Beneath the Bookstore–Power, Control, and Gaslighting: YOU Show Review| Parker’s Cut

“Hey, you.” Joe Goldberg’s story may have ended earlier this year, but You remains disturbingly relevant—especially in 2025, as our cultural obsession with true crime continues to spiral. With real-life court cases becoming bingeable content and social media turning alleged killers into influencers, You wasn’t just a show about a charming predator. It was a mirror.

Across five seasons, You turned gothic literature inside out, layering obsession with romantic monologue and cloaking violence in bookshelves and Brontë. This wasn’t a descent into darkness—it started dark and stayed there. The series openly borrowed from Wuthering Heights, Jane Eyre, and The Picture of Dorian Gray, where love often bleeds into control, and devotion masks brutality. Add in Dostoevskian guilt (Crime and Punishment) and a dash of duality from Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and you get Joe: a man who sermonizes in Brontë prose while justifying murder “for love.” The horror isn’t what he does—it’s that he believes it’s noble.

The show’s journey to Netflix wasn’t conventional. In May 2018, Netflix acquired international rights to You and released Season 1 globally as a “Netflix Original” on December 26. When Lifetime dropped out before Season 2, Netflix claimed full ownership and rebranded the show as its own. Executive Producer Greg Berlanti told Variety that You’s road to success was nothing like his other hits (Dawson’s Creek, Everwood, Riverdale)—and it shows. You is darker, stranger, and far less interested in redemption.

Starring Penn Badgley, each season offers a new obsession: Brown grad Guinevere Beck, the dangerously domestic Love Quinn, the introspective librarian Marianna, and finally, the sharp-witted Kate and elusive Louise/Brontë, a woman who collects pseudonyms like secrets. Still, Joe’s type is consistent: feminine, needy, and above all—a reader. Someone who can quote Kafka, swoon over Salinger, and conveniently miss the red flags.

By Season 5, Joe has racked up 23 murders—18 men, 5 women—and fully dropped the “misunderstood nice guy” act. Season 1 saw him worm his way into Beck’s life (and death) as a New York bookstore manager. In L.A., Seasons 2 and 3 gave us Joe as “Will,” locked in a twisted domestic fantasy with Love Quinn. By Season 4, he’s hiding in London under the name Jonathan Moore, slicing his way through the elite with one hand while stirring saag paneer with the other. Season 5 returns Joe to New York and to the books that started it all. He reclaims his real name, settles back into a once-secret bookstore, and quietly cements his status as a serial killer. The twist? He’s not even hiding anymore—he’s writing the ending himself.

And that’s the thing: Joe isn’t just a murderer. He’s a narrator. One who edits, romanticizes, and gaslights both his victims and the viewer. His delusion isn’t just personal—it’s structural. He believes he’s the hero. And we believe him—until we don’t. As Badgley pointedly asked in a Deadline interview: “To see him as a sexual predator, do you need to see the act? Because you know he’s doing it, right?” It’s a searing question in an age where we regularly consume court cases as entertainment and true crime as lifestyle content. Sometimes what’s not shown is what condemns us most.

That’s where You quietly breaks from the genre’s worst habits. In a media landscape saturated with gratuitous nudity and exploitative violence, the show dares to suggest rather than show. There are no long sex scenes or stylized murder shots. Instead, the show implicates us through implication. Coercion, manipulation, and abuse are present—but not pornographic. That’s not restraint; that’s power. And in 2025, when the Karen Read trial is being litigated as much on TikTok as in court, You feels like a warning we didn’t know we needed.

Some argue that Joe isn’t a “real” serial killer because he mostly kills people he knows. But that logic misunderstands the psychology of serial murder. It’s not about randomness—it’s about pattern, purpose, and pathology. Joe doesn’t kill for thrill. He kills to control his story. Every death is editorial.

Of course, the show took generous liberties with its source material. Characters like Paco and Ellie, invented for the screen, help humanize Joe in ways the books never do. The show’s fictional backstory for Mr. Mooney—Joe’s abusive mentor—offers psychological context, maybe even pity. The books don’t bother. There’s no tender mentorship, no childlike trauma, no “fix him” fantasy. The Joe on the page is raw, remorseless, and deeply self-aware. As the show drifted further from its origins, it became its own beast, building an alternate mythology that made viewers complicit in the question: what makes someone a monster—and what makes us root for one?

Looking back, You may have ended at just the right time. It’s a show born in the Netflix binge era, but its final message lands in a different world: one where we casually scroll crime scene footage between influencer drama and trial recaps. As we watch real people go on trial in the court of TikTok, Joe’s story feels less fictional and more like a test of how far we’ll go to excuse charisma, justify violence, and forgive a good voiceover.

As the final page turns, the question isn’t whether Joe Goldberg got what he deserved. It’s whether we did. Because You wasn’t just about him. It was about us—the viewers who kept watching him right to the end.

And if we’re honest?

We’d probably do it again.

PARKER”S CUT YOU show rating