Sam Levinson's Farewell to ‘Euphoria’ | Vanity Fair

Spoilers for the Euphoria finale below.

“Grief has a way of clarifying what matters,” said Sam Levinson while introducing Euphoria’s season three finale. “It strips everything down to the essentials: your family, your friends, your faith. And it reminds you that even in the face of unimaginable loss, the decision to keep hoping to believe in a better world might be the very thing that can help create one.” At an exclusive watch party for the season three—and series—finale of Euphoria, fans certainly felt grief as they watched Zendaya’s Rue Bennett narrowly escape death at the hands of neo-Nazi drug dealers, only to die of a fentanyl overdose.

A select group of Euphoria fans had gathered to bid the show farewell at an invite-only watch party at the Brooklyn Paramount, cohosted by Levi’s and Depop. Before the show began, fans enjoyed snacks, drinks, and Euphoria-themed activations, including a premium portrait studio with photographer Matt Monath and recreations of both the Silver Slipper strip club and the East Highland girls bathroom. The captions on the mirrors? Cassie’s iconic line “I have never ever been happier” and Maddy’s “Bitch, you better be joking.”

Those who arrived early were given Levi’s denim jackets that could be personally embroidered on-site. They also had a chance to snag a thrifted T-shirt from Depop before settling down to watch the show’s 90-minute finale with some Euphoria cast members, including season three standouts Marshawn Lynch and Darrell Britt-Gibson.

Before pressing play on the supersized finale—which HBO confirmed was the show’s final episode—Euphoria creator, director, and writer Levinson introduced it with a touching tribute to the late Angus Cloud, who played lovable drug dealer Fezco and died in 2023 of an accidental overdose involving fentanyl. “We’ve had the chance to tell a story about addiction, self-destruction, and its consequences. And between seasons, life happened, as it should, and it shapes the work,” Levinson said. “This season we lost Angus. Many of you loved him the way I did. And he had such a light that could just fill up an entire room. And he deserved more time, a longer, fuller life, but he was taken, like far too many people in this country, by fentanyl.”

Perhaps Levinson was giving a clue about what would eventually befall Zendaya’s drug-addled Euphoria protagonist. In the finale, after making it out of drug dealer Laurie’s lair by the skin of her teeth and ending up physically worse for wear, Rue returns to Alamo Brown’s ranch. There, Alamo convinces Rue to take a single Percocet for her pain. We then find Rue crashing on the couch of her sponsor, Ali (Colman Domingo), waking up the next day with a bowl of cereal, and envisioning a God-fearing future on the homestead she stumbled upon in the season three premiere. Rue then sees on the news that Fezco has broken out of prison and rushes to reunite with him, winding up back at her childhood home, where she embraces her estranged mother, Leslie (Nika King).

At this point it seems like Rue might get her happy ending. But that isn’t meant to be. We soon learn that this entire sequence has been a dream. After falling asleep on Ali’s couch, Rue never wakes up, dying of a drug overdose from Alamo Brown’s fentanyl-laced Percocet. (Why would Alamo kill Rue? In the episode before this one, Maddy accidentally tipped him off to the fact that Rue was working with the DEA.)

While Levinson introduced the episode as the season three finale, rather than the series finale, it seemed clear by the end that this was the end of Euphoria. Two of the show’s major characters, Zendaya’s Rue and Jacob Elordi’s Nate Jacobs, had been killed off—Nate in the show’s penultimate episode, after getting bitten by a venomous snake while buried alive in a coffin. This finale wrapped up plots for some cast members while leaving others more open-ended.

After the DEA arrives at Laurie’s drug den, Laurie dies by suicide, choosing to jump off her roof rather than go to prison. The recently widowed Cassie keeps the house that she and Nate bought, using it to start a hype house for OnlyFans models and content creators. She also asks sister Lexi to write storylines for the girls; Lexi declines. A vengeful Ali comes to the Silver Slipper with a sawed-off shotgun in search of Alamo Brown. The two engage in a duel, which Ali wins because Bishop has removed all the bullets from Alamo’s gun. Jules, meanwhile, is still living in her high- rise, painting a portrait of Rue.

But it seems that with no Rue, there’s no Euphoria. During an appearance on the New York Times podcast Popcast before the finale, Levinson confirmed as much. “In terms of the story that we set out to tell, which is a story about addiction and its consequences, this feels like the end to me,” he said. Levinson added that he was immensely proud of the show he created and offered another warning about drug use in the age of fentanyl: “If you are experimenting or taking drugs today, it’s very possible it’ll kill you, and I think it was a way of honoring Angus and saying a prayer for the future.”

A focus on God, and specifically Christianity, had been a through line of Euphoria season three, from Rue’s obsession with reading the Bible to her stint at the Christian homestead and seeing a burning bush. So it’s no surprise that the show’s final episode, titled “In God We Trust,” ended with hyper-religious visuals. In the last image of the series, we see Ali having dinner at the homestead on Jerusalem Road. There, he imagines Rue sitting at the table as well, holding hands and saying grace, in a tableau that directly echoes The Last Supper.

“I’ve never been prouder of this cast and crew,” said Levinson at the end of his remarks at the watch party. “For almost a decade, we’ve grown up together. This final piece is something I will carry with me forever. Thank you for riding with us. Thank you for being here. Thank you to HBO. And enjoy the season three finale of Euphoria, ‘In God We Trust,’ and may God bless you all.”

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