1 week Ago
From the very first episode, the Netflix series has been challenging audiences to question their own reactions to anti-hero Joe Goldberg. of which premiered on Thursday, April 24, marked the end of the series. For five seasons, we watched as Joe, a serial stalker and murderer, preys on women he supposedly loved.
Told from Joe’s perspective, his voiceover guides us as he methodically stalks, romanticizes, seduces, and inevitably kills women. And through it all, asks the audience a very simple question: “Why are you watching a show about such a despicable man?” At first, Joe seems like a romantic hero. He’s thoughtful, literate, charming, and played by , best known as a heartthrob from .
But just 10 minutes into the first episode of the first season, the audience learns the truth: He’s not in love—he’s a predator. Every season opens with Joe falling head over heels for a new, perfect woman. And while his behavior is worrisome, Joe’s voiceover can make his obsessive tendencies appear eerily similar to more traditional depictions of male desire—just look at all the effort he puts in! He must really care! Through Joe, explores how Hollywood romanticizes toxic masculinity and manipulative attitudes toward love.
Is it cute that Joe searches through his crush’s social media to find out a woman’s likes or dislikes? Is it romantic and brave of him to kill other men in their lives that are holding them back? You want to say “no,” but remember, one of Hollywood’s most beloved modern romances, , begins with Noah dangling from a ferris wheel, threatening to kill himself if Allie won’t go out with him. Patrick used public pressure to get Kat to accept his invite to prom in , and in , the Duke essentially forces Daphne to choose between marrying him and witnessing his death. Ryan Gosling, Heath Ledger, and Regé-Jean Page charmed an entire generation of women—including me—with their creepy, manipulative outbursts.
Joe isn’t an exaggerated stereotype, in many ways he’s a normal leading man. But while these characters have conditioned us to see toxic behavior as the epitome of romance, questions why the audience takes so much pleasure in these tropes. No matter (at least 10) or how many women he stalks (at least 5), every time he falls for someone new, we can’t help but think, By the time I started season 5, however, I was done wondering who would make him change.
I wanted to know who would take him down. Enter: Bronte, a woman who catfishes Joe after figuring out that he killed his season 1 victim Beck. Like us, Bronte knows who Joe really is—a stalker and murderer—but, also like us, the more she spends time with him, the more she likes him.
In this way, Bronte acts as a stand-in for fans who have watched Joe leave a trail of bodies around the world but can’t help but be drawn in by his sweet smile and love of literature. (Yes, the bar is really that low.) Joe is a killer, but we feel this instinctive need to understand him and his motivations.
And in doing so, we start to feel that—at least in some cases—he’s justified. When Bronte sees him murder her friend, she’s horrified, but she also empathizes with him enough to see it as self-defense. She wants him to get away with it, and so does the audience.
After all, if Joe gets caught or killed, there goes another entertaining television show. It seems twisted when I describe it here, but watching it on Netflix, we’re all living for the drama—and telling ourselves it’s just harmless entertainment. By the end of the season, Bronte has to face the fact that Joe is dangerous.
The pair have an epic showdown in the woods and Joe ends up in jail, charged with multiple homicides, all thanks to someone just like us: one of his fangirls. The with Joe in prison, reading by (widely beloved ) Norman Mailer and musing on his fate. “It’s unfair, putting all this on me.
Aren’t we all just products of our environment? Hurt people hurt people. I never stood a chance,” he thinks in a voiceover. He picks up a fan letter and reads it.
“Why am I in a cage when these crazies write all the depraved things they want me to do to them?” he wonders. “Maybe we have a problem in our society. Maybe we should fix what’s broken in us.
Maybe the problem isn’t me,” he continues, looking directly into the camera. “Maybe it’s you.” When I first heard Joe say those words, I had to pause, rewind, and watch it again to make sure I heard him correctly.
Was —a show that I had viewed as a generally feminist piece of work—really saying that the (mostly female) audience was responsible for Joe? Should we feel guilty for enjoying watching as he seduced, love bombed, stalked, abused, and killed for five whole seasons? This is Joe’s final act of manipulation: blaming women for the violence committed against them. It’s his way of asking a woman who was sexually assaulted . So, for the record, yes, we have celebrated a show that focuses on violence against women.
We have campaigned for more seasons and thirsted after Joe Goldberg. But fans of the series know the character isn’t a real person. The idea that being a fan of means you are capable of falling in love with the next stalker who hits on you just because he’s a total babe is insulting.
It also dismisses our lived experiences. Fans, especially female fans, know how scary and dangerous the world can be. It can be comforting to see your very real fears legitimized onscreen.
It’s what makes so compelling. These shows capitalize off violence against women, but they also give voice to survivors. It’s not our fault that exists—we don’t have that kind of pull in Hollywood.
Just like it’s not Beck’s fault that Joe killed her at the end of season 1, or Marienne’s fault that Joe locked her up in a cage for a majority of season 4. Just because Joe gets the last word doesn’t mean he’s right. As a fan of the show and—obviously—someone who loathes misogyny and victim blaming, I choose to embrace Bronte’s point of view: that of a survivor.
The penultimate scene shows her walking proudly down the streets of New York. “Joe was wrong about me. My life doesn’t boil down to before and after him,” she says in a voiceover, having officially taken back control over her story.
“Every day that passes, he shrinks. Eventually, he’ll just be some asshole I dated. I still have no idea who I want to be, but I can’t wait to find out.
” She is inviting the audience to transcend Joe Goldberg, to write our own stories from our points of view, and to break free from toxic masculinity in our actual lives. The final thesis of the show isn’t that we are complicit in Joe’s actions. It’s that we must stop letting him—and men like him—be the ones leading the narrative.
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