You season 5 episode 3 has some big revelations revolving Bronte (Madeline Brewer), Maddie (Anna Camp) and Reagan (also Anna Camp). As for Joe (Penn Badgley), he wants what’s inside to come out.
Here's what happened in You season 5 episode 3, "Imposter Syndrome."
There’s blood in the water
Teddy (Griffin Matthews) shares with Kate (Charlotte Ritchie) the key to taking Reagan down: embezzlement. Kate is thrilled, but when she goes to talk to her half-sister, she discovers Harrison (Pete Ploszek) leaving the house and Reagan crying on the couch. It turns out that she received a call from security, who found her half-naked husband locked in a closet from when Joe kidnapped Maddie. Since her twin’s phone was on the floor at the office, she put the pieces together that Maddie and Harrison were having an affair for years.
Reagan will be divorcing him and actually apologizes to Kate for her recent actions. This does give Kate an opening to demand Reagan leave the kids out of it, or risk the scandal being front page tomorrow morning, leading to Reagan agreeing to fix things with the school and dropping the charges.
Back at home, Kate tells Joe that since they murdered Uncle Bob, she can’t sleep. She lies awake at night, paralyzed, replaying and imagining how things could have ended differently. When she does sleep, the nightmares are horrifying. She then comments how she used to be able to read his mind, but that’s changed, and she doesn’t understand why he is not suffering the same way she is. He reasons that he does not feel guilty because he considers this his purpose and what makes him special. But Kate doesn’t want that part of him.
Make no mistake, you are the hostage here
Joe, desperate to fix his mess up, tries to tell Maddie he has a little crush on her, and when he found out that she was with another guy, he made a dumb and jealous mistake. He suggests they pretend this never happened, pushing the Harrison narrative and the mistake she’s made, but Maddie knows exactly what his plan with Reagan was because she now believes Kate killed Uncle Bob as well.
Joe does manage to come up with an idea to build trust, asking Maddie to give him dirt on Reagan that would ruin her life and stop her from ruining theirs. However, she calls his bluff because if he could kill her, he already would have. Plus, she reminds him that she has to take insulin, which he will have to go get for her.
When Maddie pushes him too far later on, Joe goes off about how not many people have seen this side of him and lived. With the news of the affair now out in the open with the family, he uses it to solve his problem, telling Maddie and explaining that she and Harrison are free to disappear together, but Reagan finding out is enough to send her spiraling.
During her spiral, Maddie calls Gretchen her baby, and it’s revealed that she carried Gretchen as Reagan’s surrogate. She considers this now a fate worse than death, saying that he should just kill her. It makes Joe feel bad enough to enter the cage to give her the insulin shot.
Reagan goes live from Maddie’s socials, pretending to be her to get ahead of the scandal and announce that she will be ceding her board voting capacity to her twin sister. This is the inspiration Joe needed for his Maddie issue: she can become Reagan.
Meet Louise Flannery
Bronte takes Joe to an estate sale so they can buy used romance novels for the store. When they return, she starts to describe a part of one of the books. When he doubts her, they put the actions in question to the test: a hair brush and lip bite combo.
They also end up going to, as Bronte calls it, a dirtbag literary salon, where her ex approaches them. He pulls up an old writing piece of hers and reads it since Joe watched someone else share their work, and that’s the rule. When Bronte interrupts him on stage to call out his behavior, he drops a big bomb: her real name is actually Louise Flannery.
With her name and real occupation, Joe begins to search online and find all the information he can on who she really is. When he goes upstairs to see her, she’s in tears over what happened, and the two end up discussing being ashamed and wanting to start over. This conversation does introduce some new information: Bronte was a caretaker for her mother, who died a few years ago. It also manages to give him an opening to ask about his suspicions regarding her reading Beck’s book.
She admits that she saw herself in Beck’s work when she was younger, and she did come here because Beck worked here. Bronte then asks Joe to tell her about her, which he does, and even comments that they dated briefly. He concludes by saying it was a tragedy and that he wishes he had killed Dr. Nicky so that Beck would still be here.
They then move into dangerous territory when Bronte asks if he’s devoured the way he wants to be at home. He confesses that he’s not before saying he should go. As he walks away, she reminds him that she’s not the “poor girl” to his “rich guy,” and she cannot handle an affair. The problem is that she has now made Joe realize what’s missing in his marriage.
All episodes of You season 5 are now streaming on Netflix.
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