Saying Goodbye to “Euphoria”

If there’s one moment that stood out from the Euphoria finale this past Sunday, it was the traditional post-episode wrap-up. With every actor giving their parting sentiment, it was the goodbye you’d come to expect from a show that became a cultural phenomenon over the past seven years, even managing to be one of the last vestiges of pre-pandemic America. For better or worse, Sam Levinson set out to make a drama about contemporary problems amongst Gen-Z youth, and he did that. It can be argued how well that came across, but my search on Reddit suggests there’s at least some relatability well into the swan song that he did something right.

And yet, the moment that stuck out for me was his insistence that a specific scene spoke to what he saw as raw honesty. To editorialize, it’s a moment that struck me more as a Marley & Me (2007) scenario where the context around it is flimsy, but that death scene hit with all the desired force that Euphoria did so well. It was a show that never veered too far from heartbreak and, as a result, left me unsure as to whether this ending was deserved or even handled well. From an analytical standpoint, I consider the final season to be a complete misfire and a testament to why healthy work environments are important. Even if so-called “honesty” is there, I’d argue that what was produced still cribbed too much into fantasy, down to having significant portions of the emotional crescendo involve characters who frankly didn’t matter to long-term investors.

I’ll save my gripes for another essay. However, it’s important to note because it was difficult to remove my frustration from the moment that will serve as the show’s redemption, which may push Zendaya back into that Emmy race. Given the actress’ announcement that this would be her last season, it was easy to understand why they chose to send her off. In a season of self-indulgence, it’s the most artful and considerate production in the entire show. It’s a chance where things broke into the metaphysical and encapsulated Rue’s final moments of life slipping away, picturing a world she was leaving but also one she longed to hold onto. It even featured an Angus McCloud cameo as Fezco, itself pointing to a real-life tragic irony of accidental drug overdoses that greatly impacted Euphoria.

As a work of creative fiction, there’s a lot to criticize, and I’m choosing to halt further discourse at that. However, I found a thought lingering in my mind the more that I constructed my planned retrospective for season three. Why was this moment so impactful for so many, who on Reddit claimed that you’d only be able to appreciate it if you knew an addict, or that it was “real” in that it painted the tragic fates of the modern user? I’m not doubting that personal touch holds truth for those more invested in the ins and outs of Euphoria, specifically Rue’s plight, but it was an odd statement I wanted to unpack until I realized something… 

If Levinson has one masterstroke in this equation, it’s the abruptness with which he created the scene. Rue was lulled into a vulnerable position, one that was even in season one when confronting drug dealers feeding her fentanyl, and taken advantage of. Given her compulsive behavior and belief that her pills were mere Percocet, it makes sense how she had let her guard down. As much as the over-the-top relapse would’ve given the ending more of a tragic bent, there is something to watching her get taken advantage of without all of the cards being visibly on the table. It was sinister and horrible. For as much as I loathe Levinson’s insistence on making the finale a largely cynical outing for long-term characters, it captured a moment that – despite seeming out of place – really captured the suddenness of an overdose, where reality doesn’t set in until it’s too late.

To be clear, I am not an addict. I have never been and am largely too paranoid to even humor gambling behavior on account of becoming obsessive. However, I slowly connected the dots between fiction and fact in my life, and considered something that Levinson insisted was true. If he were using drugs in the modern age, he would likely be dead. I buy his guilt wholeheartedly, and it explains why he tactfully explored that concept. Even if he gave the payoff a Quentin Tarantino-esque fever dream that I could’ve done without, I understood why it spoke so personally to him and why he needed that moment despite everything around it being wholly ill-conceived.

Maybe it’s because I recently wrote a Failed Oscar Campaigns essay on the director’s Malcolm & Marie (2021), but I have been thinking a lot about Levinson’s arc from even five years ago. I’ve contemplated whether some of his poor tendencies are byproducts of the traumatic nature of a pandemic and whether he’s unable to cope in better ways. As someone who went through a bad depression and became obsessed with death for three years because of 2020, I understand that notion. I also recognize the need to funnel your remorse into your art, even if it’s ugly or perverted. This isn’t a defense, but it may explain his fascination with cultural extremes in the wake of lockdown, if just because the addiction to sex or religion has become more apparent in the time since.

That period would also be a time when I suffered my own example of culture shock. As I wrote at the time, a high school friend named Dorian passed away after suffering an overdose in a rehab facility. The suggestion was that it might’ve been fentanyl. To be honest, there are a lot of gaps in the story of the last time I saw him and his passing. It had been over a decade since he lived with me briefly and had an unceremonious eviction. Ultimately, I liked the guy and wanted the best for him, if just because he was someone I had known since high school and had good feelings about. We were all imperfect, but he had his heart in the right place.

In a time when I was incapable of remembering my day-to-day, I can still recall the moment of learning that Dorian had passed. I was in the middle of a Zoom class for college and became so overwhelmed with emotion that I turned off my camera. To be honest, this is a testament to how shot my focus was that I was even looking at other messaging during those hours. However, it gave me a variety of complex feelings, less because he had lost the battle to drugs, but more because of what I took to be our last exchange.

It was a simple Facebook exchange. Having gone through a lot of self-reflection since those days of hanging out, I felt my most important point to get across in the limited space was to apologize for being rude to him. The response had this clarity of suggesting that he noticed he was in the wrong, too. Optimistically, we ended with wanting to hang out sometime soon. As much as it feels good to have left our relationship on that tone, there is that gut punch that it would never happen. At most, I would have the most somber high school reunion imaginable as we stood around the church processing what was happening.

I guess on some level, I side with the people arguing that there should’ve been more pathos given to the supporting cast around Rue’s death. I’ve heard it suggested that a funeral scene would’ve fit nicely as a goodbye. Maybe I think that way because it’s how I ended up saying goodbye to Dorian in person as we all sat there watching a montage of his life unfold on a projector and even present moments with me in them that I had forgotten. If nothing else, it drives the point home of how Euphoria had lost its touch of intimacy in favor of raucous, over-the-top genre fare with D.E.A. shootouts and a small fraction dedicated to entry-level Bible study.

I’ll admit that it took me time to process my friend’s death. There was a serious effort to make as reverent a tribute to him as I could. Whereas I knew so little about him from that last decade, I still held onto the humanity I saw in him like I’m sure Levinson did with Rue. It may explain why, despite feeling indebted to tragedy, he needed to invoke religious texts and hacky revenge fantasy plotlines just to add some sense of relief. I only wish the surrounding text were as concerted as the parting thoughts, for it would’ve made the fate more poignant. There is something beautiful about seeing her humanity despite a life of struggle. Alas, the irony is still the open-ended nothingness that everyone else got even over 90 minutes of running time.

I’m not totally sure if that Rue death scene will continue to resonate with me or not. Even if losing Dorian led to some soul searching, I don’t feel like the show understood how to communicate it with the elements it had in seasons one and two… which is odd given how much I assumed the early episodes of this final run were building to a reunion with substance, some clarity that suggested the difficulties of youth as it related to this alumni. Even the parallels to the wedding episode might’ve added a nice rhyme. Again, there are too many distractions from the rest of the closing thesis to appreciate the few minutes of powerhouse filmmaking.

Still, my heart goes out to those who relate to this more directly. I think about a friend I made online who was a recovering alcoholic and wrote about it on their blog. They also had a history of self-harm and various other behaviors that I became consumed with studying back in 2021. Outside of my uncle – who fit that religious recovering addict nicely and maybe explains a certain strain of personal reluctance there – this individual has been a more present insight into the contrast between struggle and recovery. They have been someone I’ve appreciated knowing because of personal insight as well as recognition that there’s a greater humanity beyond the consumption. They’ve been clean for over a decade now, and their occasional acknowledgement of survivor’s guilt makes me think of how much more complicated Euphoria’s tale could’ve been if it chose to be optimistic, or at least not place every character in the most stereotypical harmful position imaginable. Rue got caught up in everyone else’s conflict, and while the larger metaphor seems apt for “American drug crisis” talk, it didn’t leave room for greater pathos and relief to occasionally take hold. It was too big. It was beyond any one cast member. It was no longer what made Euphoria Euphoria.

While I plan to write a more direct criticism of the series in another essay, I felt the need to question whether or not I “bought” the big emotional payoff or if my initial instinct of misplaced empathy was a valid feeling. In all honesty, it’s somewhere in the middle and not helped by what I see to be poor writing surrounding it. Part of it is the simple backseat quarterbacking of how I would’ve written the episode (scratch that, entire season), but I’ve always been in favor of filmmakers expressing themselves and us having to deal with it. Unfortunately, it came with many behind-the-scenes disputes and sorely missed talent that kept this from feeling like a greater and more poetic conclusion. The ending was how it was, and I recognize Levinson’s giant sigh of relief at having depicted what he saw as “honesty” in his drug addiction story. It might make me think he’s a tad too hopeless about it, but that’s coming from someone fortunate to have only seen it from afar. Maybe I’m wrong here… or maybe the writing just didn’t culminate sensibly enough.