Cabin 6

She used to stay underwater until she found friends

and boy, was i wrong...

the finale of YOU s5 was perfect. it surpassed my expectations for a great ending bc it went beyond the show's assumed formula and became a self-aware, raw and surprisingly feminist meta commentary on the show itself, joe goldberg, his victims and the real world realities of the victim/predator dynamics.

throughout the season, i wondered what was the point of introducing a character like louise. was it to show once again that joe will always find a flaw in his "soulmate" and continue the pattern of his predatory behavior?

yes, but more importantly, it all clicked and made sense when the finale revealed the point of louise to be about HER, not joe.

louise is not a random chick whose life and story is split in "before joe and after joe". she is an echo of beck. through louise we see that beck was not just a tragic heroine in joe's story, she was someone who left an impact on people in her life such as louise.

she is not the perfect victim or heroine. she has some moments of internalized misogyny, thinking that she is smarter than those women who fall for toxic men. she believes that she can fix joe. she fantasizes about being saved and dominated by him, giving him control to build her up bc she does not know who she is and has self-esteem issues, struggling to love herself without a lover's validation.

in some sense, she represents joe's perfect victim; in some sense, she represents the audiences who romanticize him. and she is the one who snaps out and sees herself clearly, thus seeing joe as he truly is and becoming his ultimate reckoning.

and with her, we see joe as he is as well. a pathetic misogynist with mommy issues who does not accept anything he deems selfish in women he preys upon. a predator who kills his prey once she does not reflect the image of himself to him he wants to see. someone who does not take accountability for harming others, always making excuses for himself. his mask is finally off, he is naked.

once louise confronts him and takes her voice back, demanding joe to admit the truth, the story takes off the romantic lenses that reminded more or less intact throughout the show and turns into a pure horror of brutality and violence.

but joe can not kill louise. metaphorically, it's bc he does not have power over her anymore, she found her own power in herself. power that is found through self-acceptance and love for all the victims who were silenced by joe. she declares that she is not bronte built in his fantasy, she is louise.

i actually teared up when louise had a vision of beck autographing her books and then it cut to an older lady, showing the lifetime that was taken away from her.

bronte is a personification of the way the audience tends to treat joe. we’re all very, very much aware of the way joe is. the things he’s done. and yet we still fall victim to his deceptive narration, most ppl who’ve watched the show cannot deny they’ve ’rooted for joe’ at one point or another. paco was written into the show specifically to manipulate the viewer with the age old “oh he’s horrible but he does some good things”. he didn’t exist in the book, they needed something to balance out how sinister book joe is. and with all of this i think we also don’t talk enough about how we are getting the entire narrative from HIS perspective, regardless of what we see happening on screen we’re going to be influenced whether we realize it or not. maybe you personally don’t feel that way about it, but general audiences do. that’s who bronte is supposed to represent and call out, the ones who romanticize joe and don’t think about this show in any other context outside of thirsting for joe. she’s only actually listening and paying attention to what joe has to say about everything that he’s done, even when she has all the information.

bronte knows everything he’s done, she’s been following it all for years. and yet she still falls for him and falls victim to the classic “tragic poor sweet guy who just wants to protect the people he loves but goes way too far” trope. all of this season has been about tropes, and how people are drawn to the trope of these toxic, straight up abusive men are misconstrued as “protective” in media. and not to mention how real they can actually be. bronte knew how much horrible shit joe had done, and yet let herself fall too deep into this fantasy to the point she’d forgotten what it all had been for in the first place. it was shitty of her to stick with him despite everything but i think getting her perspective of things in the finale spelled it out that she felt like she needed to “write his ending”. not for her, but for beck, for marienne, for kate, for love, for candace, for every woman that he’s hurt.

ANNABETH & BRONTE 💛

Because with you, love has a price. This is where it was headed the whole time. Peak romance.