YOU considered two alternate endings, and they had completely different conclusions for Joe

Season five was the ending of YOU, and Joe Goldberg. There must have been big pressure of the show’s creators to give us a conclusion that felt fitting for everything that has happened before. And it turns out the YOU creators very heavily considered a couple of alternate endings, which would have basically been the complete opposite for Joe.

In the final episode, we saw Joe Goldberg finally get his comeuppance. He was slung into jail for all of the very many murders he’s committed over the years. We were told there was no way he was ever going to see freedom again. This came after an intense showdown with latest obsession Bronte, or shall we say Louise, who finally saw the light and turned on him.

But, it was nearly very different. Here’s exactly how.

via Netflix

YOU considered two alternate endings for Joe in season five

Different endings were considered for YOU, but Penn Badgley has said the one thing they decided against was killing off Joe. Speaking to Vanity Fair, he said giving someone the trauma of killing Joe would have felt “unjust”.

However, one ending that was considered was that Joe could get away with it all. Yes, really! Penn revealed the idea was posed by writer and showrunner, Greg Berlanti. “It was to let [Joe] get away with it – to let him have everything he thought he wanted, and just be absolutely miserable,” Badgley said. “Where that starts to fall apart is that it doesn’t take her into account, whoever the her is.”

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In a further interview with The Hollywood Reporter, showrunner Michael Foley added there were lots of discussions about the story should end. “We were definitely all not on the same page, and in the end, we just thought that death was too easy and that that wasn’t punishing enough,” he said. “We liked the idea of a final image of Joe in a cage of sorts, but most of all, it was about taking away his power, taking away his ability to know the touch of a lover, etc.”

Showrunner Justin W. Lo also opened up about another alternate ending. “We came up with one where it’s an ambiguous ending, Sopranos-style where Bronte is pointing a gun at him and you don’t know if she’s going to pull the trigger or not, and then it’s a cut to black,” he said.

“We came up with one… with a more Gothic ending where someone puts him in a cage buried deep underground. So we went through many, many iterations, but I think we’re really happy with where it ended up.”

That would have been… wild.

Season five of YOU is available on Netflix now. For all the latest Netflix news, drops, quizzes and memes like The Holy Church of Netflix on Facebook.