I just finished binging the final season of You. Some thoughts:
[No spoilers ahead, until I warn you about them.]
For some reason in this final (5th) season of this series about the deeply complex serial killer Joe Goldberg (though I guess most or even all serial killers are complex), I began thinking a lot about its comparisons to Dexter and its spin-offs (my all-time favorite serial killer series, and one of my all-time favorite TV series, period -- in the Top 5 all-time, I'd say). Now, I may have made comparisons of You to Dexter in my reviews of the first four seasons of You, but I'd rather write this review right now than read over those earlier reviews, which of course you are welcome to, if you like (see the links at the end of this review).
Now Dexter Morgan, as we know, has a code -- he kills only monsters, including other serial killers, that for whatever reasons the police can't touch. Dexter almost definitely would've killed Joe, even though Joe occasionally kills people who deserved to die, too. Joe didn't have much if any of a code, but he does have something of a redeeming characteristic in his literacy. Not that his way with words, spoken and written, in any way justified his killings, but they certainly made Joe much more worthy of a story than the kind of serial killers you encounter just about every week in Criminal Minds.
And Joe is refreshingly hipt. His inner voice tells him -- inner voices are another thing Dexter and Joe have in common -- and Joe's voice observes at some point, when he's annoyed at the press coverage his deeds or people he's involved with are receiving, "no wonder journalism is dying". Good for Joe! He (or actually his writers) must have read Andre Mir's masterful Postjournalism and the Death of Newspapers (which I highly recommend).
[And now I'll warn you about some very general spoilers ahead ... ]
I thought this finale season did a great job tying in major characters from previous seasons, including ones we thought were no longer with us, including a central character who is in fact gone, and another who in fact is not. I also thought Joe grappled with this in a suitably entertaining way for a story like this, with an intriguing mix of unpredictability and predictability. When a TV final season brings in so many different characters, it runs the risk of coming off like everything and the kitchen sink. This concluding season of You by and large avoided that pitfall.
But here's what I didn't much care for in this last season. When the first season debuted back before COVID in 2018, a lot of reviewers said they felt "conflicted" about enjoying so much a series about well, a cold-blooded psycho, however literate he might have been. I entitled my review of that first season "Review from an Unconflicted Fan". I thought the first season was brilliant, not because there's anything I admire about real-life serial killers, but because You did an excellent job of telling a unique story about a fictional serial killer. In the final episode of this final season, Bronte/Louise tells us that falling in love with a fictional serial killer is a good way to learn more about how to apprehend or recognize and stop a serial killer in real life. I thought that was a very keen and apt observation. But for that reason, I didn't much care for the heavy-handed way in which Joe got his due at the end. It was almost as if the show's creators felt the need to shout from the rooftops that they were no fans of real-life serial killers, something that didn't need to be shouted because it should be obvious, and of course in fact manifestly is.
In any case, congrats to everyone who created, wrote, directed, and acted in this very memorable series.
See also: You: Review from an Unconflicted Fan ... You 2: Killer Charm ... Spoiler-Free Review for You 3 ... You 4.1-4.5: So Far, Less than the Previous Seasons ... You 4.6-4.10: More than the Previous Seasons
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