worse than death for him: the inability to lure in other victims, and face his demons alone in eternal isolation.
This highlights Joe’s previous sexual objectification of his romantic partners and consent by deception — as well as his Madonna-Whore depictions of the women he meets. Joe first idealizes women as “Madonna” on a pedestal as virtuous, pure, and innocent, then devalues them as soon as they show sexual interest in other partners (like Beck and Candace did), unable to consider them as multifaceted beings apart from being fodder for his own sexual fantasies, and this is apparent throughout all of his relationships on the show. Joe’s inability to depart from this dichotomy of women, possibly stemming from his experiences of protecting his own mother from abusive men, is what makes him particularly dangerous as a “punisher” of women masquerading as a “nice guy.”
Joe may be able to protect women from other predators short-term, but ultimately, he cannot protect them from himself.
The Psychopath’s Pursuit of Novelty and Why They Devalue Their Victims
While the audience is led to believe that Joe Goldberg’s romantic history is filled with “tortured” relationships that end in abrupt abandonment only because his partners “fail” to accept Joe as he is, it’s clear that Joe Goldberg’s psychopathy speaks to the thrill-seeking, his proneness to boredom, and a perpetual pursuit of novelty that is common in psychopaths. There is mixed evidence on whether psychopaths have a hyperactive dopamine system which makes the thrill of romantic pursuit even more rewarding, or if they have a harder time gaining that dopamine rush and thus seek bigger thrills and risks to do so — studies show evidence for both. Whatever the case may be, it’s clear that a psychopath’s reward system is different from the average person’s and makes them uniquely positioned to pursue novelty at all costs, including their con artistry in relationships.
It’s clear that a psychopath’s reward system is different from the average person’s and makes them uniquely positioned to pursue novelty at all costs, including their con artistry in relationships.
This is very evident in his relationship with his first wife, Love Quinn, who he pursues ardently until she finally mirrors back Joe’s psychopathic traits and behaviors and calls him her “soulmate.” Joe is unable to create a bond with a woman who not only reciprocates his affections, but becomes a mother and wife, and thus no longer as “fascinating” to him once his pursuit and chase of her ends. Thrust into the “devalued Madonna” and “ball and chain” role once more, Joe then pursues the thrill of the chase and novelty in an affair with his neighbor who Love later murders, as well as an affair with his boss Marienne.
The callousness with which Joe murders Love (who is actually more compatible with him, in morbid twisted ways, a perfect “partner in crime”) to replace her with women he sees as either the new idealized “Madonna” to place on the pedestal (Marienne) or the “Whore” (his neighbor, Natalie) speaks to the psychopath’s ability to always search for replacements and seek the thrill of the everlasting chase. For any victims of psychopaths, this cruel pursuit of novelty is not personal, although it may feel like it.
This also plays out in his prompt affair with Bronte as soon as he feels like his wife of three years, Kate Lockwood, who has engaged in egregious acts to protect him and financially provide for him (including helping to frame an innocent young woman of a murder he committed), refuses to accept “all of him.”
Much like any other psychopathic or narcissistic individual with a roaring Madonna-Whore complex, Joe’s “weapons” include his superficial glib charm which he uses to disarm his victims, as well as his compulsion to “protect” the women he supposedly loves from “truly” abusive men, like a knight in shining armor defending a virtuous maiden or damsel in distress.
Yet it is clear that Joe is anything but the knight: he is the very perpetrator he justifies in killing. This is what makes him distinct from beloved serial killers like Dexter, who follow a “code” in harming only the guilty. Joe may kill guilty men and abusers at times (which causes the viewer to sympathize with him as a kind of vigilante hero, especially in his defense of Paco), but there are far too many incidents of him framing the innocent women he kills as guilty due to perceived rejection, abandonment, or betrayal.
The Role of Enablers — Including You, the Viewer
“You” is a distinct television show in that is takes us through the gaslighting and love bombing of Joe’s unreliable narrative and makes us fall in love with him even through the lens of viewer or voyeur — or at the very least, sympathize with Joe’s tragic childhood trauma. At times, the show also hints loudly at Joe’s true nature in ironic, sarcastic, or humorous ways — we are meant to note the irony of Joe berating “creeps” while he is stalking his victims — but inevitably, the way it paints him allows for viewers to see him as lovable rather than despicable.
In this season, Joe’s childhood trauma is also referenced as another sympathy ploy. Many enablers fall into the trap of justify a psychopath’s actions due to assumed childhood trauma, but research actually indicates that “primary” psychopaths (“born” rather than made) tend to report less childhood trauma than secondary psychopaths (nurtured by their environment), similar to narcissists, who can come from a variety of childhood backgrounds and whose traits are more strongly predicted by parental overvaluation than childhood maltreatment in longitudinal studies.
The brutality of Joe’s violence and his true nature as his predatory actions are showcased reveal a different story however — there is no amount of childhood trauma that could justify his brutality this season, and viewers are left to wonder how much of Joe’s story as revealed to us is actually accurate in previous seasons. What was the brutality we did not even see, if this was a snapshot of the brutality we did get to see? It is a wake-up call.
The call-out at the end of “You,” to all the women who wrote love letters to Ted Bundy or became “Manson girls” is particularly poignant: maybe the problem also lies in us as viewers if we continue to romanticize psychopathic serial killers or deceptive con artists like Joe. Yet we do it every day. With the backdrop of TikTok videos incorporated into the final season showing comments like, “Put me in a cage, Joe!” and “He’s kind of cute,” mirroring real life fan reactions to the show, the show’s final words may indeed have a point. Although Joe Goldberg is a fictional character that can be tempting to mischaracterize, real life predators like Joe do exist and should not be rooted for. A psychopath may get away with their crimes and con artistry using their false charismatic mask for a long time, but it’s up to us as a society to continue to hold them accountable.