Warning: This recap contains spoilers.
We’re down to the last three episodes of Euphoria Season 3, and it’s at this point that showrunner Sam Levinson finally gives us a welcome break from the show’s fatiguing violence and absurdity. Last episode, we saw Cassie (Sydney Sweeney) turn into a giantess wreaking havoc on Hollywood, while Rue (Zendaya) got yet another close call with death. Episode 6 gives us more hope for these two protagonists.
It starts with a flashback to the 1970s, when a con by Alamo Brown’s (Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje) mother (Danielle Deadwyler) inspires a young Alamo to resolve never to be fooled by anyone ever again. In the present, Rue manages to stop him from beating her with a polo mallet by calling Faye (Chloe Cherry), the getaway driver in Episode 4’s robbery), and asking for a photo of the key to Laurie’s (Martha Kelly) vault. The vault key is with Faye’s boyfriend Wayne (Toby Wallace), one of Laurie’s workers and a dirtbag neo-Nazi who wants to have “fair-skinned babies” with Faye.
And no, I’m not just throwing “neo-Nazi” around; this man has a Nazi Army General’s visor cap and an alarming interest in eugenics. He even tattoos a swastika onto Faye’s lower back. So maybe Levinson isn’t quite done with his edgelordism, after all.
Faye is hesitant to take a photo of the vault key, which she knows will be used by Alamo to steal his money back, but she’s persuaded when Rue invokes their good mutual friend Fez and promises her a cut of the cash.
Meanwhile, Rue warns Maddy (Alexa Demie) about making deals with Alamo. Maddy insists that she’s a “big girl” and can protect herself. It looks like Maddy isn’t in any trouble anyway, even though Alamo doesn’t take it well when she suggests that he give his dancers, Kitty (Anna Van Patten) and Magick (Rosalía), a day off.
“Do I look like a wet pussy?” Alamo asks his right-hand man, Bishop (Darrell Britt-Gibson), who says no. “Then why do I feel like everybody’s trying to fuck me?”
Bishop says, “There are people trying to fuck you. I don’t know if Maddy Perez is one of them,” suggesting that he may know something about Rue working undercover for the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA).
Finally, A Little Bit of Heart
Laurie and Alamo meet up at his ranch for a peace treaty, working out a deal to have one of Alamo’s men carry eighty kilos of Laurie’s drugs. Rue catches the conversation on her phone for the DEA agents to hear. They assure her that when they eventually bust Alamo and Laurie, the U.S. attorney general will “look favorably” on her case.
At Jules’ (Hunter Schafer) place, Rue suggests that they start a new life together, reflecting on the root of her anxiety and depression, and saying, “I have to live for something greater than myself.” Jules, however, rejects Rue, as she’s happy with the life she has now.
Later on, while she waits for a keysmith to finish the duplicate key to Laurie’s safe, Rue sits in a church and gets a call from her mother — the real Leslie, played by Nika King, and not the DEA agents hiding in her contacts under the name “Mom.”
Previous seasons of Euphoria were showered with emotional scenes that gave the show heart. This season has been so depraved and so rife with nonsense that it’s hard to connect with any of its protagonists. By the end of Episode 5, I was sure that I no longer cared if Rue died this season, because she’s had it coming.
But during her phone call with Leslie, Rue says she’s looking for redemption and salvation. “I don’t really wanna be stuck with all the mistakes I’ve made,” she tells her mother, before promising to visit her soon. When Rue tearfully says she wants to start over, Zendaya’s performance brings the viewer back to Euphoria’s first two seasons, which were more grounded in reality and focused on Rue navigating teenage relationships as she flip-flopped in and out of addiction.
The show really could have concluded with Rue going sober at the end of Season 2, but now it seems Levinson is blindly feeling for a reason to keep her storyline going, and he landed on the emotional beats that got us to care about Rue and her peers in the first place.
Road to Redemption
Cassie has also been difficult to empathize with, being a vapid OnlyFans model who sees sex work as liberating for women but also advocates for male power. But in Episode 6, the narrative, after continuously punishing Cassie for her MAGA-fication, finally treats her with some humanity.
During a shoot for the fictional soap drama L.A. Nights, Cassie, who’s bagged the role of “Job Applicant,” gets lost in the script after actor Dylan Reid’s (Homer Gere) line, “The honeymoon’s over,” sends her into a bit of a panic. To recall, it’s the same thing loan shark Naz (Jack Topalian) told her when he terrorized her and Nate (Jacob Elordi) on their wedding night.
She goes wildly off-script, saying that Nate going broke and getting tortured is the price she has to pay for betraying her best friend. But Dylan and the showrunners think she’s improvising. Producer Patty Lance (Sharon Stone) decides to make Job Applicant a recurring character on L.A. Nights, on the condition that Cassie deletes her OnlyFans account. Cassie does so, albeit with some reluctance.
Her sister Lexi doesn’t take this news well, having harbored resentment for her sister. But a door finally also opens for Lexi, who’s been toiling as Patty’s assistant, when her boss tells her to “take a stab” at writing a storyline for Job Applicant. At the apartment complex, Lexi’s friend Gillie (Gideon Adlon) suggests that Lexi kill off Cassie’s character in the show. “If someone doesn’t die periodically, people get bored,” Gillie says. Is this a premonition, Sam Levinson?
While this happens, a deliveryman drops off a package at Cassie’s apartment. In it, she finds a note that says, “Answer the phone” — something she earlier exclaimed as she called Nate, hoping to get his advice on deleting her OnlyFans account. Under the note, she also finds Nate’s severed ring finger.
Meanwhile, Nate is at the construction site, throwing a tantrum. With his four-toed foot, he crushes the endangered flowers that have put his project on an indefinite halt and rendered him broke. Naz’s guy approaches him, ready to torture him again, but before we see him potentially lose another limb, the show cuts to Rue sliding Alamo the duplicate key.
Alamo orders Rue to retrieve his stolen cash, and Bishop further hints at knowing that Rue is hiding something: “You never really know a motherfucker’s true intentions.” This bothers Rue, but she’s resolved to make things even with Alamo. Duplicate key in hand, she drives through the desert at night, listening to Bible passages on the car stereo, which breaks mid-reading.
As she tries to fix it, she nearly drives into a truck and sends her off-road. With the engine bay smoking, she gets out of the car, and finds (or hallucinates) before her a burning Joshua tree. Is this God in the burning bush, and is Rue Moses?
EuphoriaSeason 3 is currently streaming on HBO Max.
