Penn Badgley is back as Joe Goldberg in the fifth and final season of You, which he also executive produced. We discussed why this was the right way to end the series and how his character’s past victims and survivors were the key to Joe finally getting caught. All episodes are now streaming on Netflix, and this conversation will contain major spoilers.

In the epic fifth and final season, Joe Goldberg returns to New York to enjoy his happily ever after… until his perfect life is threatened by the ghosts of his past and his own dark desires.

“At the end of the day, he’s not real, and it’s like, actually, it is about you. It’s about us because we’re the ones who were thinking about this, and you think about it, any show that’s really successful has to be about something that’s culturally relevant. It has to be. Otherwise, it just wouldn’t be successful, even if it’s layered by horror, any genre, whatever,” the actor expressed. “So this one is about what we all think about love, it’s about what women and men think of each other, I think, in particular, it’s really about what men think about themselves, the role of man as a protector. You know, you think about this, Joe thinks it’s vital to his identity as a man to be a protector, I’m not saying even that that’s invalid, because that might be a part of it. For some people, that is important.”

He continued to explain, “It’s not that people don’t need protection, I suppose, from certain [things or people], but if you break that down, if there’s no danger, there’s no need for protection. So then, what is a man? Then, what is a father? Then, what is a husband? And I think you need to keep [going further]. What is the essence of protection? It’s not just protection because if you stay there, then you demand danger, and you don’t even realize, and that’s Joe. He needs to be a protector, and you know, loving Joe, the boy, the little innocent boy, he needed a protector. So he became the protector that he never got. It’s actually very based in like, social science and trauma research, not that that’s what we did, but that’s basic stuff right there. That’s facts. That’s life, and psychology, and biology. That’s where it’s been, I think, a valuable enterprise for us all that we can even talk about this.”

Watch my interview below: