You season 5 episode 9 recap: does Marienne Bellamy ever haunt you?

You season 5 episode 9 lands Harrison (Pete Ploszek) and Maddie (Anna Camp) in jail while the past returns, with Kate’s (Charlotte Richie) help, to haunt Joe (Penn Badgley).

Here's what happened in You season 5 episode 9, "Trial of the Furies."

Good will prevail

We start off the episode with Joe asking Bronte (Madeline Brewer) where in the world she would like to be? She answers, “A castle.” Despite her promising that good will prevail with Henry (Frank DeMaio), Joe has taken steps to break the chains between him and the Lockwoods. He planted Reagan’s teeth in Harrison’s bag, leading to his and Maddie’s arrests for her murder. He’s also tracking Kate and Henry as the two return to New York.

As for his and Bronte’s future, he’s already bought an engagement ring and also manipulated everything with Kate in a way that has Bronte apologizing for the fact that his ex-wife made Joe prove his love through killing. Before they can talk further, Bronte is interrupted by an email from a publishing company, requesting a meeting, where the publisher wants her to write her and Joe’s love story.

In a romantic gesture, Joe tries to buy her a castle, only to discover that Kate had emptied his account. He goes to Mooney’s to get his secret stash and sees an eviction notice with a new lock on both the store and apartment. His solution? Kate has to die.

Later, Bronte then breaks into the apartment to get her stuff, only to be caught by Kate. The latter tries to talk to Bronte about Joe and remembering the reason she went after him in the first place, wanting to get through to her. Sadly, it doesn’t work.

You’re so predictable

Kate sends her lawyers to bail Maddie and Harrison out, but this situation throws a wrench in her plans. She can no longer just kill Joe with a hitman, she now has to get a confession from Joe for planting Reagan’s teeth. How is she going to do that? With the cage and Nadia’s (Amy-Leigh Hickman) help. Before that, she’s resigning and appointing Teddy (Griffin Matthews) as the new CEO.

After following someone Joe thinks is Kate, he gets abducted and wakes up inside his cage with Nadia reading Joe’s vampire romance out loud. Kate appears and makes her demands, saying if he gives them a confession they’ll let him go to an island with no extradition treaties so he can start over. If he refuses, they’re going to start a carbon monoxide leak to make it look like he killed himself. As for Nadia, she wants a confession from Joe regarding Rhys’ murder so that the whole world knows that she is innocent. He refuses.

However, Kate and Nadia then bring out another familiar face: Marienne Bellamy (Tati Gabrielle), whom Joe thought he killed in season 4. She reveals that she and Nadia fooled him before the conversation spirals with Joe saying that the man who locked her in the cage wasn’t him, and he has healed since. Of course, she sees through him and doesn’t allow him to twist the narrative of what happened between them, especially when he brings up her daughter.

Marienne goes off on him, expressing how he destroyed her and the fact that she is overprotective of her daughter now because of him. Marienne goes through every single thing he did to her and stresses that he is an abuser, not a white knight. Naturally, he still views the events differently, trying to say that he saved her and has spent his entire life saving women like her from abusive men. Rather than wasting her words further, Marienne concludes that no matter what he does, he is going to die in that cage.

You’re one of those women

After saying her piece to Joe, Marienne goes upstairs in the bookstore to breathe, where Bronte sees her from outside. She lets her inside, both immediately recognizing each other. Bronte is shocked to find out she is alive; it’s the opening Marienne needs to get through to her. The two sit down, and Marienne makes a vulnerable yet powerful speech about men like Joe and how, as long as women like them are alive, it’s not too late, somehow perfectly summing up exactly how every victim and survivor of Joe has felt about him and being loved by him.

Marienne’s earlier words made Joe realize they are not going to let him go, but Kate is prepared for the consequences. Joe loses his temper and throws every hateful and hurtful word he can think of at Kate, but she remains unaffected. Nadia, however, doesn’t. She pulls out a gun, aiming it at Joe, ready to shoot and end this for good. Kate stops her and the two go upstairs, where Marienne joins them.

Nadia insists Joe needs to die now because the justice system is never on their side. Kate volunteers to kill him on her own, wanting Marienne and Nadia to be able to continue living their lives. She considers this penance for everything she has been complicit in. If she gets caught, she will tell the police that she acted alone. While they’re gone, we see that Joe hid a spare key to the cage inside his arm, which he rips open.

When Kate goes back to the basement, Joe has escaped the cage, and the two wrestle over her gun. He shoots her and hits her with a hammer, but before he can leave, Maddie, who has decided to take things into her own hands after Harrison confessed to her sister’s murder so that the police would let her go, interrupts. She locks the door so Joe can’t get back up and reveals that she is going to set Mooney’s on fire. He tries to tell her that Kate is with him, but she doesn’t believe him. One match and it’s all in flames.

Joe rushes back down to get Kate’s phone, but she hits him with the hammer, knocking him out. He eventually comes to just as the two of them are on the verge of death; Kate comments, “Till death do us part.” He commends her for sacrificing herself to kill him, before also confessing that he killed her father, poisoned Love and started the fire to get rid of the evidence. It’s exactly what Kate was hoping for, recording the conversation and sending the voice memo to Nadia to share with the police.

Outside, Bronte calls Dom (Natasha Behnam) to tell her about Marienne and to apologize for getting lost in Joe. But before she can leave, she sees Mooney on fire. She goes inside, aiming to save Kate and Marienne, but the former is already gone. Joe thinks Bronte came to rescue him, saying that Kate tried to kill him and that he was defending himself. Thankfully, she doesn’t believe him this time, but she does manage to get him out.

He proposes to her outside of a burning Mooney’s. Wanting justice and answers, she says yes after determining she is the only person in the world who can stop him. She’s the hero of their story, and he’ll never see her coming.

All episodes of You season 5 are now streaming on Netflix.