Euphoria's Maddy might team up with Jules to destroy Nate in the ultimate act of revenge, suggests fan theory
This contains spoilers for episode 5 '03 Bonnie & Clyde'.
HBO's ongoing teen drama 'Euphoria' has garnered a lot of flak for its controversial portrayal of American teens and their many dangerous and risky indulgences in the world of sex, drugs, violence, and alcohol. But one of the most lingering and haunting portrayals of all of these continues to be the relationship between its characters Maddy Perez and Nate Jacobs.
Think toxic masculinity falls for an apparent damsel in distress. That's the reality, but each of them looks at it through rose-tinted glasses: Nate thinks he is the gallant prince charming and Maddy thinks she is not a damsel and can actually make Nate do pretty much anything. And that is exactly what makes us speculate that in the episodes to come, Maddy might team up with Jules to get back at Nate.
First, here's some background. Jules (Hunter Schafer) is the new trans-kid at school. And that threatens everything that the stereotypical "manly man" Nate (Jacob Elordi) believes in. He's the signature high school jock with anger issues who has gone out of his way to be cruel to Jules for no reason at all.
After finding out that his father had hooked up with Jules among other trans-people, Nate decides to teach Jules a lesson by threatening her with exposing all the nudes she had sent him when he was catfishing her on a dating app as a guy called Tyler. This, after Nate had already shoved her off her bike with his car and drove her to slit her own wrist at a high school party because he kept aggressively threatening.
Jules has really fallen for Tyler in the brief time they had texted each other on the dating app. She had started envisioning him as the guy she could finally be with uninhibited, unlike her past encounters with men. And Nate played the part of the sweet and charming Tyler really well.
Even when he met her for the first time and crushed all her hopes and dreams surrounding this guy he had woven out of thin air, he addressed how he woke up to her messages and fell asleep to her every night. Meaning that there must be some latent feelings he harbors for Jules, or at least that he too is far deep in the closet about who he really is. But to Jules, he is a monster out to ruin her life if she ever gets in his way or comes forward with her encounter with Nate's dad.
Enter Maddy (Alexa Demie) in the scenario and everything changes. When Maddy spots Nate acting aloof, she decides to go through his phone and finds a storehouse of d**k pics. She doesn't know Nate had shared them with Jules, but he does tell her that they are other people's nudes he had saved on his phone, and even though he doesn't address anything related to homosexuality, it's possible he might have hinted at it as Maddy's friends keep talking about Nate being gay.
Things get worse when Maddy shows up at the carnival dressed like Christina Aguilera in her music video for the song 'Dirty.' Nate berates her for her outfit choices so she pops some Mollys and in that daze, ends up calling his mom the c-word and spilling their award-winning chili off the counter.
This causes Nate to erupt and he drags her out of the stall to a deserted space behind the carnival, where he chokes her hard enough to leave horrifying bruises on her neck. Authorities at school find out about this and things blow up as they do with the police taking Nate in for confrontation, but the cunning chap paints Maddy as someone of loose morals in his testimony to the police.
Maddy never for once admits that it was Nate who harassed her and goes out of her way to defend him when her family wants to press charges. She even showed up at the motel outside their town the moment Nate asks her to come see him. And this leads us to believe that when she finds out about Nate's reality — both the monstrosity with Jules and his testimony — she might team up with the only other person as extensively traumatized by Nate as her, to take him down.
Even though Jules doesn't want to talk about it, Maddy reaching out to her might give her the speck of courage to plot against him too. Like a fan on Reddit had shared: "Since Rue's narration in this week's episode made a point of saying Maddy is able to get what she wants out of Nate, I wouldn't be surprised if her going back to him and being all apologetic is just a ruse in order to f**k him over even more." So watch out, Nate. "Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned," and you have two of them possibly plotting your downfall.
'Euphoria' airs on Sundays at 10 pm only on HBO.