*Spoiler Warning*
It’s been nearly a month of mourning the loss of Euphoria Sundays as director Sam Levinson left audiences with crippling uncertainty, unanswered questions, and a gruesome character death (#flyhighashtray). Already coping with the season’s end and our favorite child drug lord’s demise, HBO Max teased us with a 2024 release date for the next chapter. There, however, is no coping mechanism effective enough to erase from my mind the trainwreck that was the plot of Euphoria season two.
Levinson certainly showed his youth and inexperience in the writing room, letting his personal conflicts, inattention to consistency, and overactive hormones drive this season’s plot into the ground. His reliance on interpretation or simply leaving out basic information completely and letting the audience fill the gaps made for more confusion and dissatisfaction than anything else. Some would even argue he’s utilizing cliffhangers to prepare watchers for season three (which is true…to an extent), but I would argue you’re giving Levinson too much credit.
I have so many criticisms of Levinson’s choices in the writing room this season that I could make a page-long list…and I will. I will make a page-long list.
Kat
Kat’s storyline went from decent to practically nonexistent this season. With the five minutes of screentime she was given, her character spent it spewing utter, random nonsense that added nothing to her story or character. This complete 180 of Kats’s involvement came after an alleged disagreement between Levinson and Barbie Ferreira (the actress who plays Kat) over the direction of her famously fat character and his choice to give her an eating disorder. Maybe she had a point, Levinson.
Maddy and the Mom
Levinson also teased a weird and highly inappropriate relationship between Maddy and the mother of the little boy she babysits. The awkward inclusion of Maddy being 18 years old in their conversation and the emphasis on the hidden camera in the closet where Maddy was getting dressed and undressed was just icky. In the end, the hinted perversion was thrown out the window when Maddy was gifted a dress she had tried on in the closet as if the audience would ignore the fact Maddy was recorded nude.
The Hypersexualization of High School Characters
Sigh. This problem is far more complex and concerning than I could put in a couple of sentences. A quick do’s and don’ts for Levinson:
Do: Hire legal and consenting adults for mature content
Don’t: Cast them as high schoolers, repeatedly show them nude, and oversexualize them to the moon as if it’s any less weird because the actors are adults.
In short, Euphoria’s combination of underage characters and excessive nudity is less than ideal.
Elliots Three Minute “Unfinished” Song
First off, stream Dominic Fike on Spotify. Second off, Dominic Fike, please never do that again.
Ashtray’s Death
Okay, I get what he was trying to do. Ashtray had known only violence his whole life. He had demonstrated time and time again that he was impulsive, that before everything he was still a child. Yet, he always put Fez first, and shooting rounds blindly into a hallway he knew Fez was standing in just didn’t make sense. R.I.P., babes.
Jules
I actually liked Jules not being so centric to the (barely developed) plot this time around. But with a whole special episode and heavy presence in the first couple of episodes, her disappearance towards the middle of the season (oh yeah, and where did Mckay go?) did not go unnoticed. Jules went from being a main character to a side one, which was a peculiar choice on Levinson’s part after giving her such a hard-hitting special episode that would have opened up the opportunity to dive deeper into that Jules in season two. While she may have served her purpose as a learning experience for Rue, her absence was odd.
While Levinson needs help in the writing room, you can’t deny the cinematography of this season was absolutely astounding. Even if Sam Levinson refuses to improve, the music, filming, and actors will keep me crawling back. See you in 2024.