You Season 5: What Do Joe’s Letters Mean? Final Scene Explained

Netflix’s hugely popular psychological thriller series You has ended after Season 5, drawing the curtains on the story of Penn Badgley‘s Joe Goldberg — a charming man who is secretly a serial killer. At the end of the Season 5 finale, Joe receives letters, and fans of the show are wondering what they mean. Here’s everything you need to know about the letters that Joe receives at the end of You Season 5.

Significance of Joe’s letters in the final scene of You Season 5 explained

The final scenes of You see Joe receiving his long-overdue comeuppance. Madeline Brewer’s Bronte orchestrates his downfall and ensures that he is arrested and sent to prison for his crimes. She does this after saving him from a bookstore fire to question him further.

Bronte’s decision to make Joe pay for his crimes through imprisonment also ensures that he will be lonely for the rest of his life. Joe himself remarks on his loneliness while in prison. As remorseless as he is, Joe seems to dread solitude.

However, as the show’s final moments reveal, Joe has admirers who are sending him letters, similar to how real-world killers receive letters from their fans. In the show, this means that even from prison, Joe can still influence people.

The ending is also quite self-reflective and meta for You as a show. Joe’s final monologue underscores how broken a society has to be to lionize people like him. He implicates the viewers of the show as part of the problem, along with people who consume true crime thrillers. Joe’s final words of inner monologue end the show as he says, “Maybe we have a problem as a society. Maybe we should fix what’s broken in us.” Joe then remarks as he goes through the letter, “Maybe the problem isn’t me.” He further says, “Maybe it’s you.”