Warning: Spoilers ahead.
When the teasers and trailers for Euphoria Season 3 came out, fans speculated that Maddy Perez (Alexa Demie) would pimp out her ex-best friend Cassie Howard (Sydney Sweeney) as revenge for stealing her ex-boyfriend Nate Jacobs (Jacob Elordi) in Season 2. It turns out that the fans guessed right: in Episode 2 of Season 3, everyone’s engaged in sex work in some way, either as the exploiter or the exploited.
Maddy is the former. She started in talent management by managing an influencer named Katelyn, who looks suspiciously like Cassie. She convinces Katelyn to start doing pinup shoots, sells the photos, and eventually sets her up with TV actor Dylan Reid (Homer Gere). Her work leads to Cassie reaching out, asking for career advice and forgiveness.
Even though Maddy “forgives” her, Cassie is unable to tell that she still harbors a grudge and may be out to exploit her. Rue even says it in her narration: “Cassie was exactly the kind of girl you’d dream of signing. Beautiful, but directionless. So desperate for attention she’s willing to humiliate herself.”
Cassie’s work as a pinup model is a headache for Nate and disturbing even to her new friend Heather (Jessica Blair Herman), who is appalled by Cassie dressing up as an “adult baby” for her creepy followers.
“It’s a whole subculture,” she explains, but it doesn’t make Heather and her husband any less horrified.
At a gathering that Nate throws to sweet-talk his friends into investing in his construction business, he is confronted by a friend about Cassie’s work. In turn, he tells her to delete her OnlyFans account, which she agrees to on the condition that he pays for the $50,000 flower arrangements for their wedding. Nate relents in the presence of his friends, afraid to appear frugal or broke.
What no one else knows is that Nate is a little short on cash because he couldn’t get a meeting with the state planning and zoning board for a project. He also owes a man named Naz $550,000, but where the debt came from, we have yet to find out.
Finally, a ‘RULES’ Reunion
Speaking of debts, Rue Bennett (Zendaya) has been saved from her debt to drug lord Laurie (Martha Kelly). Last episode established that Rue owed her $100,000. In Episode 2, drug kingpin and pimp Alamo Brown (Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje) descends into Rue’s life like a deus ex machina, paying off her debt and offering her a way out of Laurie’s grip. On the other hand, Rue says, “I couldn’t shake the feeling that I had made a deal with the devil. But at least I was free.”
Now, she’s a manager at his strip club, Silver Slipper (“Fully nude. Always lewd,” says the marquee). The work entails everything from cleaning toilets to handing out drugs to the dancers, who then sell to club patrons. One of these dancers is Angel (Priscilla Delgado), to whom Rue takes an interest in the absence of her high school sweetheart, Jules Vaughn (Hunter Schafer).
Angel is upset over the death of her best friend Tish, the dancer who died of an overdose in Episode 1. When Angel spirals into grief and addiction, Alamo makes a show of benevolence, offering to pay for her time in rehab. But we already know that he isn’t a good man, and when Rue takes Angel to rehab, we get the feeling that things are not what they seem.
The facility’s receptionist is inattentive, preoccupied with a mobile game. She only briefly asks them, “You’re with Alamo?” before she calls in an orderly to take Angel in. Rue, who has been in and out of rehab, gets suspicious as the receptionist tells her there are no forms to fill out, but brushes it off and drives away.
And with her fling out of the picture, our protagonist goes back to Los Angeles to meet Jules, who had gone to art school.
She and Rue come up to her apartment in a high-rise, which is furnished sleek and modern. Rue, still dressed like a lesbian dirtbag, looks very out of place, but Jules fits right in: tall, in a silken robe, slinking against a tan lounge chair and lit under an expensive-looking lamp. This is all, we find out, paid for by her sugar daddy, a married man.
Throughout the episode, it becomes clear that the narrative is mocking Cassie and other influencers-turned OnlyFans models. Other characters in this line of work are treated with a little more grace: Angel and the other strippers are just trying to make ends meet, and Jules talks about her own sugar daddy arrangement with some shame, as if she knows she could be in a better place.
But the show also leers at its women. There are close-up shots of coke on Angel’s breasts, melted ice cream on Cassie’s, and Katelyn spreading her legs out for the camera. I’m aware that depiction doesn’t equal endorsement. But one wonders what else writer-director Sam Levinson is doing this for, if not for shock value, because he seems confused about what he wants to say about sex work and women. Maybe this will all be clearer in the episodes to come. For now, Levinson is on rapidly thinning ice.
Euphoria Season 3 is currently streaming on HBO Max.
