*Spoiler alert*: After three seasons, 26 episodes and seven years, it’s finally a wrap for the graphic and Emmy Award-winning HBO drama series “Euphoria.”
It was a more bitter ending than sweet for fans that held out hope for the fate of characters like Alexa Demie’s Maddy Perez, and Cassie Howard, who is played by Sydney Sweeney. But no character conclusion was as gut-wrenching as Zendaya’s Rue Bennett.
The final episode, which aired on Sunday, May 31, had many viewers emotional and or upset with the shocking ending.
As the show’s main character, Rue spent the entire season working for dueling crime bosses. Initially working as a drug mule for crime boss Laurie to pay back the massive debt she racked up in season two, she then took a job working for strip club owner and crime kingpin, Alamo Brown.
As things between the two gangsters began to brew, they eventually engaged in an all-out war. Just as fans were happy that Rue survive despite being caught in the middle, it was vicious Alamo who ultimately sealed Rue’s fate, supplying her with fentanyl that he told her was Percocet — a nod to how former “Euphoria” star Angus Cloud died in real life back in 2023.
Cloud played Fez, a drug dealer and Rue’s close friend. Although he tragically died before filming of season three began, the series kept his character alive by revising he was in jail and speaking to Rue on the phone.
Recovering addict and Rue’s sober mentor, Ali Muhammad, played by Colman Domingo, found her dead on his sofa and avenged her by going to Alamo’s club, shooting and killing him.
Elsewhere, reconciled besties Maddie and Cassie remained close after the death of Cassie’s husband Nate Jacobs, who died in the previous episode after being killed by a gangster who he owed money, and managed to avoided being indebted to Alamo once he was killed.
The two later move in together joined by Cassie’s sister Lexi Howard, in the mansion the briefly married couple once shared.
They do not have a funeral for Nate and Cassie lies to her sister by telling her that he vanished.
Realizing that she was headed to prison after the DEA swarmed her home, crime boss Laurie committed suicide by hanging herself on the roof of her drug den.
Now that all eight episodes of the season have aired, fans quickly shared their thoughts on the ending.
One person typed, “as someone who has known & loved people who struggled (& still struggle) with addiction, I appreciate the way sam levinson depicted it in euphoria. loving someone with that illness is a personal hell I know all too well. I like how we got all aspects of it.”
Someone else wrote, “I actually love the way Euphoria ended, it was realistic and very true to life. The show told an amazing story about addiction and i’m glad we got to witness it!”
Others didn’t hold back on the criticism for the show or its creator Sam Levinson.
One simply said, “please never let Sam Levinson write another show.”
Someone else wrote, “How Euphoria went from a coming-of-age teen drama to a Western crime thriller in a span of one season is beyond me. I don’t think we’ve ever seen a show completely change genres mid-series like this before. Thank God it’s over, especially after that awful finale.”
Levinson explained why he decided to kill off Rue, who, after spending most of the show being a struggling addict, was on a path to recovery.
“The honest ending is that people like Rue don’t make it,” he said in a post-episode breakdown. “People relapse. They f-ck up. They’re not ready to get clean. And they weren’t dying like they are now, with the influx of fentanyl into this country.”
He added, “I wanted to tell this story for Angus [Cloud] and for people who weren’t granted a second chance.”
“If we were really going to be saying something, we needed to put the audience in the position of a family member who loses someone that they love,” he added. “I wanted to mirror that feeling and I know how much audiences love Rue. It felt like I can put them in the position that I think a lot of families are in.”
In the behind the scenes footage following the finale, Zendaya shared final words with the crew on her last day of shooting.
“I just want to say thank you,” she said. “I’m incredibly grateful for every single one of you, and many of you have been here from the beginning and watched me grow up. It’s been a pleasure and an honor. Thank you so much.”
In an interview with The New York Times, Levinson confirmed that season 3 will be the final season after initially being vague about the ending.
“In terms of the story that we set out to tell, which is a story about addiction and its consequences, this feels like the end to me,” he said.
However, he previously told Esquire on May 31, “I mean, I don’t know. I’ve approached every season like it’s the last season. If they say, ‘That’s it, Sam, pack your bags. We don’t need another.”
According to IMDB, Levinson’s next project is a film called “Place To Be” which chronicles a story about a elderly woman and a middle-aged man forming a bond while on their cross country journey from Chicago to New York.
The film is in post-production and is set to star Pamela Anderson, Taika Waititi, Lena Waithe and more.
