Spoiler Alert! ‘You’ Showrunners Reveal Shocking Alternate Ending

Spoilers Ahead!

Joe Goldberg eventually faces the repercussions of his crimes in the last season of ‘You’, but the show’s ending almost went in a completely different direction.

 As the psychological thriller comes to a close, Penn Badgley’s character Joe is confined to a lonely cage.  Bronte (Madeline Brewer), his most recent romantic interest, accuses him of killing Love Quinn and Guinevere Beck.  In the final moments, Joe reads Norman Mailer’s ‘The Executioner’s Song’ and muses on his loneliness.  He shifts the burden once more, implying that maybe the true problem is not with himself but rather with the environment around him, after receiving a troubling letter from a purported admirer who wants to be his next victim.

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Showrunner and executive producer Michael Foley told The New York Post that the conclusion wasn’t chosen until the very end of the production, even though many fans were happy that justice had finally caught up with Joe.  Foley claims that the entire creative team was committed to denying Joe a redemption story.  

Rather, they made sure he faced the repercussions of his acts and the destruction he brought about, especially by making him confront himself alone.  According to Foley, a lifetime of confinement without intimacy or connection felt like a more appropriate fate than death, which felt like a too-easy conclusion.

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During creation, the authors experimented with several different endings, according to co-showrunner Justin W. Lo.  One early idea was for Bronte to kill Joe, but the twist was that Joe would realize he was actually a ghost in the last episode, which would be when the audience found out about his death.  Even though that version was ultimately abandoned, it shows how the creative team thought of a number of ways to wrap up Joe’s journey.

–Farheen Ali