NOW ENTERTAINMENT April 20 Month 00--26, 00,2025 2023
Your Weekly TV Entertainment Brought To You By Olean Times Herald & The Bradford Era
“Gossip Girl” actor Penn Badgley returns as serial love addict Joe Goldberg in the fifth and final season of “You,” premiering Thursday, April 24, on Netflix. Penn Badgley stars in “You”
Cover Story Back to ‘You’: Final season of Badgley-led thriller gets late-April premiere By Dana Simpson What makes a murderer? And how can you tell them apart from everyone else? These sinister questions form the basis of “You,” the Netflix thriller series that shot to popularity following its Season 1 debut in September 2018. Now, nearly seven years later, the series’ fifth and final season brings murderous leading man Joe Goldberg, played by Penn Badgley (“Gossip Girl”), back to the New York City bookshop where it all began. “You” Season 5 premieres Thursday, April 24, on Netflix. Both true crime and human psychology have been hugely popular topics of public interest for centuries, but the rise of film, television and podcast culture has had a lasting impact on the way society views some of our most frightening peers — whether real or fictional. Author Caroline Kepnes capitalized on this morbid interest when she wrote her
first novel, “You,” in 2014, despite then being completely unaware that it would later be translated into 19 languages while spawning three sequels and a five-season Netflix series starring Badgley, one of TV’s biggest small-screen darlings. The novel — and subsequently the TV series’ first season — follows bookstore employee Joe Goldberg, a charming and well-read young New Yorker with a troubling outlook on love who grows obsessed with budding author Guinevere Beck (played in Season 1 by “Ordinary Joe” actress Elizabeth Lail). Driven by his untamed “love” for her, Joe tracks her every move through the city, arranging “chance” encounters and ultimately forcing a relationship by any means possible. Determined to have the supposed love of his life by his side forever, Joe’s passion sees him go to extreme lengths to secure Beck’s loyalty to him.
Now four seasons and three big “loves” later, Joe is married and moving back to New York from London, where Season 4 took place. “Every season they manage to find new space to make it interesting and relevant,” Badgley told Netflix’s Tudum while filming the series’ fifth and final season. “I think somehow coming back to where it started allowed for it to just become grounded in the way that it needs to also have this kind of spectacular finish.” Based on press details released by Netflix, the “epic” fifth season was always expected to be “You’s” last. Because of this, expectations will be high for the finale, and fans of the show are likely to be split in their desire to see Joe brought to justice for his numerous grisly crimes. As for the plot of the series’ final 10 episodes, Netflix has set the scene three years after Joe and his wife, Kate
(Charlotte Ritchie, “Call the Midwife”), left the U.K. for New York. We learn that Joe has purchased Mooney’s bookstore — the site of his meet-cute and final showdown with Beck — with some of the ample funds he has accrued by virtue of his marriage into the affluent Lockwood family. With Kate now in the role of CEO of Lockwood Corporation, “Joe is her loyal husband who has been dubbed Prince Charming by the adoring public, and they’re both following through on their pact to help each other do good” (per Netflix). Season 5 of “You” co-stars Griffin Matthews (“The Flight Attendant”), Anna Camp (“Pitch Perfect,” 2012), Natasha Behnam (“The Girls on the Bus”), Pete Ploszek (“Captain Marvel,” 2019), Nava Mau (“Baby Reindeer”), stage actor Tom Francis (Hope Mill Theatre’s “Rent,” 2020) and the mononymous b (“Station 19”).