I Have Mixed Feelings About You's Final Season, But There's One Standout Thing I Really Loved

Spoilers ahead if you're not caught on Netflix's You through the series finale.

Well, hello, you – for the final time, finally.

I feel like it’s been a long time coming, but the final season of You has come out on Netflix. I wasted no time using my Netflix Subscription to binge all ten episodes of the latest iteration of this show, which debuted its final season on the 2025 Netflix schedule. With trailers that teased what was to come and You Season 5 theories that I had for ages before, I knew I was ready for the conclusion.

And it was… good. But not my overall favorite.

I mean, if we’re being honest, I think other aspects of this show have worked way better in the past. But, there is one moment that stood out amongst the rest of this mixed season for me – and I have to talk about it.

The Season Was Fun But Not As Well-Done As Other Seasons

As I said, this season of You was fun…but it was just not as well done as other seasons.

That’s not to say it wasn’t good, either. I did like a lot of what happened. Obviously, Penn Badgley's lead role as Joe always takes the cake. I’m honestly surprised that throughout the first few seasons, he never received an Emmy nomination because I really do believe he is that good, and he delivered his A-game in Season 5.

There’s also plenty to enjoy about this season as well. Returning to New York City is always something I can get behind as someone who loves a movie or TV show taking place in NYC. And it’s fitting that, of course, the show that began in the city that never sleeps returns to that.

But there were just too many things in this season that felt far too familiar and echoes of past seasons. You really did new things each season for the first three seasons. They constantly found ways to up the stakes while still doing the same song and dance of Joe finding someone new to obsess over and then having it all fall apart relatively quickly.

Season 5 didn’t feel as well done as those other seasons, and I’ll talk a little bit more about that later. But for now, let’s talk about one I did like.

However, Anna Camp’s Character Was Hysterical

I ate up Anna Camp in her dual role as Reagan and Maddie. Y'all, she killed it.

I’ve been a fan of Anna Camp for more than a decade now. While there are plenty of people who might know her from her appearances in The Office, The Help, or her part among the True Blood cast, I was introduced to her from her role among the Pitch Perfect cast, where she played a hilarious college girl who threw up more than I needed to see in a single movie, and was the sort-of antagonist to Anna Kendrick’s character, Becca.

Either way, I think she has great comedic timing and is a great actress overall, but something about her dual role in this made the first five episodes of this series so much more enjoyable.

Again, I’m not saying they weren’t fun, but introducing them here made the episodes better. Reagan was the kind of character that you just loved to hate. She was manipulative and cruel and did whatever she could in order to achieve the outcome that she wanted, no matter what it took – even impersonating her sister to fake a confession to the world about Maddie’s affair with Reagan’s husband.

It’s that kind of devious behavior that makes a character so distasteful that it’s almost hilarious. And then there’s Maddie.

She’s the complete opposite of Reagan, someone who genuinely looks like she has a good soul but does stupid things. The fact that she calls Joe “boo-boo,” of all things, is the funniest line I believe I have heard on Netflix in years – especially since Joe literally gives people the biggest “boo-boos” of their life.

And her work with Joe was fun. I liked their dynamic and the way that she just caught on. It subverted our expectations that she wasn’t just some pretty face and a whole lot of money in her pocket. She didn’t fall for Joe’s tricks at all, and that’s what made me like her more.

Adding in a character who's the complete opposite of Reagan and having her played by the same actress takes a lot of talent. And it’s something I just loved.

And The Characters That Surrounded Her Made It Even Better

Something else that I loved about Maddie and Reagan is that, because of their introduction, we met a whole slew of different characters that we never would have met before, mainly Harrison, Reagan’s husband, and Teddy, their half-brother.

Watching their interactions with Maddie and Reagan brought out the loudest belly laughs I have had for this show in decades because they just said the funniest stuff that felt so out of pocket. Teddy himself was a lot more grounded, but I just enjoyed his presence in the show overall. Harrison was the kind of loving guy who really had no idea what the heck was going on half the time, but you could tell he had a heart—despite having an affair with Maddie.

I mean, his whole conversation with Maddie in the second half, where he’s just going back and forth about what to do with Reagan’s death and how he was responding to Maddie – his reaction to everything just made me snicker, and I was dying the whole time. He was so lost – as he should be. And it’s because of these twins that we were even able to get that.

Honestly, I enjoyed the new characters in this season more than You Season 4’s cast of characters because they felt like they added so much to an otherwise overly-done story that we have seen time and time again.

I Think If The Episodes Were Shorter And We Got To The Twist Quicker, It Would Have Been Better

This whole article makes me sound like I only liked You Season 5 for Anna Camp, and that’s not true. I will say she was a big part of what made the show so much fun for me this time around, but at the same time, I can recognize that there could have been moments expedited a bit more that might have made the show more enjoyable.

The first five episodes felt so long, and while I did like Maddie and Reagan, I don’t think we needed to spend as much time around their issues with Kate and everything else if Joe was going to head down the same path of falling in love with another new girl. To me, it felt like the show really woke up when we realized who Bronte was.

That was where we really saw Joe’s anger return, and where the stakes were upped. That was where we saw a lot of familiar faces circle once again as well, like Marienne and Nadia, whom we all theorized would return in some way with our You Season 4 questions. That was when Season 5 truly took its form.

It’s just a shame that we had to binge through five hour-long episodes to get there.

Either way, You has officially come to an end and with it, my fascination with this ridiculous series that took over my life every time it premiered. I’ve laughed, screamed and cried with this show, and I have a feeling it’ll remain one of the best shows to binge on Netflix despite the fact that I don’t necessarily agree with how the final episodes were delivered.

Anna Camp’s characters will forever be a favorite, and I find it fitting that Joe ended up in prison thanks to a fellow book girl and author. Kudos to you, Bronte. You’re what we needed. With that in mind, I bid this series adieu and move on to the next Netflix obsession – when is Wednesday Season 2 coming out again?