Warning: Major spoilers ahead for season five of Netflix’s “You.”
Characters from seasons past return for the fifth and final installment of “You” — but there’s one key character missing.
After getting away with murder for four seasons, Joe Goldberg (Penn Badgley) is finally exposed for his crimes in season five.
Episode seven, titled “#JoeGoldberg,” shows the public turning against Joe after an incriminating video taken seconds after he murdered Clayton (Tom Francis), the son of season one character Dr. Nicky Angevine (John Stamos), goes viral.
Dominique (Natasha Behnam) and Phoenix (b), two internet vigilantes who livestreamed the shocking moment, continue their takedown of Joe in episode seven as they accuse him of being a serial killer and post videos discussing the evidence they’ve found from years of research.
Suddenly, Joe becomes a hot topic in the news, with his name trending online and his face plastered across newspapers with headlines that question if he’s a “homicidal maniac.”
“Leave it to social media to be my downfall,” Joe says in the narration, as he scrolls through TikTok and sees people from his past sharing their thoughts on him.
Dottie Quinn (Saffron Burrows), Annika Atwater (Kathryn Gallagher), Sherry Conrad (Shalita Grant) and Cary Conrad (Travis Van Winkle), Paco (Luca Padovan), and Ethan Russell (Zach Cherry) are among the characters who make cameos. But season two’s Ellie Alves (Jenna Ortega), a social-media-savvy aspiring filmmaker, is noticeably absent.
In a recent interview with Business Insider, season five co-showrunners Michael Foley and Justin W. Lo explained that Ortega’s commitment to season two of the Netflix series “Wednesday,” in which she stars as Wednesday Addams, prevented her from reprising her role in “You.”
“That was complicated by the fact that she’s doing ‘Wednesday’ in Ireland and it just seemed like a non-starter,” Foley said. “We just couldn’t figure out a way to make it work.”
If Ortega was able to return to “You,” the storyline would have involved Ellie being a benefactor to Dominique and Phoenix. But ultimately, that storyline was scrapped.
“That was a thought that I’m sure when we were putting things together, we felt like maybe we could make this work, and we just simply couldn’t,” Foley said.
Ortega joined “You” in season two, as Joe moved from New York to Los Angeles for a fresh start. Ellie, a 15-year-old cinephile who lived in the same apartment complex as Joe, was one of his closest acquaintances whom he was protective of.
After Ellie’s older sister, Delilah (Carmela Zumbado), is murdered by Love Quinn (Victoria Pedretti), Ellie relocates to Florida using money that Joe gives her.
Although Ellie doesn’t appear again in the show, Joe is shown still sending her money in season three, and he references her at the start of season four.
Sera Gamble, the previous showrunner, told IndieWire in 2023 that there was a desire to bring Ortega back for season four, but she was committed to season one of “Wednesday.”
If Ellie did come out of the woodwork to share her opinion online in season five, Lo said that perhaps the character would voice her support of Joe, or maybe she’d have a completely different opinion in the time that’s passed.
“You could make an argument for pro-Joe because he was there for her during a very difficult time in her life,” Lo said. “But you could also say, I think Ellie’s very smart and she probably knows that he had something to do with her sister’s death, even though it was Love. So she could have turned against him as well.”
Season five of “You” is now streaming on Netflix.
