Before pressing play on the supersized finale—which HBO confirmed was the show’s final episode—Euphoria creator, director, and writer Levinson introd
Before pressing play on the supersized finale—which HBO confirmed was the show’s final episode—Euphoria creator, director, and writer Levinson introduced it with a touching tribute to the slow Angus Cloud, who played lovable drug dealer Fezco and died in 2023 of an accidental overdose involving fentanyl. “We’ve had the chance to tell a story about addiction, self-destruction, and its consequences. And between seasons, life happened, as it should, and it shapes the work,” Levinson said. “This season we lost Angus. Many of you loved him the way I did. And he had such a light that could just fill up an entire room. And he deserved more time, a longer, fuller life, but he was taken, like far too many people in this country, by fentanyl.”
Perhaps Levinson was giving a clue about what would eventually befall Zendaya’s drug-addled Euphoria protagonist. In the finale, after making it out of drug dealer Laurie’s lair by the skin of her teeth and ending up physically worse for wear, Rue returns to Alamo Brown’s ranch. There, Alamo convinces Rue to take a single Percocet for her pain. We then find Rue crashing on the couch of her sponsor, Ali (Colman Domingo), waking up the next day with a bowl of cereal, and envisioning a God-fearing future on the homestead she stumbled upon in the season three premiere. Rue then sees on the news that Fezco has broken out of prison and rushes to reunite with him, winding up back at her childhood home, where she embraces her estranged mother, Leslie (Nika King).
At this point it seems like Rue might get her joyful ending. But that isn’t meant to be. We soon learn that this entire sequence has been a dream. After falling asleep on Ali’s couch, Rue never wakes up, dying of a drug overdose from Alamo Brown’s fentanyl-laced Percocet. (Why would Alamo kill Rue? In the episode before this one, Maddy accidentally tipped him off to the fact that Rue was working with the DEA.)
While Levinson introduced the episode as the season three finale, rather than the series finale, it seemed clear by the end that this was the end of Euphoria. Two of the show’s major characters, Zendaya’s Rue and Jacob Elordi’s Nate Jacobs, had been killed off—Nate in the show’s penultimate episode, after getting bitten by a venomous snake while buried alive in a coffin. This finale wrapped up plots for some cast members while leaving others more open-ended.
After the DEA arrives at Laurie’s drug den, Laurie dies by suicide, choosing to jump off her roof rather than go to prison. The recently widowed Cassie keeps the house that she and Nate bought, using it to start a hype house for OnlyFans models and content creators. She also asks sister Lexi to write storylines for the girls; Lexi declines. A vengeful Ali comes to the Silver Slipper with a sawed-off shotgun in search of Alamo Brown. The two engage in a duel, which Ali wins because Bishop has removed all the bullets from Alamo’s gun. Jules, meanwhile, is still living in her high- rise, painting a portrait of Rue.
But it seems that with no Rue, there’s no Euphoria. During an appearance on the New York Times podcast Popcast before the finale, Levinson confirmed as much. “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. Levinson added that he was immensely proud of the show he created and offered another warning about drug exploit in the age of fentanyl: “If you are experimenting or taking drugs today, it’s very possible it’ll kill you, and I think it was a way of honoring Angus and saying a prayer for the future.”
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