We all knew season two of Euphoria was going to be a tough watch. But what I was expecting, thanks to Zendaya’s comments about her character Rue, was a lot of difficult content – not a mess of unfinished plot lines and anti-climaxes.
This season of Euphoria consistently under-delivered. Sure, the shock factor was present and accounted for – we finally got a realistic depiction of drug addiction, the violence and sex was, as always, teetering on the edge of problematic and refreshingly confronting. The fashion levelled up, we’re all back to painting extreme glitter flicks on our eyelids and asking for the longest french tips at the nail salon. But peel away the stylish veneer and really, what we have is a show that seems to have a lobotomy after every episode.
What was the point of that incredible, melodramatic montage at the end of episode four? Fan theories swarmed the internet – was Rue dead? Would Elliot die? Instead it was just… artistic licence? There were hints all season that Maddy would fall pregnant, but that amounted to nothing, too.
We spent an entire episode learning more about Nate’s dad and his sexual awakening (easily the best episode of the season, in my opinion, and the reason I now have a dedicated INXS playlist on repeat), but instead of the series doing anything of note with this new information, Cal just sort of disappears into the ether mid-way through season two – returning for the finale in the most tepid way possible.
Even more of a mess was the Rue/Laurie plot. There is no world in which Laurie, the most fearsome drug lord in town, would not have immediately come for Rue after she lost all those drugs. We all thought Rue’s escape from her den at the end of episode five was just the beginning of the teen’s problems, but Laurie, like Cal, just vanished from the Euphoria world. We got one mention of her, briefly, in the finale – but in a completely different context, when Faye tries to deflect the blame for Mouse’s death onto Custer.
It’s all well and good to present your show as high stakes and high drama, but there has to be follow through. All these open-ended plots ended up just being vehicles for some seriously creative, but ultimately unsatisfying episodes. It’s like Euphoria is stuck between being an episodic series and a serialised one. We get episodes like Cal’s past and Rue’s drug spiral, but instead of the events within them serving as springboards for future activity in the rest of the season, things just peter out.
Let’s talk about Lexi’s play. Skipping over the fact that no school in the history of Earth would have the kind of budget to stage such an elaborate performance complete with pyrotechnics, this was another plot that fell flat. The play was meant to push everyone over the edge as they were publicly humiliated with their toxic, chaotic lives depicted in front of the entire school. Sure, Cassie loses it, but her monologue was convoluted and weak, the response from her peers was confusing at best (they’re clapping, then they’re jeering?) and we ended up back at her “they weren’t even together!” bullshit which is, honestly, getting really tired.
Cassie had a lot she could have said here – I really feel for this teen who is addicted to validation and sees relationships as the source of this. Her sister literally splashed her most vulnerable moments on stage, her boyfriend dumps her subsequently, and all she does is jump up and stomp around saying “is this part of the play?” Where was the final straw that broke the camel’s back and resulted in a searing take-down of the judgement that’s been heaped on this broken teen for two entire seasons? Where was Cassie’s moment?
Don’t even start me on Maddy, getting up to finally fight Cassie, as we’d all expected her character to do since discovering the betrayal, only to get a few hair-pulls in and then let the whole drama go with a dismissive “this is just the beginning”. That’s not the Maddy we’ve been given over the course of this series. That was just a lazy way to wrap up some drama.
The one climax that did pay off, albeit in the most tragic of ways, was the raid on Fezco’s home. This, I have to say, was brilliantly done – Ash was always going to fight back, and watching Fez beg the cops to lay down their weapons was heartbreaking. I hate that we lost Ash, but I think if that raid didn’t result in some sort of casualty it would have been, frankly, ridiculous.
Still, one well-paced storyline does not make up for the myriad of mess we were served in Euphoria this season. Will I tune in for season three? Absolutely – I just hope the writer’s room gives us some more follow-through next time.
Melissa is a contributing editor at Grazia. You can find her on Instagram.
