It’s weird what Hollywood can get away with.
The first episode of Euphoria’s third season aired on April 12, and I honestly don’t know what I expected. I had hopes, absolutely; I hoped Rue stayed sober and was out of the drug business, I hoped Nate ended up in jail, and I hoped Lexi got literally everything she wanted in life. As of right now, only one of those things is true.
What do you mean that Rue is in $100,000 of debt to a dealer? Better yet, what do you mean the interest rate was 20% a month on the money she owed her? What do you mean she’s smuggling fentanyl into the country by swallowing balloons of it and shitting it into a strainer once she gets back stateside? Rue. What are we doing?
What do you mean that Cassie is living in this bajillion-dollar house in Hollywood Hills and is still calling Nate broke for not paying $50,000 for wedding florals? What do you mean he’s okay with her doing sex work to pay for them? That is not the Nate I knew.
So, yes, we lost the plot a little bit with the character development. Suddenly, Nate is this sweet, struggling entrepreneur who gives his fiancée everything she wants? Yeah, right.
Characters aside. Is it a stretch to say that having four of the five main female characters in sex work is oddly diminutive?
In the first episode, Rue meets Alamo, a strip club tycoon. His relationship with his female employees is purely predatory, and in her imperfection, desperation, and lack of moral compass, Rue decides, “I want to do what he does.”
For Rue, it might be empowering, but for the women working under Alamo, the line of work they’re in is life-threatening and nonautonomous. Rue doesn’t seem to have a problem with that, and while it’s clear that she is not the grand poobah of virtue, I can’t help but wonder if creator Sam Levinson has some not-so-secret obsession with putting his female characters through degrading humiliation rituals and calling it autonomy.
Frankly, I want to see Maddy beating the hell out of Nate and Cassie on my screen. I do not want to see Sydney Sweeney in poorly executed fetish play.
I don’t even know what to write. I need to scrub all memories of that episode out of my brain.
Want to keep up with HCBU? Make sure to like us on Facebook, follow us on Instagram, check out our Pinterest board, watch us on TikTok, and read our latest Tweets!