‘Euphoria’ Wraps Up In Emotional Season 3 Finale, with a Major Character Death

Warning: This article contains heavy spoilers for Euphoria Season 3, Episode 8.

All that fans have done throughout the run of Euphoria Season 3 is rightfully bemoan how much the show has changed. It’s not the same without Labrinth’s score, and all the main characters’ storylines have taken such wild twists and turns that it’s become hard to invest in them. “This isn’t the Euphoria we knew and loved,” we all seemed to say in unison.

But in all of this, Colman Domingo’s Ali has kept the show grounded to its emotional core and reminds us that it’s still about Rue’s battle with addiction. Euphoria’s finale brings us back there, albeit with the theatrics that Sam Levinson just couldn’t resist sprinkling throughout the season.

Rue (Zendaya) has narrowly escaped death countless times this season. And at the beginning of Episode 8, she does it again. As Faye (Chloe Cherry) wakes neo-Nazi Wayne (Toby Wallace) up, Rue takes a wrench to his knee and runs out. She’s briefly pursued by Harley (James Landry Hébert) on horseback and gets injured when he gets her with a lasso, but manages to get away when G (Marshawn Lynch) shoots Harley in the shoulder.

At Alamo’s (Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje) ranch, Rue receives praise for bringing back the contents from Laurie’s (Martha Kelly) safe: not the cash that she’d stolen from the Silver Slipper, but the IDs of missing people (which implies that Laurie was engaged in human trafficking). As a treat, Alamo gives Rue a week off and a bottle of Percocet to deal with the pain from her injuries.

Which Characters Die in the Euphoria Season 3 Finale?

In Mexicali, former Silver Slipper manager Eddy (Kadeem Hardison) and Mitch (Daeg Faerch), one of Laurie’s guys, are picking up drugs to deliver in a van disguised as an ambulance. Having stored the drugs under the van’s flooring, they pick up dancers Kitty (Anna Van Patten) and Christina (Amelia Hammer Harris) from a cosmetic clinic. Mitch goes into the clinic for the paperwork. When he returns to the van, he notices that his Coke bottle is no longer in the cup holder, but dismisses it.

As the van crosses the border, Wayne loads up on painkillers (after taking a wrench to the knee) at Laurie’s house, but ends up in the bathroom. Faye says, “I told you they were laxatives,” and the two figure out that their cartel has been set up.

The van arrives, trailed by several police vehicles and a helicopter. Faye and Wayne manage to escape on horseback, and Laurie seems to get away as well, only to climb to the rooftop and hang herself from it. As the rest of the cartel is arrested, Eddy, noticeably not handcuffed like everyone else, tells DEA agent Jimenez (Hemky Madera) that he’s quitting, revealing that he’s also an informant.

Meanwhile, Rue has crashed at Ali’s house to recover from her injuries. The next day, Ali wakes up and finds a healthier-looking Rue watching the news in his living room. They see that Fez has escaped from prison, and a jumpy Rue heads out to find him. She drives to her town, East Highland, and goes to the convenience store Fez used to run, now abandoned. As she drives through the suburbs, she imagines reuniting with Fez, and gets a flashback to seeing Jules (Hunter Schafer) for the first time, on her bike, just like in the show’s pilot episode. At this point, I’m starting to cry, mourning the show that Euphoria used to be.

Rue makes her way home, climbing into her bedroom through the window, and finds her mother, Leslie (Nika King) in the living room. Zendaya does a good job of making Rue look more like the teenager we met at the beginning of the series. Mother and daughter embrace, but the scene is interspersed with shots of Rue lying down and reaching a hand up to the sky, gasping for breath, and other shots of Rue’s dead father hugging her.

Ali wakes up again in the same pajamas and sees Rue lying on his couch, as if to imply that the previous scene was only a dream sequence. But as he comes to wake her, he finds her unresponsive and pale. We’ve seen Rue recover from an overdose before and resolve to get off drugs before. Surely, this has to be another one of those moments, I think as I watch. But Rue stays still as Ali feels for a pulse. And when he feels nothing, he asks God to bring her peace.

The Percocet bottle is as full as when Rue took it, so we know she didn’t die from an overdose; she died because Alamo gave her fentanyl to kill her. Ali confirms this using a Defent test kit, calls Leslie to tell her the news, and writes Rue’s name in his notebook, which he uses to memorialize all his young sponsees.

At a Narcotics Anonymous meeting two months later, Ali admits that he’s “tired of talking to kids, helping kids, pouring my fucking heart and soul into kids, only to not see them get a second chance.” He also says it’s his last meeting, and comes home to saw the bayonet off of a shotgun.

How Does It End for Maddy, Cassie, and Ali?

In the wake of Nate’s death, Maddy (Alexa Demie) and Cassie (Sydney Sweeney) now have to figure out how to pay Alamo, who helped them get rid of the loan shark Naz. They make plans to have their own influencer house for OnlyFans models, and Cassie tries to recruit Lexi (Maude Apatow) as their “storyteller.” The Howard sisters have a moment, grieving for Rue and Nate (even though Cassie claims that Nate has only gone missing).

Meanwhile, Maddy gets in Bishop’s (Darrell Britt-Gibson) car with an envelope of cash in her bag. They go to the Silver Slipper, where Alamo takes her to a private room and admits that he wants to live the “American dream” with her, which to him means white picket fences and four babies.

Ali walks into the strip club in a formal military uniform and asks for the manager. G emerges from the office, gun in his pocket, to confront Ali. When asked how Rue died, G says she “OD’d,” which we know by now is a lie. As G gets up, Ali shoots him in the crotch and calls for Alamo.

The drug kingpin emerges from the private room, takes a revolver from Bishop, and challenges Ali to a duel. The mechanics are that Kitty would roll a champagne bottle down the bar, and the two men would have to wait for it to fall off the edge and shatter before they raise their guns and shoot.

Alamo, intending to win the duel, raises his pistol before the bottle even falls, but when he pulls the trigger, nothing comes out. As he figures out that the chamber is empty, the bottle falls, and Ali shoots him three times, killing him. Bishop reveals that he had taken the bullets out and leaves the club with Maddy.

In the last scene of the entire show, Ali heads to the crunchy conservative homestead that hosted Rue in Episode 1, and which she said she would move into when she paid off her debts. The family’s religious eldest daughter, Daisy (Jessica Treska), who fans speculated had developed a crush on Rue, is saddened to hear about Rue’s death. At dinner, Ali says grace, just like Rue did in Episode 1, and sees her sitting across the table, smiling. The credits roll on a shot of the farm as the sun sets, American flag waving. For the first time this entire season, Hans Zimmer’s score hits me emotionally as I realize that the episode was missing Rue’s narration. 

With the release of Episode 8, HBO confirmed that Euphoria has come to a close. But Euphoria, all three seasons and 26 episodes, are still available to stream on HBO Max.

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