Despite the length of Penn Badgley’s contract, it’s unlikely that “You” will be on air for more than five seasons.
“I think if there’s another season, I think it’s only going to be one,” the “Gossip Girl” star explained. “I know that everybody is concerned, from the top on down — nobody wants this show to become tired.”
The show has been a smash success, but it’s important to Badgley and creatives like Sera Gamble that “You” maintains its “intelligence,” as the actor described it. The showrunner and actor want to avoid taking the show past its natural conclusion.
“It was never anyone’s intention to run this one into the ground,” Gamble told The Hollywood Reporter. “When we’re done, we’ll be done. And we’ll pack it up. Even in the early conversations with Penn [Badgley], the idea was not to crank out episodes forever; it’s to feel like we have told the complete story.”
It was important to all the creative minds behind “You” that the series didn’t lose sight of its original point of view. Joe isn’t supposed to be a likable protagonist that can show up anywhere, like, say, Natasha Lyonne’s character in “Poker Face.” The intention for Joe was always to display his descent further and further into darkness, like Walter White in “Breaking Bad.”
“I feel like tonally, we’re very different and we are not trying to sell Joe as any kind of a hero with a straight face,” Gamble explained. “This is a show that is in the tradition of these single-lead shows with a guy who does increasingly bad things. The beautiful thing about it is that when his arc is complete, so is the show.”