Euphoria season 1 finale: Emotional turmoil, violent breakdowns, and a final relapse blending into chaos
This article contains spoilers for the finale, episode 8: And Salt The Earth Behind You.
HBO's extremely controversial, dark, and disturbing teen-drama 'Euphoria' just culminated its debut season and boy was that a joyride. Taking a major shift in focus from a lot of signature storytelling, the episode introduces Rue's (Zendaya) mother as the narrator and does not specifically focus on any character's backstory. Having said that, there's not a single thing that will disappoint you if you have been an ardent fan of the narrative so far. In fact, it will shock and surprise you in ways you didn't think was possible: such as, empathizing with Nate and pretty much getting annoyed by Jules (Hunter Schafer). Interesting, right? But wait till you get to the ending of the finale, it is a whole other ballgame!
The episode begins with the aftermath of Rue's urine troubles. The previous episode saw her undergoing a manic slash depressive episode as possible symptoms of bipolar disorder and the depression led to her not urinating for over 24 hours. That caused her to land up in the hospital with a kidney infection, and for the first time in the recent past, we see Rue debating whether or not she should go for the Vicodin she gets prescribed for pain. She requests for a higher dosage of Roxicet but gets put on the plain old Tylenol. The entire sequence just humanizes Rue all over again and it only goes on to show that yes, this girl is on the path to recovery, but she still falters like most people do in real life.
The next highlight happens to be Rue's mom speaking at her Narcotics Anonymous meetings as part of a protocol where every recovering addict's family member speaks about what their addiction has cost them as a family. Rue's mother speaks about the day she was born and how she wishes she had an omniscient narrator by her side to forewarn her about what a tumultuous joyride it was going to be, to parent a girl like Rue. Sprinkled with equal amounts of praises and some harrowing impacts of what her addiction did to them as a family, Rue's mother speaks in the background while we see all the other mothers on the show deal with their own kids as they gear up for their high school prom. There's Kat's (Barbie Ferreira) mother constantly worried, but never letting her inhibitions show for her dominatrix inspired outfit; Maddy's (Alexa Demie) mother just asks her to have fun. But things are way too complicated on the Cassie (Sydney Sweeney) front, with her abortion taking place side by side and a double narrative for the show.
The third simultaneous narrative of the episode is some mysterious gang stuff that Fezco (Angus Cloud) is up to. Given the events leading up to this episode, the easiest eduction would be that Fezco is driving to bust Nate (Jacob Elordi) and none of that is expected to be anything but nasty. If Fezco did end up either beating or even killing Nate, at this point of the show, fans would be totally fine with it, because a) Nate is that despicable, and b) Fezco is that precious. Turns out, it's not Nate he is looking to bust. Instead, he drives off to a doctor's house - where Mouse gets his prescription drugs supply from, expectedly - and threatens the doctor with a gun. Fez gets the money he needs to pay Mouse back, but incidentally, it is the money Mouse had paid to the doctor. And if that doesn't make your respect for Fez increase by a good measure, read the whole thing again.
Speaking of Nate, remember how we mentioned that maybe there was some scope for redemption after all? In a very violent breakdown, he ends up hurting himself while his Dominant Daddy Cal Jacobs (Eric Dane) tries to calm him down. All that bottled up aggression and anger just explodes out of Nate after he manages to win the year's football game but it's still not enough for his father. Almost as if out of frustration of not being enough for his father, for Maddy, and with the added pressure of the entire school finding out about his d**k pic hoarding habits, Nate is the dormant volcano that explodes, suddenly making you feel sorry for what his parent has turned him into, but still not enough to make you forget about all the vileness he is capable of. There's a wonderful confrontation scene between him and Rue, where he genuinely compliments both her and Jules and you can tell he means it, while the lingering fear of what if he is planning something worse for them keeps hovering, and that, right there, is the exceptional skill of Elordi's acting.
In other areas of the episode, Cassie's abortion happens side by side as Fezco's operation goes down. But compared to the Cassie centric episode that episode seven was going to be, the finale sheds more light on the blonde beauty. We see abortion in a way the issue hasn't been dealt with before: both in terms of explicit content and in terms of the dubious mind that a young girl of seventeen is in when going through such a crucial event of her life. Cassie comes out of it stronger, and sort of even chaperones her baby sister Lexi (Maude Apatow) at the prom. So watch out for some fun drunk Lexi moments, while Nate and Maddy try to make each other jealous before finally admitting they should never be together, in the middle of what looks like the last ever slow dance they enjoy together.
Rue on an impulse decides with Jules that the two will leave town to go live in the same city as Jules's recent hookup, Anna (Quintessa Swindell) and if that doesn't establish just how toxic the two's relationship is... But relief finds its way into the episode when Rue backs off last minute. She is finally able to let Jules go and maybe that is the first step to her recovery. Or so you'd think until you go back to the very end of the episode and flashbacks get mingled with the in-time narrative haphazardly. It almost looks like the fan theories were right and Rue has been dead this whole time because there's a very intense dance routine that Zendaya pulls off, amidst a montage of nobody around her being able to notice her except her dead father. And as she climbs a pile of bodies, and jumps from the top, our hearts gasp and brains freeze because there couldn't be a better cliffhanger to end this season on. In simpler terms, give us season 2 already!
'Euphoria season 1 finale (episode 8) is available for streaming on HBO.