NetflixYou Season 5 takes a jab at BookTok tropes through Bronte, Joe Goldberg’s latest obsession. She’s quickly proving to be one of the most divisive new characters of the Netflix series, but there’s far more to her than meets the eye.
Now, you may be wondering: what exactly happened to Kate Lockwood, Joe’s wife who saves him at the end of You Season 4? She’s still around, because when has being married ever stopped Joe?
In Season 5 Episode 1, Joe takes a little look around Mooney’s, which Kate bought for him when they moved back to New York. During his visit, he comes across Bronte, who has been breaking into the shop as the books seemed “lonely.”
Joe agrees to give her a job to help bring the shop back to life, and over time, we learn more about her interests. Warning: spoilers ahead!
Bronte is a BookTok dream girl
NetflixHonestly? At first, Bronte’s character is like if you asked AI to analyze the entirety of BookTok and generate the ultimate dark fantasy dream girl. She wears holed cardigans, reads “fairy smut,” and toes the line between innocent and seductive.
In short, she’s tailor-made for the kinds of tropes BookTok eats up, and it seems the writers purposely leaned into these elements to cater to this corner of the internet (and maybe poke a little fun).
Played by The Handmaid’s Tale star Madeline Brewer, Bronte is an aspiring playwright who bonds with Joe over books – but not the kind he’s used to. She encourages him to expand Mooney’s romance section and introduces him to the world of spicy dark fantasy.
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In Season 5 Episode 3, she even performs a TikTok-worthy reenactment of a scene from ‘The Relentless Rancher’ – complete with a literal purr in Joe’s ear and a dramatic bite of her lip. It’s just the kind of moment you can picture going viral as a thirst trap or a re-enacting challenge on BookTok.
But You Season 5 doesn’t stop there. In another scene, Bronte breaks down the D&D “moral alignment chart,” the viral trend that BookTok and Tumblr both love using to classify characters.
BookTok has catapulted erotic fiction, dark romance, and morally gray characters into the mainstream, and Bronte feels like You’s sly way of acknowledging that and then satirizing it.
This has rubbed some fans up the wrong way, with one writing on X/Twitter, “I find it odd that Joe fell for the living image of a Wattpad girl.”
Another said on Reddit, “Have the writers changed? Beck and Love were such great characters I grew to like Marianne and tolerate Kate, but I can’t just get past the absurdity of the Bronte character.”
There’s more to her character in You Season 5
NetflixBut don’t be fooled by appearances. As Netflix viewers are slowly finding out, Bronte isn’t who she says she is. The truth is her real name is Louise, and she’s part of a plan to take Joe down.
She was never breaking into Mooney’s because the books were “lonely.” It was because months before, she teamed up with a group of cyber sleuths, including Dr Nicky’s son Clayton (Tom Francis), to expose Joe for the crimes they believed he committed.
Their plan is revealed in Episode 5, when Joe kills Clayton in defense of Bronte/Louise. Her friends jump out and reveal they’re live-streaming the whole thing.
Amazingly, Joe still manages to pull the wool over Bronte’s eyes, but only temporarily, culminating in a truly fitting punishment for Joe at the end of You Season 5.
Even before this plan was revealed, plenty of viewers jumped to Bronte’s defense, with one writing, “I low-key love her because I’m certain she’s there to bring Joe down. Everything she says and does is perfectly scripted for Joe to obsess over.”
Netflix“I adore Nronte, I think she’s so silly, and I like that she feels like Beck, Candace, Marienne, and even Love all rolled together,” said another. “It’s really intriguing and I’m interested in seeing what her underlying motives really are because there is def something going on.”
Thanks to her plan, justice is finally served for Joe. So yes, Bronte might be built from the tropes that BookTok loves – the morally gray love interest – but she’s not just a “quirky book girl.”
She’s You’s way of holding up a mirror to the platform that romanticized Joe in the first place. And this time, the fantasy bites back.
You Season 5 is streaming on Netflix now. For more, find out whether Maddie and Reagan are twins in real life, why You Season 6 won’t happen, and check out the other shows to watch on Netflix this month.
