This post contains detailed spoilers for Euphoria.
There was a lot of hype leading up to the most recent episode of HBO’s Euphoria. Narrating the turmoil of the otherwise well-adjusted high school students is the lucid voice of Rue (Zendaya). Rue, the series lead, takes not just the form of the all-seeing eye, but also of a young woman experiencing love, loss, and addiction. As the anchor of this showcase of tumultuous youth, Rue sits center stage, a position that allows space for the delicate portrayal of a flawed woman whose worst behavior never precludes her from being deserving of the love of both her family and fans of the series.
When we first meet her, Rue’s fresh out of rehab having barely survived an overdose. She’s quippy and funny, falling in the warm embrace of her mother and sister who are elated at her drug-free future. “I had no intention of staying clean,” she tells us with an inescapable magnetism. Though she instantly betrays the trust of her glowing family, she is never viewed as the villain. She isn’t a tragic hero or a disposable side character. Ruby “Rue” Bennett is a human worthy of sympathy and love who trips over her relationships on her way to drugs.
Rue has a romantic relationship with her addiction. In her signature poetic style, she paints a picture of a life spent outrunning her own anxiety, and then the beautiful, “two seconds of nothingness,” she chases every time she gets near that perfect chemical concoction.
In the between-seasons special episode, Rue sits across from her sponsor and discusses the ruthless hold of addiction, allowing her trajectory to feel dire. Speculating as to Rue’s fate, fans considered if the omniscient narration was a manifestation of the lead having passed into the afterlife. Each episode is another hour of bated breath waiting to witness her ultimate fate. Meanwhile, Season 2 opens with her playing fast and loose with pills, barely escaping cardiac arrest, then handling it with casual ease. Her drug use is often portrayed as dark, but with a wash of glitter and spunk.
At the start of this now buzzed about fifth episode, Rue’s mother, Leslie (Nika King), has confronted her about her addiction. Against the wall, Rue turns angry and violent, shouting at her mother and sister, trashing their home, and begging for the whereabouts of her suitcase full of drugs, a suitcase she promised to sell at the risk of being sold herself. Audiences all knew Rue was never going to move the suitcase on her own, but few could fathom such a descent for the beloved lead of a high school fantasy series. After pleading for the whereabouts of the drugs, she finally hears a voice. From the other room, Jules (Hunter Schafer) utters “we flushed them down the toilet.”
This moment, wherein Rue has discovered she is in the middle of her own intervention, sets our lead down a path of destruction, setting fires to every bridge she’s ever built. She spits vitriol at Jules, shouts at Elliot, then sprints into the streets to smash relationships with most everyone else in her path. After arriving at the home of Cassie (Sydney Sweeney) and Lexi (Maude Apatow), our lead is met with warmth and love and responds by chucking a social grenade into the center of it all.
We’re reminded that the gritty tale of high school students is a lot less Degrassi and a lot more Goodfellas. For every “don’t steal my boyfriend,” there’s a stark reminder of Rue’s drug use pushing her closer to suicide than to a wild night of partying. She isn’t the reflection of who the audience wishes they were, she is the generation’s Tony Soprano or Walter White. She’s the self-destructive lead dragging fawning audiences into her demise. And like Tony before her, the audience might turn a cold shoulder, but they will never stop rooting for her survival.
Whether by Levinson’s creation of the character, Zendaya’s immense likeability being imbued onto her, or both, Rue almost can’t isolate herself despite her best efforts. Her character is radical because she is human. Euphoria shows every single part of her. The child struggling with early onset mental illness, the grieving daughter, and the teen learning about love and sex. Her drug use and addiction are a part of her, sometimes used for a lark but never for a punchline.
There’s magic in what Levinson put on the page and Zendaya’s portrayal of it. Rue is and remains loveable. Even after she ruthlessly attacks characters we love, lies, cheats, and steals, audiences still can’t help but think, “lol, go girl,” as she sprints through the town like a limping Ferris Bueller, complete with the impossible charm. When she finally ends up at the home of her debtor, the drug queen pin, a Rue who has spent the entire episode at her most loathsome and abhorrent is the character we’re begging to be removed from danger. For the breathlessness coerced by the opening minutes of her spitting poison at her most beloved, there’s a deeper inability to exhale when a crying Rue desperately consents to an injection of morphine.
As she escapes the clutches of being sold for parts, audiences are face to face with the darkest place her drug use could take her. Rue has always been sympathetic; a woman beyond her years who experienced mental illness and trauma that forced her to edges women like her should never even have to see. Rue’s evoked anger when she lied to Jules, and sadness when Jules left her behind, all because of our investment in their love story. She evoked frustration when she seemed trapped in an endless cycle, and outrage when she got high on her fentanyl supply, all because we were scared she was destroying herself.
Leading up to the second season, Zendaya, now serving as an executive producer, cryptically warned viewers that the show would tackle some dark issues. In two Instagram posts, she said, “This season, maybe even more so than the last, is deeply emotional and deals with subject matter that can be triggering and difficult to watch,” and “she hits rock bottom. It’s my hope for people watching that they still see her as a person worthy of their love.” Of course, these posts set the clock on the time bomb. One that was made up of a suitcase full of unsold drugs and drug-buddy, Elliot (Dominic Fike) that she lets get close to her deceived girlfriend, Jules. Now, with the fifth episode of the season, Rue has finally isolated herself from her loved ones, put out fire with gasoline, and is on a quick trip to the bottom.
At the midpoint of the season, with a third one on deck, there’s much to be resolved for the students at East Highland High School. But because of Zendaya’s strong performance paired with the groundwork of her complicated story, audiences will spend the week counting down the milliseconds until Sunday when we can find out if Rue is okay.
