There’s a good chance the person most excited to say goodbye to Netflix’s hit series You is none other than its star, Penn Badgley. The show’s fifth and final season dropped Thursday.
Badgley plays Joe Goldberg, a serial killer who becomes obsessed with smart, beautiful women. Stalking them on social media and in real life, Joe does everything he can to get close to the women of his dreams and maintain his charming facade, even if it means killing everyone who stands in his way.
Season 5 picks up three years after Joe returns to New York with British billionaire Kate Lockwood (portrayed by Charlotte Ritchie). Now a public figure and married to the Lockwood Corporation CEO, Joe is once again trying to play the role of the family man when he meets a new love interest and is confronted with his murderous past.
As it turns out, Badgley has some pretty surprising thoughts about his character. Here’s how the 38-year-old actor really feels about playing Joe Goldberg and who inspired Joe’s devious ways.
Is Joe Goldberg based on a real serial killer?
While some fans have speculated that Joe Goldberg is based on a real serial killer, such as the charismatic Ted Bundy, the character is purely fictional. Instead, Caroline Kepnes, the author of the You book series that the show is based on, found her inspiration in pop culture.
One such influence is the 1991 Bret Easton Ellis novel American Psycho, which follows wealthy and narcissistic investment banker Patrick Bateman who spends his nights as a serial killer. Much like that book, Kepnes writes several passages on Joe’s inner monologue, revealing his manipulative, obsessive, and deranged nature.
Still, Kepnes didn’t even realize she had written about a serial killer until she finished the first book. “I never used that phrase the whole time that I was writing,” she told W Magazine in February 2019. “I remember finishing and my friend told me, ‘I can’t believe you wrote about a serial killer.’ I was like, ‘No, I didn’t. He just killed a few different people.’ She asked, ‘Do you hear yourself?’ And I realized, Oh, God. That’s what people are going to say he is.”
You fans romanticized Joe
Some viewers of the Netflix series also didn’t seem to recognize Joe as a serial killer at first, though the character is considered more likable in the show than in the books. After Season 1 premiered in 2019, Badgley was alarmed with the number of social media posts he saw romanticizing his You character. He went viral with his response to one Twitter post fawning over Joe’s good looks. Badgley simply replied: “He is a murderer.”
The actor later commented on the glorification of actual serial killers, telling people who are attracted to murderers that they “need to look” inside themselves. “Now, to be fair, with our show you’re meant to fall in love with him. That’s on us,” he said to Entertainment Tonight in February 2023. “But Ted Bundy? That’s on you!”
Badgley judges Joe but says he has one universal trait
Badgley has been very vocal about his disdain for Joe’s behavior, comparing the character to a narcissistic sociopath. But unlike most portrayals of serial killers, the actor brings more humanity and complexity to the role.
“I am the least forgiving person in the world with Joe. He’s clearly, to me, not a good husband. He’s not a good father, but the ways that he’s trying, I think are universal,” he said in a 2021 interview with InStyle. “His fear is probably pretty universal, [but] how he goes about responding to all that is so terrible, obviously.”
This month, the actor told The Guardian that the new season, and the series as a whole, works as well as it does because of how far removed it is from reality. “We use camp and absurdity in a way that I think saves us and the viewer from, I don’t know, a more grisly exercise,” Badgley said. And while he couldn’t reveal how the series ends for Joe, he did confirm that his fate is more than fitting, adding, “We reached truly the best resolution for him.”
Catherine Caruso joined the Biography.com staff in August 2024, having previously worked as a freelance journalist for several years. She is a graduate of Syracuse University, where she studied English literature. When she’s not working on a new story, you can find her reading, hitting the gym, or watching too much TV.
![a teenage boy holds golden trophy above his head with one hand](https://hips.hearstapps.com/hmg-prod/images/owen-cooper-accepts-the-outstanding-supporting-actor-in-a-news-photo-1757950768.pjpeg?crop=0.651xw:0.875xh;0.0561xw,0.0517xh&resize=360:* "Owen Cooper accepts the Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Limited or Anthology Series or Movie award for "Adolescence" during the 77th Primetime Emmy Awards on September 14, 2025")
