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Atitle of the series finale, I didn’t think there was much Euphoria could do to surprise me. Since the third season of the HBO drama that took its story five years after a group of teenagers graduated from high school, Sam Levinson’s brainchild has created a series of impressive performances. From Cassie (Sydney Sweeney) cosplaying as a dog and making tons of money on OnlyFans, to Nate (Jacob Elord) having his fingers and toes cut off before being buried alive, and Jules (Hunter Schafer) being drowned in plastic by his sugar daddy, the last eight episodes demand our attention in a media environment where the same thing is more valuable than anything else.
But when I watched the last episode, it also gave something I didn’t expect. The 88-minute finale served as a stand-alone film, without biblical references. Until he finished with the last words: “God bless us all.” The sudden settling into a dull, star-studded scene suggests a disorganized show that, until the last minute, isn’t quite sure what it wants to tell us. As a moral lesson, it falls flat. However, looking deeper, there is something more complicated going on.
On the face of it, the final version of Euphoria had everything you could hope for. There were shocking and gruesome deaths, starting with Laurie (Martha Kelly), a monotone drug boss who hangs herself by jumping out of a house when the feds show up to arrest her. Until now, we have not been sure if the gentle queen of horror feels anything, but in the end we see that her biggest fear is losing her freedom. (It’s ironic, considering he’s spent his life incarcerating drug addicts in a prison of addiction.)
Then we see the most important moment of all. After surviving several near-death experiences – including the final opening of the Western season, in which she is captured by a man on horseback – Rue (Zendaya) succumb to a fentanyl-related overdose. The ending is unclear for a man who has struggled with bad habits since we met him as a teenager. Ironically, Rue’s death occurs 45 minutes into the 88-minute ending, leaving the show without a director and narrator. In his absence, the baton is passed to Ali (Colman Domingo), Rue’s assistant and mentor.
Him being the voice of the last episode of the show is odd, to say the least, because he was just a side character. In comparison, Jules – the person who shared so much with Rue – is not acknowledged, except when he quietly paints a picture of Rue while her sugar daddy makes coffee. Cassie, whose sexiest desire to be online has to be controlled information about the weather, is also downloaded.
This shows Euphoria’s biggest problem last season: that it wasn’t sure what it wanted to be. Levinson was very successful in combining footage from the show and examining how young people are being programmed by an algorithm to engage in extreme behavior. But his idea of setting up a war between drug lords Laurie and Alamo (Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje) made the show feel like a gangster movie. It was hard to see what he was trying to say when we were dragged into the shots like Tarantino.
In that sense, the ending was a suitably messy ending. After Rue’s death, we spend about 30 minutes at the Alamo club, where Ali shows up in a military uniform to avenge Rue’s death. And it’s not that each of these scenes doesn’t work individually – the rivalry between Alamo and Ali was fun – but together it felt like being told a story by a drunken man who just misses details and repeats himself and skips ahead to the big things. This style works in club smoking areas, but it’s very difficult HBO drama. While Domingo’s performance was amazing, I would have liked to have learned how Jules felt about Rue’s death, or spent more time with Maddy and Cassie. It felt like a disappointing, machismo-inspired ending to a show that has always emphasized relationships between girls.
The religious motifs were not what I expected from a show that, especially in its last season, has focused on a group of young people who have stopped pretending that they have any agenda of value beyond making money. But maybe that’s the point? One of the loudest voices, Ali he says that “everyone” is involved in Rue’s fentanyl overdose, from the government to shipping companies, dock workers, cartels, chefs, corrupt police officers, government officials, non-profits, lawyers and politicians. There’s a parallel here with the internet frenzy we’ve seen Cassie and Maddy do with OnlyFans, where they worked together on stage. Bonnie Blue– engagement-bait style. It’s the social media we all have, which taps into our annoying habit of clicking, tapping, clicking for more, more, more.
Beyond the disturbing shootings and drug gang wars, Euphoria’s third season was the strongest it’s ever been. nihilistic world Young people feed on the Internet, where they are raised to believe that they must be the hunter or the prey. As the show ended with the American flag waving in the wind, I was reminded Trick Mirror – a 2019 documentary by Jia Tolentino, in which he argues that fraud has become an integral part of American life. Tolentino writes that being an American is learning that “one of the best things a person can do for economic security” is to “exploit other people”. This is shown at the Alamo’s strip club, where men treat women like disposable toys, or in the supporting part Cassie walks, where porn meets the creatures. Cassie tells her sister that she’s turning her old wedding house into a #content house, where OnlyFans can stay for free in return for a small portion of the profits. In other words, he has become an animal.
Perhaps the conclusion of Euphoria was not a moral lesson at all, but a lesson in the deception of the New American Dream, created by an algorithm. It’s a shame that, like the rest of the season, you have to look hard – past the many pointless gunfights and subplots – to see what the show is trying to say.
