What makes a murderer? And how can you tell them apart from everyone else? These sinister questions form the basis of “You,” the Netflix thriller series that shot to popularity following its Season 1 debut in September 2018. Now, nearly seven years later, the series’ fifth and final season brings murderous leading man Joe Goldberg, played by Penn Badgley (“Gossip Girl”), back to the New York City bookshop where it all began.

“You” Season 5 premieres Thursday, April 24, on Netflix.

Both true crime and human psychology have been hugely popular topics of public interest for centuries, but the rise of film, television and podcast culture has had a lasting impact on the way society views some of our most frightening peers — whether real or fictional.

Author Caroline Kepnes capitalized on this morbid interest when she wrote her first novel, “You,” in 2014, despite then being completely unaware that it would later be translated into 19 languages while spawning three sequels and a fiveseason Netflix series starring Badgley, one of TV’s biggest smallscreen darlings.

Badgley, who had completed his five-year run as studious hunk Dan Humphrey on the massively successful teen drama “Gossip Girl” just six years earlier, would explore a career in cinema by way of films such as “Parts Per Billion” (2014), “The Paper Store” (2016) and “Cymbeline” (2014) before ultimately returning to television in 2017 when he was cast as the psychopathic lead in the Netflix adaptation of Kepnes’ acclaimed novel.

The novel — and subsequently the TV series’ first season — follows bookstore employee Joe Goldberg, a charming and well-read young New Yorker with a troubling outlook on love who grows obsessed with budding author Guinevere Beck (played in Season 1 by “Ordinary Joe” actress Elizabeth Lail).

Driven by his untamed “love” for her, Joe tracks her every move through the city, arranging “chance” encounters and ultimately forcing a relationship by any means possible. Determined to have the supposed love of his life by his side forever, Joe’s passion sees him go to extreme lengths to secure Beck’s loyalty to him.

Now four seasons and three big “loves” later, Joe is married and moving back to New York from London, where Season 4 took place.

“Every season they manage to find new space to make it interesting and relevant,” Badgley told Netflix’s Tudum while filming the series’ fifth and final season. “I think somehow coming back to where it started allowed for it to just become grounded in the way that it needs to also have this kind of spectacular finish.”

Based on press details released by Netflix, the “epic” fifth season was always expected to be “You’s” last. Because of this, expectations will be high for the finale, and fans of the show are likely to be split in their desire to see Joe brought to justice for his numerous grisly crimes.

“We always said that we would stop after five and [that], in a perfect world, we would bring Joe back home to New York,” co-showrunner/executive producer Michael Foley (“How to Get Away with Murder”) told Netflix Tudum.

“We loved the idea of things coming full circle for him. We’re excited by the fact that Joe came home as such a different person than [who] we saw in Season 1. At the core of our final story for Joe is this dichotomy of the old and the new.”

As for the plot of the series’ final 10 episodes, Netflix has set the scene three years after Joe and his wife, Kate (Charlotte Ritchie, “Call the Midwife”), left the U.K. for New York. We learn that Joe has purchased Mooney’s bookstore — the site of his meet-cute and final showdown with Beck — with some of the ample funds he has accrued by virtue of his marriage into the affluent Lockwood family. With Kate now in the role of CEO of Lockwood Corporation, “Joe is her loyal husband who has been dubbed Prince Charming by the adoring public, and they’re both following through on their pact to help each other do good” (per Netflix).

“But as the teaser hints, and longtime followers of the misadventures of Joe Goldberg can guess, reconciling who Joe has been with who he wants to be is an ongoing project,” the Netflix synopsis continues. “Joe will not only cross paths with a young woman, played by Madeline Brewer [“The Handmaid’s Tale”], who makes him reconsider his affluent life, but will also contend with his wife[‘s] ... siblings.”

“All the other seasons, [Joe]’s been really under the radar,” coshowrunner/executive producer Justin W. Lo (“Parenthood”) told Tudum, adding, “That’s how he is able to move from season to season and place to place: because of his anonymity. Now that he is well known in New York, social media is on him. That’s something fun for us to explore.”

Season 5 of “You” co-stars Griffin Matthews (“The Flight Attendant”), Anna Camp (“Pitch Perfect,”

2012), Natasha Behnam (“The Girls on the Bus”), Pete Ploszek (“Captain Marvel,” 2019), Nava Mau (“Baby Reindeer”), stage actor Tom Francis (Hope Mill Theatre’s “Rent,” 2020) and the mononymous b (“Station 19”).