You: Every Season Of Penn Badgley's Netflix Series Ranked

Major spoilers for all 5 seasons of "You" follow.

After five seasons, the lurid, pulpy, sexy, trashy, and, yes, enjoyable Netflix thriller series "You" comes to an end. Based (partially) on the books by Caroline Kepnes, "You" began its life on Lifetime before making the jump to Netflix, where fans just couldn't get enough of Joe Goldberg, a very handsome, very literate man who also happens to be a serial killer. The twist is that Joe doesn't see himself that way. In Joe's eyes, he's the star of his own ongoing rom-com, and his inevitable victims are chances at true love. He's the type of person that describes themselves as a "nice guy" when they're anything but.

For all its flaws, "You" does an excellent job of showcasing the way people can be lured into a sense of comfort by manipulative, abusive sociopaths, especially if they're handsome white guys with a winning smile. The secret to the show's success is star Penn Badgley, who has an extremely tricky job. As Joe, Badgley has to both be immensely likable/sympathetic while also being a monster. He pulls this off remarkably well. There are long stretches of the show where we just can't help but like and root for Joe — and then suddenly, something (like, say, a secret box containing stolen panties and a jar of teeth ripped from the mouth of a corpse) will bring us crashing back down to reality and remind us that yep, for all his charms, Joe Goldberg is a creepy psycho.

With "You" season 5 bringing the show to an end, I've gone ahead and ranked every season, including the new final season, from worst to best. And although I already warned you above, let me just do it again to be safe: major spoilers follow.

"You" season 5 is now streaming on Netflix.

After killing his wife and abandoning his child (more on those characters later), Joe Goldberg fakes his death and flees to the UK, where he assumes the identity of Jonathan Moore, an English professor working at a posh university. The idea of relocating Joe across the pond is solid, in theory, and let's be honest: Joe/Penn Badgley looks really good with a beard. But "You" season 4 goes to some truly ridiculous places and almost never finds its footing again. 

Joe turns into something of an amature detective as he tries to snoop out the identity of the Eat the Rich Killer, a serial killer targeting a group of wealthy friends Joe becomes acquainted with. But ah, there's a whopper of a twist: Joe has had a complete break with reality! We learn that Joe is actually the Eat the Rich Killer, and he's made up an imaginary friend in the form of Rhys Montrose (Ed Speleers), a popular author running for the Mayor of London, to take the blame. And oh yeah, in his madness, Joe also completely forgot that he locked Marienne (Tati Gabrielle), the object of his affection/obsession from season 3, away in his ever-present plexiglass cage that he somehow always manages to have with him no matter where he goes.

"All this stuff that happened is actually a figment of the main character's warped mind!" is one of the laziest tropes in all of fiction, and it comes across as seriously wacky nonsense here. The one bright spot in season 4 is Kate Lockwood (Charlotte Ritchie), a wealthy, morally complex woman who starts off hating Joe's guts before eventually being won over by his charms. Greg Kinnear also has a brief but fun turn as Kate's obscenely rich and unapologetically evil father (Joe eventually kills him, naturally).

The final season of "You" is a bit of an improvement over season 4, but it's still a mixed bag. Part of the problem here is that season 5 feels like two seasons crammed into one, as if the writers had an idea for an additional sixth season but needed to mash it all together for one grand finale.

The first section of season 5 has Joe back in New York, married to Kate and reunited his young son, Henry. We learn that a few years have gone by without incident: Joe hasn't killed anyone, and he's used his newfound wealth (via Kate) to buy back the book store he grew up in. But Joe is a creature of habit and soon things go off the rails. For one thing, Kate, who is aware that Joe is a killer (although she seems oblivious about how many murders he's actually committed) pretty much recruits her hubby to kill off one of her business rivals. This causes a rift to form in the marriage and soon Kate begins to understand how dangerous and deranged Joe really is.

In the midst of all of this, Joe finds himself with a new "romantic" obsession: playwright Bronte (Madeline Brewer). Halfway through the season, the show throws out an interesting twist: Bronte has been pretending to be in love with Joe because she suspects Joe is a killer (she's right, of course) and wants to expose his crimes as revenge for season 1 character Guinevere Beck (more on her below). 

So far, so good. But the final season stumbles when Bronte does an about-face and suddenly starts believing Joe is innocent. To be fair, I get what the writers are going for here: showing us how intelligent people can be manipulated by abusive men and start making excuses for them. Bronte has tons of circumstantial evidence that Joe is a serial killer but she still ends up falling for him anyway, and that's not such an outlandish idea (after all, even real-life serial killers like Ted Bundy had groupies). But it still rings false here and makes Bronte seem like kind of clueless.

Thankfully, the final episodes set things right. Bronte comes to her senses and vows to stop Joe once and for all, luring him into a trap. Joe ends up getting shot in a very uncomfortable place and lands in jail, where he belongs. It's a fitting end, but the final season has too many subplots for its own good. But hey, Anna Camp ends up being a real highlight of the season, playing a pair of twin sisters who cross Joe's path.

The first season of "You" falls smack-dab in the middle of the ranking. It does a good job establishing the world of the show but it also has some rough patches. It's in this season we're introduced to Joe Goldberg, the type of guy who thinks he's a hopeless romantic but who is actually a creepy stalker. Joe takes one look at beautiful grad student Guinevere Beck (Elizabeth Lail) and immediately falls in love. Or so he says. Joe's ideas of what "love" actually is are a little more warped than an average, mentally stable person, and soon Joe is stalking Beck and finding ways to insert himself into her life.

The two end up in a relationship, all while Beck remains almost completely unaware of Joe's true nature — like the fact that he straight-up murdered her jerk of a boyfriend. Joe tries to grapple with who and what he is as the season progresses, and this first season does a good job of tricking the audience into sympathizing with Joe to some extent ... only to pull the rug out from under us and reveal that even though Joe has some likable qualities, he's still ultimately a monster who ends up strangling Beck to death when she learns the truth. While the shockingly bleak finale sticks the landing, getting there is a little bumpy — a subplot about Beck's best friend, the annoyingly-named Peach (played by Shay Mitchell), eats up way too much time and grows tedious, and there are numerous moments during this season when it feels like show doesn't quite know what it wants to be.

The best character on "You" isn't Joe Goldberg — it's Love Quinn, played by "The Haunting of Hill House" breakout Victoria Pedretti. In season 2, Joe has fled New York and ended up in Los Angeles, where he befriends his precocious teen neighbor (played by a pre-stardom Jenna Ortega!) and falls head over heels for fancy supermarket heiress Love Quinn. Joe also befriends Love's really annoying twin brother Forty (James Scully).

For the majority of season 2, we think the show is following the same formula as season 1: Joe meets a woman, grows obsessed with her, and will eventually kill her. But the show has a very clever twist up its sleeve for its second season: we learn that Love is just as deranged as Joe, and that she's been deliberately manipulating the situation to make Joe fall in love with her. Love is so committed to Joe that she's even willing to kill for him on multiple occasions, including killing Joe's justifiably vengeful former girlfriend Candace (Ambyr Childers).

When Joe realizes Love is not the sweet, innocent girl he thought she was, his immediate reaction is to try to kill her. But Love stays his hand when she reveals she's pregnant with his child — forcing Joe to settle down and move to the suburbs with Love and start a family. This completely upends the formula, and season 2 feels even darker than season 1 in the way it draws us deeper into Joe's violent world. Adding Love ends up elevating the show, because Pedretti is just so damn good.

"You" season 2 may have introduced Love Quinn, but season 3 is where she really gets to shine. Since a large portion of season 2 was attempting to pull the wool over our eyes about Love's motivations, Victoria Pedretti had to play things a little coy. In season 3, with Joe (and the audience) now aware of what Love is capable of, Pedretti gets to really cut loose and lean into Love's darker, demented side. Season 3 also almost immediately defies our expectations: season 2 ended with Joe seemingly falling into old habits by growing obsessed with his new neighbor. You might think that season 3 would then be about him turning his sights on her. But instead, Love learns what's going on and straight-up murders the poor neighbor before Joe can really get started.

On top of this, Joe and Love have a child now — a son named Henry. And while the show wisely keeps the baby off screen as much as possible (there's only so much you can do with a baby on a TV show), making Joe a father adds a great wrinkle to the character. Season 3 is also great at showcasing how self-destructive Joe is. In Love, he's found the seemingly perfect partner: a fellow murderer completely devoted to him. But Joe can't leave well enough alone, and he's soon fixating on sexy librarian Marienne (Tati Gabrielle). Meanwhile, Love finds herself wooed by a local college kid. It all culminates in a deadly conclusion: Joe and Love are just too psychotic to work together, and Joe ends up murdering his wife, leaving his infant son on a doorstep, and faking his own death. It's a logical endgame to the season, but in truth, "You" never fully recovered from killing off its best character, Love Quinn.