The classic “boy meets girl, boy obsesses over girl, boy kills girls” tale returned Thursday with the fifth and final season of Netflix’s YOU.
Where viewers might have been excited about a fresh start, the show falls into repetitive cliches, which is exactly what fans didn’t want after season four’s let down. The show continues to recycle the predictable story of charming yet deeply disturbed serial killer Joe, but by season 5, the repetition feels more like writers block then character consistency.
The season opens three years in the future, with Joe explaining his new life in New York City with his wife, Kate. While setting the series in London for season four seemed rather random, bringing Joe’s story back to New York felt full circle for the series end.
But instead of building on the season four finale, the premiere continued clinging to cliched tactics.
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Working with their established, iconic material is effective in moments. As the owner of the iconic bookstore Mooney’s, Joe is inclined in one scene to go to the basement where the “cage” — a plexiglass box originally meant for preserving books, but later used to trap victims — remains.
Without much subtlety, the show guides audiences to think that a body will end up there soon enough, making an eerie homage to earlier seasons.
He also quickly finds himself obsessing over a new girl, who he finds living in the store. Of course, she is a book fanatic, which Joe found hard to resist since the first episode. But it’s grown born to see Joe fall head over heels for someone, only to grow bored once he has them and begin his mission to ruin their life.
Visually, the show’s moody lighting, flashes of cityscapes and zoomed in close up shots of characters remain effective. The voiceovers — once a window into Joe’s mind — now come off overused. In past seasons, Joe referred to the girl he is obsessing over as “You.” Now, season five introduces “you” as Joe’s season four self.
This new framing suggests that Joe is attempting some kind of self-reflection. But the sudden change to the city undermines any attempt at real growth, making all of his progress vanish.
But watching Joe embrace fatherhood with his son Henry is a welcome change, despite leaving the child in Los Angeles. Like Henry, almost the entire cast introduced in the premiere are new faces.
While I typically prefer continuity in intense series like You, the new cast works — especially since Joe is living an entirely different life now. But the struggle to remember all the new people, including a set of identical evil twins, takes away attention at moments from other events in the episode.
By the time the episode ends, Joe, of course, already has a new target after learning about an upcoming hit piece about his wife’s past. At first, he resorts to putting his desires into writing, telling the story of how he wishes to kill the person who sent in the hit on his wife, showing his true willingness to change. But it’s clear Joe missed the thrill of killing — you can see it when he puts on his classic black hat to get the job done.
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After seasons of Joe fleeing and changing identities, returning feels risky and contradicts his pattern of escape, rendering the move out of place rather than a part of believable story progression. In one scene, Joe is seen smiling for cameras, embracing the paparazzi attention alongside his famous and wealthy wife — a shift from his usual paranoia in past seasons.
His new comfort in being seen feels thrown in without much thought. It disrupts Joe’s developed character and makes his return home seem less natural and more like an added twist for the sake of the show.
Joe’s cycle of obsession, murder and regret is stuck on a loop from season to season. While the familiar New York City setting is a nostalgic nice touch in watching Joe fall back into the same cycle is unappealing. Nonetheless, the intense premiere already has me hooked on this season and I’m excited to see how the series concludes.
