Wow, the show is over

Euphoria is over.

Ruby Bennett. Dead. Euphoria. Season Three, Episode Eight. (HBO)

I want to state up top that this is not a reaction based in pure sentimentality.

That has to be said because, quite frankly, I do not want people to start writing screeds about how Euphoria is not a fairytale and addicts die of overdoses all the time. First off, Rue does not die from a regular overdose. Secondly, the reality of drug addiction is one I am very aware of and Rue’s often unhinged and aggressive behaviour in the throes of addiction is something that Levinson has always been praised for. The show is also over, meaning the character does not need to be alive anymore to facilitate future seasons. It is not the “what” that I have a problem with in this season finale, but the “how” that bothers me.

Let me start off with a few positives. Zendaya is, as always in this show, absolutely phenomenal. I really appreciated the final moments of her breathing, which really came full circle to how she described her drug use in the first season. It was a nice callback that was subtle enough that I think a lot of people will have missed it. The use of Angus Cloud via footage from Season One was sweet. Colman Domingo was very good, as always. Maude Apatow and Sydney Sweeney share a genuinely touching scene where they grapple with Rue’s death. Sweeney’s characterisation of Cassie as performing, even in this moment with her sister, is striking in it’s smallness. She’s done a lot of big comedy in this season, but it was nice to see a more nuanced take from her. Alexa Demie did a neat tumble.

That’s all.

In a wider sense, this season fails to do what it sets out to thematically. I’m talking about the sex stuff. Much like how season one saw teenagers as victims to hyper sexualisation due to online exposure to pornography and general predation (even as his own writing also sexualised these fictional children), this season sees basically all women as victims of contemporary sexual mores.

Depiction is not examination. While I applaud Levinson for his efforts, Euphoria never has the juice to make this lead to anything interesting. He mostly treats it as spectacle. It’s a very woke version of conservatism that both pities women doing sex work but also judges them for it. Jules especially is lost in this whole thematic vomit, mostly because her plot as no narrative to it. She starts the season where she ends. Her role is symbolic.

Cassie is sexually exploited by the masses, Jules by an individual, Maddy is doing the exploiting, and Lexi is terrified of sex. Nate is willing to let Cassie do what she must for money and live off that. She, in turn, loses out on a huge opportunity in traditional media because she is a sex worker. Alamo is trafficking his dancers, who are routinely raped like Kitty and discarded like Angel. Maddy must sleep with him as part of her debt, becoming a prize like the hunted animal heads on his wall. The show circles this point with startling clarity that you’d think it was getting somewhere. It never does. Cassie and Maddy end the series planning to have a content house of OnlyFans models, Jules is still a sugar baby, and Lexi is still a virgin who is now really into the Bible. Makes you think.

But then you have Rue, who is Levinson’s surrogate and thus immune from adverse sexualisation. Her job is to die and trigger the end sequence of the show. A shooting in a strip club, where there is no catharsis or horror. A utilitarian event that exists mostly to kill Alamo and save Maddy, allowing her a happy ending. One where she’s about to make a lot of money and there’s potential for a spin off. It’s too tidy and weirdly fantastical while also being unearned.

The death of Ruby Bennett is something that Euphoria has always been leading towards. An addict for almost half her life, Rue proved time and time again that she lacks a sense of self or any responsibility towards those who love her. She can see the problem, but does not have the ability in herself to fix it. Addiction is a hell of a disease and she had, in previous seasons, been completely driven by it. Except…she was apparently sober this whole season? She was working safely before the plot started. Her death is a revenge murder by Alamo that takes up a lot of time without doing much to set up what comes next. She dies because the plot demands it.

Conceptually, this is broadly an acceptable ending. Rue dying was heavily signposted, even if I thought it was all a red herring. Ali has been extremely attached to Rue as a surrogate daughter, so his response to her death (well, murder) being the catalyst of the episode is understandable. His decision to avenge her is an acceptable outcome, even if it’s a bit silly. Sam Levinson wrote this season as a Western, so the shootout is on brand for the genre.

But the problem is…Ali is not the main character of the show. We got backstory this season that did not unmake this fact. He’s also not Rue’s first, second, or third most important relationship that we have been shown. Ali was introduced to the show as a mentor figure, but primarily in the background. Their relationship is defined by suggestions of intimacy and not in onscreen dynamics.

Spending so much of the episode on his response is a necessity because of the ending, but unsatisfying for the audience. It is also weirdly poor writing. His backstory this season explicitly showed us that Rue is by no means the first young person to die under his sponsorship. His sudden rejection of religion is completely nonsensical and relies on a lot of unspoken pain that could have been better dealt with had Levinson given him more scenes earlier on in the season. Domingo is doing basically all of the heavy lifting to make this work.

Rue is the main character of the show and we spend basically no time on the rest of the ensemble actually responding to her death. We do not see her family or friends find out. There is no funeral. We get maybe five minutes of grief for her, as Maddy and Cassie are too busy to care. Main characters are apparently hard to find.

We get yet one scene of Jules, where Hunter Schaefer is silent, sad, and painting a portrait of Rue while her sugar daddy wanders behind in the background. It is astoundingly frustrating to watch. The scene is genuinely the worst thing the episode presents to the audience. Jules, who is a main character on technicality at this point, has been locked in her apartment and painting without purpose all season. She went outside twice. Her arc is giving up her autonomy for the sake of…nice furniture?

My assumption is that Levinson would argue that her ending makes sense, as Jules has always been a character that exists in response to Rue. Euphoria is Rue’s alone and we do not need to close out anyone’s arc with any particular grace. She and Rue ended their involvement with the slap, and Jules does not need closure beyond that. In return, I would call bullshit.

Maybe in the first season that excuse could fly, but by this point, the plot exists so far beyond it’s protagonist that Jules ending the show in this position is almost criminal. Euphoria was initially designed to structure episodes around what Rue would conceivably know. The show’s conceit was that everything was second hand gossip from an unreliable narrator. But we get so much of Cassie and Maddy this season that this basically collapses. Rue wouldn’t know about anything to do with the Nate plot, or his death, or the astounding amount of money owed to Alamo by Maddy at the end of the penultimate episode. Everything there is so neatly closed out by this finale for those characters that it makes Jules’ ending distractingly bad.

Jules was the heart of the show. Her plots in the first two seasons (even the mostly-bad second season) informed Rue’s struggles with addiction. They also allowed the show to contrast her own issues to a different kind of damaged teen. But something did shift in the second season, as Jules was slowly phased out to allow Cassie and her Nate-related drama to take up more space. As Rue’s plots became more dramatic and isolated from the rest of the cast, Levinson lost interest in the wider world that he had created. By this third season, Jules has become an aspirational icon for Rue and no longer a person. Which is interesting in theory, but abysmal in execution.

This season is hindered by Levinson’s conflicting instincts. It is about Rue’s final months alive. But he also wants to make the ultimate conservative takedown of the entertainment and pornography today. It does not managed to do either particularly well.

Euphoria got a mildly disappointing finale that is designed to leave the door open for a spin off. I doubt it will happen now. But if so, I hope that Sam Levinson gets a writer’s room who can help him streamline and focus his writing. This season of television had a lot of interesting ideas that should have been narrowed down and explored more deeply.

Let’s hope, when he comes back, it is with a little help.