For a good amount of time, I could never understand what girls saw in Joe Goldberg, why the reverse psychology technique worked so well in his case, and how he made the other person buy his narrative even when it seemed blatantly illogical. But then, when you analyze his behavioral traits, how he conducts himself in front of people he is attracted to, and his extremely analytical internal monologue where he decodes the other person, you get to know why somebody like Bronte fell for him, even after knowing the kind of man he was. Bronte, aka Louise Flannery, Joe’s latest victim, came with the intention of laying a trap for the predator, but in the end, she herself fell into it. It goes to show how good Joe was at influencing people. Bronte had no way of knowing she would fall for him when all she wanted to do was put him behind bars. So, let’s try to understand what Bronte was trying to do, what made her fall for Joe Goldberg, and if in the end she was able to get the better of him.
Spoiler Alert
How Did Bronte Plan To Implicate Joe?
I don’t deny that even I thought, at the beginning, that Bronte was just a kleptomaniac who had no place to stay or money to survive, which is why she broke into Mooney’s, the bookstore owned by Joe Goldberg. But it wasn’t so. The girl knew Beck from before, and she shared a very deep and emotional connection with her. Beck was probably one of the first people who told Bronte that her writing was great and that she would become a successful writer one day. This meant a lot to an artist who doubted her own capabilities, who didn’t think that she was good enough. Then one day Bronte saw on the news that Dr. Nicky, the psychiatrist, had killed Beck. Beck, already dealing with her ailing mother, just couldn’t process the information. Bronte did some research, and she came across a group of people on Reddit who believed that it was Joe Goldberg who had killed Beck. One of the members of the Reddit group, Clayton, was Dr. Nicky’s son, and he desperately wanted to prove his father’s innocence so he could come out of prison. As for the other two group members, i.e., Dominique and Phoenix, they were true crime podcasters who wanted to find the truth at any cost. Breaking into the bookstore was never part of the plan, but Bronte, without telling anybody, made that impulsive decision. Bronte never thought that he would get interested in her. She just wanted to stay close to him, find incriminating evidence, and lure him into the trap.
Joe falling for Bronte changed the entire dynamic. Bronte started questioning what she was doing as she knew that their beliefs were based on purely circumstantial evidence. Bronte’s dilemma, the duality of her intentions, and her confusion created a rift between her and her group. There came a point in You season 5 when she felt really vulnerable in front of Joe. She could feel herself developing feelings for Joe that were getting deeper every passing day. Joe treated her like a princess, and that entire feeling made her even more overwhelmed. Bronte ran away, and she decided to not go ahead with her original plan. She gave a call to Joe and told him not to follow her. But Joe, being Joe, tracked her down and reached the cottage where she was putting up. Bronte had clearly told Dominique that she was aborting the plan, but Clayton came to the cottage unannounced. Until that moment, Joe had no clue that he was being catfished and that whatever Bronte had told him about Clayton being her ex-partner and everything else was a complete lie. Clayton lost his temper, and he blamed Bronte for betraying their trust. Joe intervened, and he ended up killing Clayton. Dominique, who arrived just in time, captured everything on her livestream, as a result of which Joe was taken into custody.
Why Did Bronte Defend Joe?
Thanks to Kate’s contacts, Joe immediately got bail since the former didn’t want her family’s reputation to be destroyed. Bronte was called in for questioning, and everybody believed that she would say that Joe had killed her friend and that he was a serial killer and a pathological liar. But nothing of that sort happened. In fact, Bronte ended up telling the detective that had Joe not been there, then Clayton probably would have hurt her. She said that Joe acted in self-defense and that it was Clayton who was hell-bent on crossing the boundary. And that’s where we realize the kind of impact all the gaslighting, all the fake narrative, and all the brainwashing had on her. Joe was good at what he did, but still, to change the perspective of someone who just hated you to the core was a big thing. Joe had no clue what Bronte had said to the authorities, and even he felt that she would try to make a case against him and hand over all the research material she had on him to the police. The question that arose there was why, even after everything that Bronte knew, she started to trust Joe more than her own friends. The answer, I believe, is Joe knew when to strike. He might not have known what Bronte was up to, but he had this innate capability to strike when the other person put their guard down. Also, Bronte somewhere wanted to experience the kind of romance she had read about in all those novels. Joe was a romantic in a very old-school manner, which made his entire aura even more appealing for her. Bronte didn’t even realize when her fantasies took over her rational side, and she got mesmerized by the same man she wanted so desperately to expose at one point in time. It took Marienne Bellamy coming back from the dead and having a chat with Bronte for her to understand that she had been tricked by the Mindhunter. The hunter was hunted, and everything happened so organically and smoothly that Bronte never came to realize it.
Why Didn’t Bronte Kill Joe?
I felt that the You season 5 ending was a bit rushed and the makers just wanted to give closure to everybody who was involved. So Bronte had a change of heart after she had a brief meeting with Marienne in the bookstore. Bronte could have let Joe die in the basement after Maddie set the entire bookstore on fire. But suddenly Bronte wanted to play the great savior and get justice for every girl that Joe had killed. She saved him (which in itself seemed the most bizarre twist until we realized that even Kate had managed to escape) and then pretended to be the girl who accepted him for who he was. Bronte played along just to buy some more time so that she could expose him. Probably she wanted the police to catch him red-handed, which is exactly what happened at the end of episode 10. I believe there was still a part of her that wanted to have that happy ending with Joe, but her conscience overpowered her demons this time. Joe had planned to escape to Canada with Bronte and start afresh. But before that could happen, Bronte engaged in a fight with him and almost got herself killed.
Miraculously (that’s the only way one could describe how Bronte survived, because it seemed unbelievable), she survived, and just at the right time, the police arrived at the scene and took Joe into custody. Joe was found guilty after what we were told was a messy trial, and Bronte got Beck’s book reprinted after she erased all the parts that Joe had added after her death. The ending of the show was so rushed, and there were so many plot holes, that at one point I felt that everything was happening inside Bronte’s head. Maybe in her imagination, she had this god complex where she took the mantle to fight for justice. But then I don’t think that that was the intention of the makers. I believe that they wanted to show that finally somebody was able to get the better of Joe Goldberg, who tricked him in the exact same manner that he used to trap his victims. Anyway, after this whole fiasco, it’s likely that Bronte, I mean, Louise, will give writing a try and become an author like her friend, Beck, who was never able to pursue her dreams and whose entire life was stolen by a serial killer. I mean, Louise can try to pen down her experience on how she tricked a sociopath, right?
