After deciding to re-open Mooney’s, You season 5, episode 2 opens with Joe cleaning the bookstore up in preparation for its reopening as he reflects upon killing Uncle Bob – likening the moment to a rebirth.
The action then moves to Joe’s home, as he and Henry enjoy some breakfast burritos as Henry gets ready for school. As Henry leaves the room to get his things, the TV cuts to a story about Bob and Kate quickly turns it off. Before she heads out, she urges Joe to make sure he’s burned the pages of the story he wrote fantasizing about killing Bob so that they don’t come back to haunt him now that Bob has actually turned up dead. Joe assures her he’ll take care of things, but his inner monologue reveals he has no plans to destroy his works, which have been locked away, and we wouldn’t be surprised if this foreshadowed the pages finding themselves in the wrong hands.
Joe helps Bronte get settled into things at Mooney’s, and the two quickly get to chatting. Joe opens up about having once worked at the bookstore and shoots down many of Bronte’s assumptions about him including that he went to some expensive college. It’s clear Joe is walking a dangerous line, and things are getting a bit too flirty until Joe notices the bookshelf in front of the basement door has been moved.
He immediately questions Bronte, who claims she simply moved it while sweeping. Bronte asks about what’s behind the door. Joe brushes it off, saying it’s simply storage. Their conversation is cut short when Joe receives a call from Henry’s school about an altercation and must race off.
Joe and Kate arrive at the school, and Joe is ready to go to battle against Henry’s attacker… only to find out that it was Henry who started the fight, punching Reagan’s daughter, Gretchen. Dr. Val, the school psychologist at Baisley, begins to press for information about what could be behind Henry’s actions and then shifts the attention to Joe, pressing him about his past and whether he was exposed to violence as a child. Joe shuts things down as Dr. Val warns them both that while Henry is only suspended at the moment, he could very well be expelled depending on how things play out.
Back at Mooney’s, curiosity gets the best of Bronte, who opens the door and finds the locked metal door. With help from a YouTube tutorial, Bronte picks the lock, but before we learn whether she has the chance to explore the area, we hear Joe and Henry arriving and Bronte races to greet them. As Bronte makes conversation with Henry, she makes a few casual references to liking Baddies which Joe views as casual flirting, but she leaves the pair before things get too flirtatious.
Joe sits down with Henry and asks him about the fight with Gretchen, which seems to have been the result of Gretchen calling his mom a killer, something she overheard from Reagan. Henry asks Joe if there is any truth to what Gretchen said. Not wanting to expose Henry to the concept of murder too soon as he was, Joe tells Henry that his first mom loved him so much and was very sick which is why she’s not here with them before telling him that what Gretchen said was not true.
When Joe and Henry get home, Kate is getting ready for a dinner with Reagan and her husband in hopes of defusing Reagan’s rage. Joe fills Kate in on what Henry told him, and they decide to charm Reagan into submission.
As the night begins, Reagan arrives with her husband, Harrison, a former NFL player, and we quickly see Harrison attempt to defuse some of the tension in the room, much to Reagan’s displeasure. Before the group can move the party to the table, there’s another knock at the door. Enter Maddie and her date, Kenton, who have come at Reagan’s invitation for moral support. Funny enough, Kate has called in some reinforcements of her own as Teddy comes down to dinner, setting the stage for what is sure to be an awkward dinner party.
The family sits down for dinner, and Reagan wastes no time in addressing the elephant in the room. Kate begins by suggesting they all take a family trip to the Hamptons like they used to do when they were kids, before things got so tense. Maddie loves the idea, but Reagan isn’t having it making a comment about it being Kate’s home rather than the family home. Maddie suggests Kate pay for Reagan’s nose job, and Reagan says her other conditions are that Henry cannot go back to Baisley and requests Kate and Joe apologize for their shortcomings as parents. Kate caves and apologizes for both of them, but Joe has clearly set his sights on Reagan and we’re worried her time could be limited.
Back at Mooney’s, Bronte sneaks down to the basement where she comes across the glass container with the books – or the mecca as she calls it. She sneaks into the glass room and begins taking photos of the books, just as the door closes behind her. Realizing she’s locked in, Bronte begins to panic, and things go from bad to worse when she’s unable to get any cell signal in order to call for help.
An alert flashes across Joe’s phone as we return to the dining room, where Reagan pushes Joe for an apology of his own. He caves and offers up an apology, but when Reagan questions the sincerity of it, he calls her out for gossiping about Henry’s birth mom being a murderer in front of her daughter, who then used that to taunt Henry. Reagan tells the group she wasn’t talking about Love Quinn, but rather Katie, who she believes killed their Uncle Bob.
Much to Joe’s surprise, Teddy interjects and says Kate couldn’t have killed Uncle Bob, as he saw the footage and can confirm he took his own life. When Reagan asks to see the footage, Teddy says he deleted it, as no one should see it. So, what does Reagan want? She wants Kate to step down as CEO, and she makes it clear she’s coming for everything: Kate’s job, her son, and her entire family. The dinner party comes to an abrupt end when Henry comes running into the room, throwing a butter knife at Reagan before Joe kicks Reagan and the guests out.
After putting Henry to sleep, Kate and Joe talk through the Reagan-sized problem. Joe suggests talking to Reagan the same way he talked to Bob, but Kate shuts that down immediately as she notes there is no way they’re killing her sister, as it’s not who they are. Joe reminds her there is no line he wouldn’t cross to protect his family, to which Kate questions, where does it end? Joe says it ends when they’re safe, but Kate says they’ll go through lawyers. Kate wants to put Henry into therapy and Joe lashes out that this must actually be about him. He storms out of the room and finally sees the alert on his phone about the motion alert.
Joe heads to Mooney’s, where he finds Bronte trapped in the glass room. He questions her about why she came down to the room when he had explicitly told her not to. At first, she brushes it off as just curiosity, but then admits she was taking photos of books to send to a buyer in hopes that the money could get her out of debt and fund her play. He unlocks the door and tells her she’s fired. Before she leaves, she mentions that she read the pages of his story about the serial killer, but mentions the character has no backstory, flaws, or wounds. She tells Joe she knows he has more in him and questions what he’s hiding. As he lashes out about his real self, she says it’s nice to meet the real him as she leaves.
His conversation with Bronte inspires Joe to take things into his own hands as he concocts a plan to go after Reagan… and to also get better security for the basement door at Mooney’s. Kate, meanwhile, tells Teddy that she would like to nominate him for Bob’s board seat and thanks him for being in her corner, learning that he was apparently bluffing about the footage.
You season 5 episode 2 ending explained: Joe sets his sights on Reagan
At the office, Joe prepares to put his plan into motion, knowing that Reagan always stays late and is the last to leave. As Reagan grabs her speaker and some alcohol which she takes to Kate’s office, Joe prepares to make his move, only for a masked man to enter the office and attack Reagan. Just as Joe was about to step out to come to Reagan’s defense, the masked man took off his mask to reveal himself as Harrison. Turns out the two were engaging in a bit of role play. But Joe doesn’t let that stop him. When Harrison leaves to get some scissors, Joe hits Reagan over the head and then locks Harrison in the supply closet.
When Reagan awakens, she finds herself trapped in Joe’s glass cage in Mooney’s as we see Joe setting up the new security system with a pin code.
Bronte inspired Joe to continue writing. Joe calls her, and to her surprise, he not only offers her her job back, but he also offers her his old apartment. As he shows her the place, he can sense a change in Bronte which is when she mentions another callback in the form of Sherry and Cary Conrad’s book Caging, about how his ex-wife allegedly put them in a cage. Bronte comes clean that she does know about his life and that seeing the cage in the basement weirded her out. Joe claims that Love used his childhood trauma of being locked in the cage by Mr. Mooney as her inspiration, and Bronte accepts the job and apartment.
Joe realizes that he needs to be honest with Henry. He reassures him that Love loved Henry so much. He reminds Henry it’s not his job to protect them; that’s Joe’s job. Joe ends the conversation by realizing Kate was right and that getting Henry help wouldn’t be the worst thing to do.
Following the conversation with Henry, Kate tells Joe that she needs to be better for Henry; they both need to be the parents they didn’t have. She calls what they did to Bob a moment of weakness and makes it clear they need to do better. There is one thing she’s hung up on from their previous chat about Bob, and she asks Joe what he meant when he said he felt exhilarated when he handled Bob, which scared her. She asks Joe point-blank whether he was only doing this to protect them or if there is something else he can’t control.
Before Joe can reply, Kate gets a call from Reagan notifying her she’s pressing charges against Henry. Reagan makes it clear to Kate that she’s going to make her pay, but wait. How did Reagan get out of the glass cage?
Well, you can likely see where this is going. Joe races back to Mooney’s in a state of panic, wondering how she could have escaped. To his surprise, the door is still locked, so he heads down to the basement to see Reagan waiting there in the cage for him… only, it’s not Reagan, Joe grabbed, it’s her twin sister, Maddie. Turns out, Joe caged the wrong twin!