"Euphoria Season 3 Finale Predictions: Which Character Faces Death in Episode 8? | Vanity Fair"

“If there’s a beginning, there must be an end,” Zendaya’s character, Rue, says in the penultimate episode of Euphoria season three, which ends, likely for good, with its May 31 finale.

The hit teen drama premiered on HBO in the summer of 2019, back when “Old Town Road” topped the charts and the biggest thing Jacob Elordi had ever done was kiss Joey King at a carnival. Seven years and merely three seasons later, Euphoria has become part of the zeitgeist, remembered for its bedazzled underage debauchery as well as its provocative commentary on coming of age in Trump’s America. Euphoria launched Zendaya and now Oscar nominee Elordi into the stratosphere, alongside costars Hunter Schafer, Maude Apatow, Alexa Demie, and Sydney Sweeney.

Fate has been less favorable to their onscreen counterparts, who, five years after graduating East Highland High School, are all going through it. Rue descends into crime, working with Nazis, the feds, and a Black cowboy in a drug plot that stems from her adolescent foibles with monotone drug dealer Laurie (Martha Kelly). Cassie (Sweeney) and Maddy (Demie) both hit bumps in pursuing their show business dreams: Cassie loses a role on LA Nights (the TV show on which sister, Lexi, played by Apatow, writes) due to her OnlyFans account. Meanwhile, Maddy gets fired from her assistant job in part for helping Cassie escape her toxic marriage to Nate. Maddy negotiates with strip club owner Alamo (Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje) to pay off Nate’s debts, but nothing can save her ex from his destiny: being buried alive on one of his own construction sites, the parts of him that haven’t been removed with garden shears poisoned by a rattlesnake.

There’s a lot of plot for a show that also insists on confining Jules (Schafer) to a high-rise apartment, where she waits by an easel for a mysterious sugar daddy…all season long. I hope Jules gets more to do in the Euphoria finale, which should give proper send-offs to all its remaining characters.

Below, seven VF staffers share their predictions for what will happen as Euphoria comes to a dramatic close. Possible spoilers to follow—assuming we made good on our guesses.

Last week, Lexi’s friend Gillie declared what a TV show requires for viewers to stick around: “If someone doesn’t die periodically, people get bored.” Although Euphoria just killed Nate, I suspect there’s at least one more death before the show concludes. It’s easy to envision Ali adding Rue’s name to his “book of the dead,” which he keeps as a “reminder of how the story of addiction often ends.” But it would be even more shocking, and oddly poetic, if it were Ali who met his end while attempting to save Rue from her illicit dealings. Afterward, perhaps Rue even writes Ali’s name in his own book—a devastating outcome that supports actor Colman Domingo, who recently told The Hollywood Reporter the ending is “going to smack people in the face. You don’t see it coming.”

Elsewhere: Maddy and Cassie will ride off into the desert, Thelma & Louise–style. Jules ties together all her silky robes to scale the fire escape of her sugar daddy’s hideaway, armed with a hefty settlement to fund her art. And we discover the script Lexi’s writing has been a little show called Euphoria all along. —Savannah Walsh

I’m predicting the final episode to be a bloodbath. There’s a massive shoot-out where Alamo and Laurie are both killed, violently. Maybe somehow Maddy kills Alamo, and takes over his business. Cassie dies. I don’t know how, but I feel like she’s been in this messy femme fatale role all season and somehow she’s going to meet her tragic end.

And what of Rue, the heart of this show? She’s been on her own for so much of this, I predict her troubles finally catch up with her and she somehow sacrifices herself to protect her family or maybe Jules (who hopefully gets something dramatic to do in this finale).

Because the style and tone and, honestly, characters, this season have been so different from the previous two, I think in the final moments it’s going to be revealed that this season was actually all just a movie, written by Lexi. Just like her high school play, it’s her way to get revenge on so many of the people in her life (she is the only character who comes out pretty clean)—and we learn that every one of her former classmates is actually living a mundane, ordinary adult life in Los Angeles. —Rebecca Ford

I haven’t watched Euphoria since the special episodes that came out before season two, so everything I’ve learned since has not been by choice and by way of Twitter. That said, I think the writers are making viewers think Cassie has a high chance of being “final girl” if people start dying because they’ve been obsessed with her this season, but then they’ll actually kill her. Fingers crossed!

Rue skips town and survives or we get a scene of her lying on the ground bleeding out and monologuing after being shot. Rue finally puts her big boy pants on and gives Jules what she needs to believe that Rue loves her. Jules might be the true “final girl” because nothing’s really happening to her this season other than having a sugar daddy and slapping Rue, which are both not offenses punishable by death. And maybe Rue gets a pay-in-four Klarna plan and very slowly pays back what she owes that lady. She’ll probably have really bad credit after, but if she doesn’t die, she may ride off into the sunset with Jules, who retires the both of them (What is Rue’s job?) with her painting career.

Nate comes back to life and strangles Cassie in a dark green Bottega Veneta suit, then Maddy saves her. Alamo tries to traffic Maddy. Maddy kills Alamo, Cassie kills Maddy, or—what the heck—Lexi kills Cassie. Everyone dies and we hopefully don’t get another season.

But it’s possible that amid a Red Wedding–level bloodbath, the person that will be dealt the worst cards is Lexi. Lexi will experience the only thing worse than death: the pain of trying to get a writing career off the ground in a post-woke climate with no nepo connections as she submits to (and is rejected by) The Paris Review numerous times. —Wisdom Iheanyichukwu

It’s bad news bears for all of the characters on Euphoria heading into the finale. My guess? Maddy kills Alamo—then somehow uses the street smarts and instincts that have kept her alive this long to walk away clean. As for Rue, there have always been only three possible endings: jail, rehab, or six feet under. I think she lands in jail, but only briefly, and only after she kills Laurie. Her cooperation with law enforcement buys her some leniency, and Ali steps in before her mistakes get her killed. By the end, I suspect Rue and Jules find their way back to each other, and Rue makes nice with her family. Jules may get the closest thing this show allows to a happy ending: leaving her sugar daddy behind and finally building a life as a successful visual artist. Lastly, I see the Howard sisters reconciling. After years of resentment and collateral damage, Cassie and Lexi finally make peace and get the hell out of Dodge—each pursuing her own artistic ambitions, but no longer trapped by the same family dysfunction and exploitative professional settings. —Maxwell Adler

I, like many, have been left behind by the narrative. While I was optimistically tuned in at the top of this season, I’ve officially been caught slipping on the show that moved beyond my comprehension and into complete cultural osmosis. Soon enough, Rue and crew found me again by way of my For You Page. At this point, I consume Euphoria exclusively through TikTok clips, out-of-context tweets, and the rogue Instagram reel.

So yes, I know Cassie seemingly went full Godzilla. I’m vaguely aware she and Nate Jacobs are either married, divorced, or both. And that Rue definitely still owes that lady money.

My theory for the finale? That the characters realize that the real Euphoria was the friends we made along the way. Also, I think given Jacob Elordi’s Oscar-nominated turn in Frankenstein, some kind of Gothic resurrection plotline is on the table. —Wengel Gemu

I have experienced this season of Euphoria exclusively through short clips on Twitter, but here goes nothing: I’m optimistic that Zendaya and her team smartly negotiated some sort of mandatory-death, character-exit clause, so RIP to Rue. Cassie will either be brutally murdered or announce a congressional run in whatever district this show is set in. Jules will step away from a giant canvas to reveal an eerily prescient work of art, pack up her paints, and drive away from her sugar daddy and off into the sunset. And if Maude Apatow is still involved, I wish her character the best. —Emily Dentinger

I don’t know if it’s because of Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje’s addition to the cast or what, but I cannot stop seeing parallels between this season’s themes and plotlines of Lost. First off, Akinnuoye-Agbaje’s character on the ABC island drama was an ex drug smuggler turned fake priest (remember those heroin-stuffed Virgin Mary statues?)—two of the major recurring themes in Euphoria this season: drugs and religion. All season long, Rue has been exploring her faith and believes she is being led to her destiny by a higher power, which feels very John Locke. Then there’s the rivalry between the two opposing power camps: Laurie and Alamo, much like how Lost’s final season was built around the impending showdown between Jacob and the Man in Black. And how can we forget Jules, locked up in the Hatch, punching a code every 108 minutes waiting for Kelvin to come back—I mean, painting in her penthouse? If Maddie were to watch Lost now, would she be wondering, “Is this fucking play about us?” I mean, at this point, Sam Levinson might as well throw in a polar bear. So how will it all end? Maybe they all reconvene at a church and Rue is finally reunited with her dad. He pushes open the church doors, letting in a bright white light that engulfs them. Then you hear the sound of a school bell ringing. We are back at East Highland, setting the stage for Euphoria: The Next Generation. —Brandon Leung

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