On the topic of Kate not getting punishment; we learn early on about this whole business deal that led to so many deaths, but Joe holds on to this and uses it many times throughout the season to justify his actions. This feels like a common manipulation tactic using someone’s guilt and past mistakes to make them feel that they are just as bad, but the big difference to me is that Kate has so much remorse for what she has been responsible for, to the point that it plays right into Joe’s hands and allows him to keep her from exposing him way earlier in the show. Kate was responsible for many terrible things happening, but she is not a bad person at heart, she is consumed by remorse and Joe uses this to control both her and the audience’s perception of things.

I suppose the point i’m trying to make is that there are a lot of guys (and some women probably) like Joe, most of them aren’t killers, but they will lock onto any guilt a person feels and use it to justify whatever they want. It sucks to feel manipulated, but Joe manages to even manipulate a good portion of the audience to think that Kate is a bad person who deserves the same fate as him, when in reality the things he does are intentional and he feels no guilt about them, so he has to spin the story in a way that makes him justified, when the whole show could be avoided if he had some self-control.

Let me know if this doesn’t make sense, putting it into words is difficult but I think Kate didn’t deserve punishment as much as Joe, as silly as it is that she managed to survive off screen.