Warning: this article contains spoilers for season 2 of Euphoria
Episode 6: A Thousand Little Trees of Blood
This episode gave me very mixed feelings while watching it. One on hand, I loved the Lexi and Fez scenes, Ali and Rue with her family, those were great. On the other hand, watching the Kat and Ethan scene physically hurt. The episode begins with Rue going through her withdrawals, crying in extreme pain. As she slowly goes through that, she also realizes she must apologize to Ali for the cruel things she told him in a prior episode. Tearfully apologizing to him, Ali accepts her apology. He comes over for dinner at her house, where he speaks to Gia, who is still visibly upset because of Rue’s actions.
We see Nate getting up, unaware of the events that happened in the past episode. Ignoring Cassie’s 30+ voicemails, he feels more concerned that Maddy hasn’t texted him. Going downstairs, the Jacobs family seems livelier than before because of Cal walking out. At the same time Maddy is on the phone with Kat, who is at lunch with Ethan, saying that she wants to kill Cassie in a violent way. After they hang up, it goes to the lunch between Ethan and Kat. In what is quite possibly one of the most awkward scenes this season, Kat breaks up with Ethan by telling him she has a terminal brain tumor. Of course Ethan sees right through this and says he expected her to at least be honest with him.
In the Howard household, Lexi is forced to bury all the knives in fear Cassie may harm herself. Cassie spends the day trying to call Nate back to avail. Trying to convince her mom and Lexi that Maddy and Nate were not dating when she hooked up with him, her mom doesn’t buy it. Her mom, Suze, doesn’t buy any of what she says and calls her out for pretending to be innocent to which Cassie screams and freaks out at. Attempting to hurt herself with a corkscrew, Suze just grabs it and scoffs clearly annoyed by Cassie. Lexi confronts Cassie, telling her that it’s sad she fell in love with someone who spent years making fun of her. In retaliation Cassie insults Lexi and her friendship with Rue but Suze stops her before Cassie screams again and leaves.
Lexi spends the rest of her screen time at Fez’s house. Singing and watching Stand By Me they both enjoy each other’s presence. She tells him her worry about putting on the play since the incident with Cassie just happened. Meanwhile Faye is taking out the trash when her boyfriend Custer shows up. He tells her that he’s being forced to work with the cops over the death of Mouse, a drug-dealer that Ashtray killed in the first episode.
Back at the Jacobs household, Marsha, Nate’s mother, gets wine drunk. Insulting Maddy, and telling Nate she’s glad he choked out Maddy, she starts acting giddy. He yells at her to stop acting like that before she gets serious. She tells him that he used to be a sweet kid before he got this darkness inside of him. She continues by telling him he’s somewhat darker than Cal. After the conversation ends, he goes into his father’s office where he find’s a gun. Knowing he will take over the family business, he goes to get the tape back from Maddy. The tape in question is Cal and Jules having sex, which will do irrevocable damage to his family if it gets leaked.
At Maddy’s babysitting job, she talks with her employer Samantha about what happened. Deciding they need to swim, Samantha confides her that she was like Cassie in college. Samantha tells her that nobody thought she would settle down until she met her current husband. Maddy is surprised they don’t fight, and Samantha tells her that she’s 18 and it doesn’t matter at this age. As Maddy leaves, Nate is in her room with a gun. Threatening her in a sadistic “Russian roulette” way, he asks her where the tape is. Putting the gun to his head while he’s on top of her he kisses her before she finally tells him where it is as she cries. Trying to say it was a joke she tells him to leave.
In a strange turn of events, he gives the tape to Jules. He apologizes, which Jules accepts but does not trust him in the slightest still. He grabs her hand before she leaves and tells her everything he said when they were online texting was true. Another throwback to the first season when Jules had an online “relationship” with Tyler, who was Nate behind the screen. She just nods and says me too, before leaving. Nate then calls Cassie, and tells her to pack her bags and move in with her. Cassie immediately grabs her things and Suze just watches her not stopping it.
Back at Rue’s house, Ali is the first person to acknowledge Gia’s suffering at the table. Telling Leslie to watch Gia too, they finish dinner on a decently happy note. At night Leslie tries to call an inpatient hospital begging any place to let her daughter stay in fear that she will kill herself. In a dark ending, the screen fades out as Leslie pleads for her daughters life and for her safety.
Episode 7: The Theater and It’s Double \
I absolutely loved this episode and I know it wasn’t super highly rated, but I enjoyed it a lot. We finally get to see the play Lexi has been talking about all season. At Rue’s father’s funeral, a young Lexie walks past several girls who look a lot like Maddy, Cassie and Kat to find Rue. In her room, Rue is snorting some pills in her room. Lexi reads her a poem called “Let This Darkness Be a Belltower” and as she reads the shot fades from Rue in her room to the set of a play. We see the Rue lookalike pass out on the bed and Lexi takes her pills as the scene ends. Introducing her play Our Life, she plays the main character named Grace. Cassie is named Hallie in the play, Maddy is Marta, Kat is Luna and Rue is Jade. We see every character who is portrayed in the plays reaction, including Maddy asking if the play was about them. Ethan plays the photographer in this scene and portrays many other characters in the play as we see him throughout the episode.
Switching to the months leading up to the play, Fez and Lexi talk on the phone every day. He promises her he’ll be there in the front row to watch her. We see glimpses of them and then Fez getting ready throughout the play. We see how Lexi views herself verses her sister especially when going through puberty. Suze is having the time of her life in the crowd, especially when Ethan comes on stage as her. Back again at Fez’s Faye is steaming a shirt for Fez. He’s getting ready to go to the play, and she is helping him get ready. We see a card and flowers that he has prepared to bring for her. Custer comes over, causing tension cause of what he said in the last episode.
Again, back at the play we see Cassie portrayed as condescending and self-obsessed with her appearance. Their relationship with their father is also explored in the play. We see a flashback of Lexi and Cassie when they were young and their father is passed out during the day. Cassie feels bad and lets him drive them home, even though he is clearly inebriated. We also see clips of when the Howards were still a family, all dancing in their living room, with Ethan as the dad of course. The scene was reenacted in the play, causing Suze and Cassie to both tear up at the scene. Lexi narrates how her and her sister both grew up so differently after puberty and we see Nate dressing up Cassie as a Barbie doll. She claims he could never scare her (yeah don’t know about that one Cass) and they kiss. We then see Rue and Lexi at Fez’s convenience store the summer before high school.They sit on the roof and talk about popularity and self image issues. Transitioning to the play, Lexi and Jade have the same conversation she and Rue did that day. Rue watches and smiles, reminiscing on that time.
In the middle of the play, we see a scene between Rue and her mom after the issues that happened in the past several episodes. Admitting she gives up, Leslie tells her she can do drugs if she wants. Rue is surprised, but her mom says that she’ll be 18 and no longer her responsibility so she can still take care of Gia. Rue says that Gia is fine before her mom tells her she’s almost failing math and getting detentions. Leslie tells Rue bluntly that she’d rather have one daughter alive than lose both of them.
The play then shows Cassie and Maddy’s friendship beginnings. Lexi explains that she never met someone as sure of herself and that she did not trust Marta (Maddy) until she had to move in with them for a few months because her parents were fighting. Marta cries in Hallie’s bed as the camera shows Maddy and Cassie’s uncomfortable reactions. Cassie gets up crying and forces herself to smile in the bathroom after she sees that. That part of the play parallels what happened when Rue exposed Cassie for sleeping with Nate. The viewers finally see what happened after Maddy ran after her in the 5th episode. Cassie locks herself in the bathroom, a few tears going down her cheek as Maddy tries to get Cassie out. Asking her if it was worth it and saying she would never do this to her, Kat helps Maddy leave.
A scene of Cassie, dressed very much like Maddy, climbing on top of Nate is shown. There are random unexplained clips of Kat camming, but I honestly have no clue where they came from. Cassie whispers in Nate ear that he can control everything down to what she eats and wears, and says that she belongs to him and will never complain. When he asks if she’s scared people will look down on her, Cassie says “at least I’m loved,” as the shot moves back to show a stage setting again.
Ethan plays Nate in the play as well. His character is named Jake, and there is a scene of him putting a fur jacket on Marta, just like he did in the first season to Maddy. Marta says that nobody has ever loved her as much as him and Jake says nobody will with an uncomfortable looking Nate in the background. In an eerie scene, we’re in a room that looks just like the motel room Cal had sex with Jules in. Maddy is in on the bed before the camera pans to Nate who is staring at her before Jules walks up and embraces him. Cassie appears in pain on the bed which switches to Cal on top of a scared looking Nate. He wakes up from his nightmare, where Cassie embraces him in bed. In the meantime, Jules burns and breaks the tape of her.
Maddy and Samantha are at Theo’s little league game, where Maddy is afraid to tell Theo she won’t be babysitting for him anymore. The viewers do not know where she is going, but it can be assumed away from her hometown. Samantha gives her a parting gift which is a sparkly purple dress that Maddy tried on once in her closet.
Fez is almost ready to go and asks Faye is other people will think he’s handsome, which is clearly about Lexi (aw). Ashtray watches Custer and sits down next to him staring at him. It’s the last we see of all of them for this episode, as Fez’s chair is empty the entire play.
In the last part of the episode, a group of shirtless boys in gold leggings run on stage, including Ethan. All of them moving in sexual acts while working out, when “Holding Out for a Hero” by Bonnie Tyler starts playing. Breaking into into a 2 minute long sexually charged dance sequence, everyone bursts into laugher except for Cassie and Nate. Nate clenches his fists in anger while Cassie tries but fails to calm him down. Maddy and Kat meanwhile, thoroughly enjoy the show looking back at Nate to laugh him. When the performance ends, it gets a huge applause with Maddy calling Lexi a “G” for that. Nate gets up in anger, with Cassie following behind. Calling it homophobic (didn’t you call your dad a slur in the first season?) he’s angry that Cassie didn’t stop it since Lexi is her sister. He kicks her out and leaves the school. Cassie walks back slowly and stares through the door window into the theater with huge eyes as the episode ends.
With the last episode airing on Sunday, I feel a mix of emotions for this. I really don’t want anything to happen to Fez or Ashtray, but the trailer’s don’t look too promising. It looks pretty intense for the last episode, so be on the lookout for my last recap!
Watch Euphoria on HBO Max on 9 p.m. on Sundays.