SPOILER ALERT: The following story contains plot details from the Season 3 premiere of “Euphoria,” now streaming on HBO Max.
Though it’s been four years since we last got a new episode of “Euphoria,” and five years have passed in the world of the HBO show, Season 3 begins somewhere familiar: with Rue (Zendaya) in a dangerous and chaotic position.
The premiere opens with Rue in Mexico as a group of men help push her car out of a ditch in a desert landscape. She thanks them in Spanish then drives off wildly, eventually using a makeshift ramp to drive up a wall at the border and leaving her car precariously teetering at the top of the wall when she can’t find a way to safely steer it down onto Texas soil. On foot, she carries a duffel bag full of drugs until she stops to rest at the home of a conservative Christian family, who believe she’s there to write a story about “the pure evil that’s pouring across our border” for her college newspaper. Eventually, Rue makes it back to California and brings the duffel bag to Laurie (Martha Kelly), who reprimands her for leaving the car behind and says she’ll add it to her tab.
In voiceover, Rue explains that a few years after graduating high school, Laurie confronted her at the smoke shop where she worked and coerced her into becoming a drug mule; the $10,000 Rue owed Laurie for the drugs her mom (Nika King) flushed down the toilet in Season 2 had grown to $43 million with interest, Laurie claimed. So she moved into Laurie’s home, bringing Faye (Chloe Cherry) with her, and the two entered the brutal business of obtaining illicit substances on Laurie’s behalf dropping them off to her various shady clients. In one scene, Rue and Faye gag violently as they shove balloons full of drugs down their throats to keep them invisible to border patrol agents, then painfully defecate the balloons to retrieve them.
Next, Rue is seen visiting Lexi (Maude Apatow) at her Los Angeles apartment. Lexi is now working in Hollywood as the assistant to a showrunner played by Sharon Stone. As she catches up with Rue, who lies about driving for Uber full-time, Lexi lectures her about needing to find a better career path. Rue in turn chides Lexi for not keeping in touch with Fezco (Angus Cloud), who is revealed to still be alive but serving a 30-year prison sentence. (Cloud died in 2023 from a fentanyl overdose. Series creator Sam Levinson says his death inspired much of Season 3, and the first episode ends with a tribute to Cloud as well as the late actor Eric Dane and executive producer Kevin Turen.)
Five years after high school, Cassie (Sydney Sweeney) is engaged to Nate (Jacob Elordi) and trying to become TikTok famous. She’s first shown wearing a skimpy dog costume as she and Nate’s housekeeper, Juana (Minerva Garcia), records until Nate comes home and angrily interrupts, disapproving of Cassie’s side hustle. The couple argues about money, with Nate assuring Cassie that they’re doing fine financially and that she doesn’t need to turn to the internet for cash. But in the next scene, it’s revealed that Nate is secretly struggling after taking over his father’s (Dane) business. Cassie tells her friend Heather (Jessica Blair Herman) that she’s considering starting an OnlyFans account.
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Back at the apartment, Lexi says that Rue’s ex, Jules (Hunter Schafer), has become a sugar baby. She heard it from Maddy (Alexa Demie), who also works in Hollywood now, at a talent management company.
Rue catches up with her sponsor, Ali (Colman Domingo), next. They discuss the third step of the 12-step addiction recovery process. “How am I supposed to give my life and will over to the care of God?” she asks, saying that she’s never been religious, though she reflects on how happy that family in Texas seemed to be. As they talk and joke about how the Bible talks about gay people, Ali tells her to look past all of that and decide whether or not she has faith. She decides that she does.
Rue drives to a house in the middle of nowhere owned to do a dropoff for Laurie. In the garage of the house, she gives a baggie to Bishop (Darrell Britt-Gibson), an employee of Laurie’s client. As she enters the house to use the bathroom, Bishop warns her not to touch anything she isn’t supposed to. Inside, she finds a party full of strippers who are drinking, dancing and swimming. In the bathroom, she helps a stripper named Tish (Emma Kotos) get dressed, then ends up joining the party. Bishop intervenes and takes her to talk to his boss, Alamo (Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje), who is in a hot tub wearing a cowboy hat and surrounded by multiple women.
“You walk up into my house, dance with my girls and you don’t even introduce yourself. That’s mighty disrespectful, little lady,” Alamo says. But Rue apologizes and the two get to know each other. She learns that Alamo is a strip club magnate, and tells him that working for him — “troubleshooting,” not as a stripper — would be her dream job.
The episode cuts to Nate and Cassie as they eat dinner at home and get into another financial argument. Cassie has her heart set on a $50,000 floral package for their wedding that Nate has refused to pay for, but she says she can pay for itself if she starts an OnlyFans account. Nate is upset, but eventually agrees that she can start the account as long as she doesn’t ever include her face and her breasts in the same photo.
Back at Alamo’s house, a woman screams as she discovers Tish foaming at the mouth and dead on the floor of a bedroom. It turns out that the drugs Rue brought from Laurie were laced with fentanyl. Alamo interrogates Rue, who swears that she didn’t know. “If I did, why the fuck would I stay here?” she says. “You tell me,” Alamo responds. “It’s gonna sound stupid now, but when were talking, I thought that maybe God brought us together. I don’t wanna be working for Laurie. She’s got me swallowing balloons the size of golf balls and packing my intestines and going across the border. It’s fucking hell on earth, and it’s over some shit I did in high school.” She explains the debt she owes Laurie and says, “When you started talking about how, in America, you can reinvent yourself, I thought, maybe this is God.”
“So you believe in God? Let’s see if he believes in you,” Alamo says. They go outside and put an apple on Rue’s head while Alamo stands several yards away and points a gun at her. He shoots, and the bullet goes through the apple instead of killing Rue. She begins laughing and sobbing wildly, grateful to be alive.
From Variety US