Diksha Sundriyal
Netflix’s ‘You’ is full of deceptions and people who keep their real nature a secret from those around them, especially those they seem to love. Usually, Joe Goldberg is guilty of this act, but in the fifth and final chapter of his story, he comes across a woman who unpacks her bag of secrets, a lot of which can either hurt or save Joe. This woman is Bronte, aka Louise, who meets Joe while stealing from his bookstore, Mooney’s. This chance encounter turns into much more as Bronte becomes more and more attractive to Joe, who seems to have become disillusioned with his marriage to Kate. Soon, however, he discovers that there is more to Bronte’s story, and much of it concerns his past crimes. SPOILERS AHEAD.
Bronte Wants Joe to Answer for His Crimes, Not Escape Them
When one thinks about revenge, the general thought is an eye for an eye. If a person’s loved one has been killed, they would want the killer to die as well. This feeling becomes especially strong when the said killer is incredibly dangerous. This is the thought process that we notice in Kate, Nadia, and Marienne, all of whom are convinced that if Joe doesn’t go to prison, the only way to stop him is to kill him. Bronte, however, is intent on making Joe pay for his crimes the right way. She doesn’t want him to slip away into nothing. Instead, she wants people to know his name, to know all the bad things he has done, and most importantly, to know the women whose lives he has destroyed.
The motivation behind Bronte’s actions is her love for Beck. Years ago, when she came to New York to become a writer, Beck was the only one who encouraged and appreciated her. So, even when Bronte left New York, she was happy because of how Beck made her feel about her writing and herself. So, when Beck dies, Bronte reads her book and realises that parts of it have been written by someone else. Over time, the piecing together of the evidence leads her and other truth seekers to zero in on Joe. They believe that he killed Beck, but for Bronte, it isn’t just about the murder. It’s about the fact that he tried to erase Beck by changing her book and encroaching on her writing, so that nothing that remains of Beck is actually hers.
Bronte doesn’t want Beck’s legacy to be tainted by Joe, so when she finally has him at gunpoint, the first thing she forces him to do is mark down everything that he wrote in Beck’s book. When the time comes, she has all that stuff removed and the book is re-released. This time, every single word in it belongs to no one but Beck, which means that her legacy is clean of Joe’s influence, and she is also free of him in death. For this reason, Bronte couldn’t kill Joe when she had the chance.
Bronte Wants Joe to Suffer for the Rest of His Life
In the time that Bronte gets to know Joe Goldberg, she discovers a few key things about him. She realises that he is a romantic, or at least he believes himself to be one in a twisted way. He has created a version of himself in his head where every bad thing that he did is justified, even Beck’s death. He has convinced himself that everything he does is for the ones he loves, to protect them from the bad things around them. She watches all of this in action as he kills Clayton right in front of her eyes. By this time, she is so charmed by him that she even starts to defend him and wonders if she was wrong about him after all.
Eventually, her eyes are opened to the truth again, and this is when she decides that she cannot let him die so easily. This thought pops into her head when she finds him and Kate struggling for their lives in Mooney’s burning basement. She could have rescued Kate in that moment, but she chose to go with Joe because she wanted him to face what he feared most. She knows that once he is put on trial for his crimes and is sent to prison, he will be pushed off his high horse. The perception of him as Prince Charming will be decimated, and he will be seen as nothing but a cold-blooded killer.
Not only will his freedom be taken away from him, but he will also be doomed to an existence where he can never be loved again. He will never find a woman to fixate on, and through her, he sees himself as a good guy who has never wronged anyone in his life. She wants to break down that self-perception of his, which is why she doesn’t kill him when she has a gun pointed at him. She feels the power of her decision when Joe begs to be killed rather than being arrested. But she does not give in to his pleas, and condemns him to a fate he considers worse than death.
