This article contains spoilers for the series finale. «"Euphoria"» .
From the first minutes of the series premiere «"Euphoria »"In 2019, it became clear that, no matter what happened, the series could only end in two ways: the lead character, Rue Bennett, a teenage drug addict played by Zendaya, would either finally quit drugs and embark on a path to sustainable recovery, or she would die.
After seven years (and just three seasons) of Sam Levinson's hit HBO series, the heartbreaking teen drama finally concluded Sunday night with its finale, "In God We Trust." Until the finale, HBO and Levinson had remained tight-lipped about whether it would be the end of the season or the series as a whole. After the finale revealed Rue's fate, it became clear: it would be the end of Rue and the end of a show that had endured much since its premiere—a pandemic, industry-wide strikes, and the tragic loss of a beloved actor when Angus Cloud died at age 25 from an accidental overdose in 2023—but remained, at its core, the same, which ultimately proved its undoing.
Levinson's choice regarding Roo's fate wasn't unexpected, given the significantly darker tone and visual style of season three. After all, «"Euphoria"» is a series about people struggling and failing to break their addictions. Despite the five-year time jump between seasons two and three, Rue begins season three struggling with addiction, which becomes even more difficult when she's thrust into the role of a drug mule and henchman for two feuding drug dealers. Maddie (Alexa Demie) becomes Cassie's (Sydney Sweeney) manager, who begins a lucrative but challenging career as an OnlyFans content creator when her marriage to Nate (Jacob Elordi) crumbles under the weight of his failed real estate venture, which has left him in massive debt to dangerous loan sharks. At this point, as if coming full circle, the girls, former best friends before their high school love triangle with Nate drove them apart, find themselves in a dynamic very similar to their high school days, where Maddie's intelligence and her trust in Cassie clash with the blonde's increasingly absurd stupidity and selfishness. And then there are the other characters, who haven't changed much from previous seasons because in this final episode, they simply don't do much. they do . Lexi (Maude Apatow) remains ambitious and diligent in her quest to become a great Hollywood producer and screenwriter. Jules (Hunter Schafer), Rue's former lover, appears only a few times on the show as a failed artist (who produces comically bad work throughout the series) and the kept woman of a wealthy married man who is indifferent to her only as a means of satisfying his desire to have sex with transgender women.
Oddly enough, one of the characters who has undergone the most significant changes this season compared to its first incarnation is the severely toothless Nate, who dies a horrific death in the penultimate episode, bitten by a rattlesnake after being set upon by bloodthirsty thugs he owes money to. A failed attempt to prevent this death brings Cassie closer to Maddie, while Maddie becomes increasingly beholden to Alamo (Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje), a drug-dealing pimp and strip club owner who has employed Rue for much of the season. In the finale, Alamo is ultimately responsible for Rue's fate: after learning that Rue was informing on him to the feds—she was implicated in aiding the DEA—he arranges her murder. After Ru successfully evaded capture by the Drug Enforcement Administration, Alamo, aware of her long-standing struggle with drug addiction, offers her Percocet to treat her injuries. "I used to love those pills," Ru says before taking them.
If «"Euphoria"» If "Season 1" ended here, it would already foreshadow the inevitable ending. Viewers know what happens every time Rue relapses: each time it brings her closer to death than the last. But what happens in this episode is an emotional farewell to Angus Cloud, in which Rue attempts to reconnect with Cloud's character, Fezko, whose absence was explained by the character's incarceration. But it feels wrong because it's not: it's all a dream, brought on by a drug high that causes Rue to die midway through the finale. She's found by her sponsor, Ali (Colman Domingo), who's been letting her live on his couch. Ali tests the pills left behind by Rue's body and discovers that Alamo deliberately laced them with fentanyl. In the series' final moments, Ali kills Alamo and then travels to rural Texas to visit the religious family Rue was staying with at the beginning of the season. Rue fell in love with the family's peaceful life, which she attributed, at least in part, to their faith in God. Ali introduces himself to the family by his real name, Martin McQueen, and says a prayer before family dinner, imagining a smiling Rue sitting across the table from him.
Taken out of context, it might have seemed a fitting way for Rue to die and a way for her mentor to honor her memory. (And it was certainly a joy to see Domingo show off his immense acting chops as Ali, who grieve Rue's death—another Emmy-caliber performance from a guest star. «Euphoria» .) But the way events unfold after Rue's death left me—and many other viewers, judging by the reaction on social media—indifferent. The main character «"Euphoria »" doesn't receive a funeral or even any meaningful commemoration beyond a brief conversation between sisters Lexi and Cassie and one obscure (and, again, poorly executed) painting from Jules. When Lexi expresses guilt over Rue's death, Cassie counters that it was practically inevitable. That may be true—looking back, I can't recall a single moment after the first season when viewers had reason to believe Rue would survive the series and maintain her sobriety—but to hear it like that in the universe of "« Euphoria »" , without much surprise or emotion, was like a slap in the face. What a disrespect to the beating heart of the show to offer such a one-sided plot that its ending was so predetermined that it didn't even need to be properly mourned. Ultimately, the suggestion that Rue's life apparently meant little to anyone who tried so hard to protect her is a fundamental failure., most the fundamental failure of the series.
It is this failure that ruins the long-awaited ending. «"Euphoria »"In many ways, all the characters have met their likely end. However, rather than being narratively and thematically satisfying, it feels more like the result of stagnation. Perhaps it was too much to ask for Rue, who spent the entire season pondering the existence of God and religion while trying to find a new way to live, to escape before her past mistakes finally caught up with her. But after seven years of watching these characters struggle with the demons that haunt them, I'm left wondering: what was it all for? Once upon a time «"Euphoria"» It promised some kind of euphoric pleasure. Afterwards, we get only emptiness.