Warning: spoilers ahead.
It isn’t easy to humiliate Sydney Sweeney’s Cassie Howard — or Mrs. Jacobs, as we should now call her. In the first two episodes of Euphoria Season 3, she appears oblivious to the judgmental looks of her peers, from Maddy (Alexa Demie) giving her a once-over as she makes subtle digs at Cassie’s tastelessness, to Heather’s (Jessica Blair Herman) disgust when she sees photos of her dressed as a baby for OnlyFans. But in Episode 3, Cassie’s ongoing humiliation ritual (in the hands of writer-director Sam Levinson) reaches its peak in a wedding night gone horribly wrong.
But before the wedding, the episode starts with a glance at Jules’ (Hunter Schafer) life. To recall, she has dropped out of art school, finding it more profitable to be a sugar baby. Of all the men she’s met, she sticks to Ellis, a married man whose wife knows of his “proclivities,” which apparently include cling wrap bondage.
Rue (Zendaya), now also an arms dealer, lets her new boss Alamo Brown (Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje) know that she wants to go “legit” someday, but he and his aide Bishop (Darrell Britt-Gibson) only laugh at the idea. As they discuss Rue’s future, the pig that Alamo had sent Laurie (Martha Kelly) last episode is sent back to the Silver Slipper. He shoots it for making a mess in the strip club, and then plans to retaliate with another count of animal cruelty, this time targeting Laurie’s beloved pet cockatoo, Paladin.
The next day, Rue invites Jules to be her plus-one at Cassie and Nate’s wedding. Jules is hesitant to attend, given her history with Nate (Jacob Elordi) and his father, Cal (Eric Dane), but accepts the invitation.
Cassie’s been fighting for expensive flower arrangements at her wedding since Episode 1. To her credit, the flowers looked like they did cost $50,000, not because they were pretty, but because there were so much of them, from the archways to the hedges and the petal-covered aisle.
I’m not one to judge how good a wedding is, because I believe they should be done the way the bride and groom want them to be. That said, this one’s a mess.
In attendance are Rue, Jules, Maddy, and their high school friend BB (Sophia Rose Wilson), aka “Vape Girl.” Even the disgraced Cal is on the registry — the sex offender registry, that is, after he reveals to Jules that he had slept with another minor after her, all those years ago.
Nightmare Wedding
At the reception, funeral mogul and loan shark Naz (Jack Topalian) shows up uninvited, reminding Nate he “owes a lot of people money.” This spurs a series of confrontations between Nate and Cassie, Cassie and Heather, and then Heather and her husband Fred (Justin Sintic), who’s invested in Nate’s construction business.
Nate reveals to Fred that his latest project was halted after his workers ran into some endangered flowers at the construction site. But Nate also assures him that a meeting with the state zoning board will solve their problems and that he could pay off his debt to Naz.
During the most gauche first dance I have ever seen (with a lot of twerking, gyrating, and lap-dancing), she tearfully tells Nate, “I don’t wanna be poor.” When they get home later on, the newlyweds are assaulted by one of Naz’s men. As Nate is dragged up and down their spiral staircase, beaten to a pulp, and tortured with pliers, Cassie laments, “I’m bleeding! This is my wedding night!” I don’t think she’s cried this much since Maddy found out about her and Nate in Season 2.
Meanwhile, Rue has ditched the party to pick up drugs from Laurie’s place with Bishop. There, the latter secretly places a pill in Paladin’s water bowl, which would eventually kill the poor bird, unbeknownst to Laurie and her family. The drug lord, on the other hand, asks Rue if she’d like to come back and work for her, but Rue says she’s happy working for Alamo. Laurie replies, “Remember, the grass is always greener by the septic tank.”
On the way home, Rue is followed by a car, and the audience wonders for a minute if it’s Laurie attempting to kidnap her. But the blue and red emergency lights come on, and in the episode’s final moments, Rue is pulled over by an officer of the Drug Enforcement Administration.
Speaking of nights to remember, HBO Max Philippines heralded the return of the hit series with “Euphoria Nights” on April 17 at Shooting Gallery Studios, Makati. The party teased the new season with a desert-themed photobooth and decorations, but also nodded to past seasons with neon lights, a room set up to look like Fezco’s convenience store (from which guests were free to take liters of soda and snacks), and a glam area complete with a generous supply of rhinestones and body glitter for guests to use. Unlike Cassie and Nate’s wedding, however, this party was a blast from start to finish, with a surprise performance by IV of Spades and a pop-driven DJ set by Butta B.
Next week, the show returns with Episode 4, marking a halfway point in the season. Euphoria Season 3 is currently streaming on HBO Max.
