For some baffling reason, HBO and Sam Levinson refused to actually confirm that what we saw last night, the season 3 finale of Euphoria, was in fact the series finale, which became fairly obvious given the events in question. Now that it’s over, I think we can collectively look at the season and go, “What was that?”
That was never more true than in last night’s Euphoria finale, which was almost 100% devoted to just Rue and eventually, Ali, previously a third-tier side character but ultimately made the most important person in the finale. Mercifully, Ali is played by multi-Oscar nominee Colman Domingo, and if there was a saving grace last night, it was him.
But to what extent the show ignored essentially all of its other characters was rather terrible, especially given that, at 90 minutes, it tied maybe one other series in HBO history for the longest finale ever.
Cassie, despite being a huge focus of this season with Sydney Sweeney probably giving its best performance, had about three minutes of screen time, her story effectively ending last week after Nate’s death. Her sister, Lexi, had a single mini-monologue about the bible. Maddy’s story ended up linked almost exclusively to Alamo and the final showdown, though at least it was more substantive than the others.
Easily the worst-handled moment, and really the worst-handled character in the entire show, was Jules. She almost never left a single room this season, outside of a bizarre detour where she inexplicably painted a pornographic painting for a TV show. Here, in the grand finale of a series she practically co-led for two years, she had a minute-long scene and zero lines. Plus, a laughable moment as we see her painting of Rue, which is just plain awful. It’s worth asking the question of why she was in this season at all, other than to let them say “well, Hunter Schafer is here, technically.”
Even though it was overlong, I did think the Rue/Alamo/Ali stuff worked. Rue dying of an overdose always seemed like where things would end up, albeit in this case, she was flat-out murdered by Alamo, who knew she couldn’t resist the Percocet, which he’s laced with lethal Fentanyl. It did seem like the show was trying to make a point that she wasn’t actually abusing the drug, just taking it when the severe cut in her hand started hurting (plus, you know, being dragged on horseback), rather than just taking it to get high. Her “dream sequence” of going to save Fez, however, was rather strange, as you had to wonder where on earth that was actually going, as it’s not like they were going to CGI the sadly departed Angus Cloud back to life. But we learn it was, in fact, her dying moments, all of it in her head, including a tearful goodbye to her mother.
I liked the finale, with Ali abandoning his faith in well, anything, and going full-on The Punisher to get revenge for Rue on Alamo, a character that it was easy to want dead a hundred times over by the end of the season. It was certainly odd to give the final 30 minutes of the entire series to Ali, but fortunately, Colman Domingo is amazing, so it worked. The moment of betrayal where Bishop gives Alamo an empty gun was probably the best moment of the night, even though it was somewhat easy to see coming if you were paying any amount of attention this season or this episode.
It was an extremely strange evening and the conclusion of a series that very much did not seem to know what to do with itself for most of its duration. There were a few solid episodes in here, but you could absolutely feel the separation of the cast due to various scheduling issues (Jacob Elordi, Hunter Schafer), and the entire show turning into what was effectively a Western was such a sharp left turn that this didn’t feel much like Euphoria at all.
It’s easy to see that there’s really no reason to continue on this story, which I suppose could now be led by Maddy and Cassie, but that doesn’t seem like a good idea at this point. Euphoria is over. You could argue maybe it never should have come back at all, and after last night, you may be right. But it did have its moment.
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