[This story contains MAJOR spoilers from the season three finale of Euphoria, “In God We Trust.”]
Over the last seven years, audiences have followed the lives of those in the fictional world of Euphoria and watched many of its young stars rise to household names. Following last week’s episode, the series’ first major death — the killing of Jacob Elordi’s Nate Jacobs — shocked audiences. And Sunday night’s finale continued the surprises.
The episode begins with Rue (Zendaya) escaping Wayne (Toby Wallace) after Faye (Chloe Cherry) turns on her and screams to wake him up while Rue attempts to rob the drug cartel. Audiences also see Maddy (Alexa Demie) and Cassie (Sydney Sweeney) grieving after discovering Nate’s dead body.
After the traumatic night, Alamo (Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje) gives Rue money and time off but intentionally leaves a bottle of pills out, knowing Rue will take them. As Rue heads to Ali’s (Colman Domingo) home, Laurie’s (Martha Kelly) drug cartel is raided and she takes her own life after saying, “I can’t go to prison.”
While at Ali’s home, Rue sees on the news that Fezco (Angus Cloud) has escaped prison and goes to find him. A clip of Fezco and Rue in a field is then shown, making for an emotional moment for fans of the series, as Cloud died in real life of acute intoxication following an accidental overdose in 2023, one year after season two aired.
However, the sequence is revealed to be a dream Rue is having, along with a reunion with her mother, Leslie (Nika King), as Ali wakes up to find Rue dead. After testing her Percocet pills, he discovers they were laced with fentanyl and that Rue was poisoned after Alamo learned she was a rat. Given that Rue has struggled with addiction throughout the series, her death is especially heartbreaking.
Following her death, Ali sets out to avenge her, even showing up at Alamo’s strip club to confront him and fatally shoots him.
As for Maddy and Cassie, they plan to rent out bedrooms in Cassie and Nate’s house to other OnlyFans models in an effort to pay off their debt, and turn it into their own hype house.
Regarding Euphoria’s other original main cast members, including Lexi (Maude Apatow) and Jules (Hunter Schafer), they feel like an afterthought in the finale. Jules appears in only one scene and has no dialogue, though she is shown crying, making it unclear whether it’s because she knows Rue is dead. She and Rue also don’t have a last moment together in the finale, but in Rue’s dream sequence, a flashback shows Rue watching Jules ride her bike, as she did in the pilot.
Lexi, meanwhile, declines to help Cassie and Maddy while grappling with losing Rue to drugs. Cassie also doesn’t tell Lexi the truth about what happened to Nate, instead claiming that he disappeared.
The episode ends with Ali visiting the family and the farmhouse Rue stayed at in the season’s premiere. He tells them that she’s now “in a better place” and prays that Rue’s memory is a blessing. During his prayer, he imagines Rue at the end of the table and the two share a smile. “May God bless us all,” Rue says in a voiceover as she bids her farewell to the series.
Following the season’s premiere in a post-show segment, Levinson said season three was about choices and consequences. By killing off Rue, the finale leaves many questions about how the show could continue, if it does.
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Euphoria season three is streaming on HBO Max. Check out all of The Hollywood Reporter’s coverage here.
