Euphoria first graced our screens on June 16, 2019, and fans praised Sam Levinson as a genius for it. He introduced complex concepts like addiction, attachment styles based on childhood trauma, exploring sexuality as a teenager in a world run by social media, and how toxic gender tropes can shape us as we grow into functional humans in society. He did all this while producing a visually and aurally magnificent masterpiece in season one.
However, the longer the story went on, the less it seemed that Levinson cared about these characters and their individual journeys. Instead, he cared more about exploiting the actors and using them to explore weird fantasies that had no correlation with the story he hooked us into.
What if Euphoria ran its course and gave satisfying conclusions for each character? In this rewrite, I’m reimagining the ending from the ground up—giving every major character a conclusion that feels earned, heartbreaking, and true to who they are. I need to be clear: this is not a Euphoria recap. Instead, I’ll recap each character arc in the first two seasons, expose the flaws in their season 3 storylines, and rewrite their conclusion. Get comfy and cozy; this will be a long post.
Trigger warning: This post includes sensitive topics like drug abuse, adults having sex with minors, adult sex work, sexual abuse, and child murder. If any of these topics are sensitive for you, you may find this content to be upsetting.
Since Euphoria is an ensemble of several characters, we’ll be covering each character’s unique journey before moving on to the next. Obviously, there will be overlap, as their stories intersect in more ways than one, but I will try to keep everything as organized and easy to digest as possible. I will keep in mind the unfortunate deaths of actors to create a story that could’ve been plausible and to show that Levinson really didn’t even try. Rest in peace to Angus Cloud, who played Fez, and Eric Dane, who played Cal. They were both phenomenal in their roles and are greatly missed.
We’ll talk about the secondary characters and tumble through the major ones, wrapping up with Miss Rue Bennett. Up first, we’ve got Lexie.
Lexi
Seasons 1 & 2
We’re introduced to Lexi when Rue asks her to help fake a drug test in the pilot. Rue described Lexi as her best friend, acknowledging that they had grown apart because they no longer had much in common. By that, she meant that she had become a waste plant drug addict while Lexi was a functioning human.
Throughout season one, Lexie is a background character. She does nothing but serve as a way to rub up against the other characters and develop them for the audience. When it comes to her personal development, though, we don’t really explore it until season 2.
Season 2 Lexie is great because she’s finally started to come out of her own shell. She’s directed this dramatic play, showcasing her own perspective on everything she’s witnessed, and we even get great insight into other characters, like Rue, who genuinely seems moved by it. She’s developed a relationship with Fez, so it’s heartbreaking when he doesn’t show up, and she’d later learn it’s because he was getting raided by the police and carted off to prison.
By the end of season 2, Lexi has finally begun to show real complexity, making her feel less like a supporting caricature and more like a real person. She feels overshadowed by her attention-seeking older sister, but she used the play to overcome it.
The questions I would’ve liked to see answered with her moving forward were whether she’d ever get to repair her relationship with her sister and what that could look like, what would bloom between her and Fez, and whether she would become less of a bystander in her own story. Let’s briefly touch on what the show did with her in season 3 before we get to how I would’ve changed it.
Canon Season 3
In the canon timeline, when we’re reconnected with Lexi, she’s working as an assistant in the film industry. This makes sense for her character because we see her going that direction in season 2, with the play.
She’s still the most judgmental person on the show, which is why I actually laughed out loud when she told Rue she couldn’t be friends with a Christian because of their judgmental nature. Like, Lexie, you spent the entire season telling everyone that they’re wrong for living their lives the way they choose to!
She gets Jules an opportunity on the show she was on, but Jules fumbles it and embarrasses her. More on that in Jules’ section. But I do find it ironic that Lexie was so ashamed of her sister, even though the crew loved Cassie. While they did ultimately decide to pass on Cassie because of her history with porn, I think that could’ve gone differently if Lexie had advocated for her sister instead of constantly undermining her at every opportunity.
So, did she ever repair her relationship with her sister? Not really. By the end of the show, they’re regurgitating whatever Lexie read from Rue’s Bible while Cassie lies to her sister about Nate and sterilizes dildos. What a joke. Not a funny joke. This is actually horrid and an insult to the people who waited 7 years for a conclusion in these sisters’ story.
As for her relationship with Fez, of course, we couldn’t do much about it because of Angus Cloud’s death. However, they didn’t write him out the show. Rue had scenes with him on the phone. They even used behind-the-scenes footage of Zendaya and Angus, so why couldn’t we have some of that magic here with Lexie?
Rue asks Lexie about Fez at one point, and this would’ve been the perfect opportunity to explore what it’s like to be left behind when a loved one gets incarcerated. Especially loved ones who aren’t accustomed to that kind of lifestyle, like Lexie. Instead, she just shrugs the whole thing off and avoids even talking about him.
Finally, we wanted to know whether Lexie would stop being a bystander in her own story and take more agency in her life. I think the answer to that is no. And I think that’s okay, too. In her core, a change like that would have to happen after some kind of major awakening. We’re looking for natural character development, not lobotomies like what they did to Nate.
Lexi’s Season 3 Rayewritten
Regarding the rewrite of Lexie’s story, I wouldn’t make many changes, but there are three I’d like to address.
First, I want to say that I don’t like what they did with Cassie and Lexie’s relationship. By that, I primarily mean Cassie’s side of things. Lexie being embarrassed by her sister’s porn exploits and angry at Maddie for pimping her out feels appropriate. However, Cassie being so muted about Lexie’s constant judgment and dismissiveness feels out of place. Cassie never had an issue standing up to Lexie in the past.
In Season 3, Cassie has no genuine personality or motivations beyond using her body to become rich and famous, whereas in the past, all she wanted was love, particularly from a man. More on that in Cassie’s section, but in the meantime, I’d have liked to see more conflict between Cassie and Lexie, rather than Lexie just hammering Cassie down like whack-a-mole!
Lexie writing the storyline for Cassie’s character on the show could’ve been a great way to bring these sisters in a full-circle moment with the play. That was such a negative experience for Cassie to be blindsided with it at school, but the show also gave them an opportunity to reconcile and share a real, heartfelt moment before Levinson decided that Alamo deserved that screen time.
The second change would be the scene where Rue asks Lexie about Fez. I think this was a real opportunity to say something meaningful, and Levinson just skated over it. This was a chance for Lexie to share her anger towards Fez for getting arrested in the first place and leaving her behind. Or maybe she wouldn’t be feeling anger. Maybe she’s feeling sad about it and avoiding talking to him because it’s emotionally too much for her.
Personally, I think the most Lexie-coated response would be indifference. When Rue asked about it, she’d admit she cared about Fez a lot, but also acknowledge very plainly that he was gone. Locked away for who knows how long. Lexie was free, living in the real world. She couldn’t be bogged down and associated with a known drug criminal while she was trying to focus on building her career.
The last change I’d give Lexie is that I wouldn’t have Lexie find Rue’s Bible and start word-vomiting it at Cassie in their final scene. That whole thing felt so random, especially given her initial reaction to Rue reading the Bible.
I understand Sam wanting to leave his own message somewhere, but giving those lines to a character that would otherwise oppose what they’re saying is such a lazy writing decision. Same thing with Maddie yammering about jubilation and Jesus to Rue in the diner. These characters have never expressed any interest in religion, so plopping in these lines of dialogue takes me out of the scene.
I think a better way to convert Lexie, if Levinson was really set on doing this, would be to have Lexie finally call Fez after Rue’s death. We saw them discussing religion at the party in season 2. He and Rue were close. Rue also found religion, so I think it feels more authentic for her to have that final conversation of rambling about Christianity during the phone call where she tells Fez about Rue’s passing rather than it being with Cassie and her dildo collection.
I do like that the sisters’ final scene is together, though, and I do like the general gist of their conversation. They talk about their father and compare their grief for Rue to the abandonment they felt when he left. I think it makes sense for Cassie to avoid sharing too much about Nate, as it shows that whilst their relationship has strengthened, they still don’t have a very deep trust in one another, which feels fitting. We’ll discuss the dildos, the mansion, and all that in Cassie’s section. In the meantime, let’s chat about my favorite forgotten character.
Kat
Seasons 1 & 2
Kat was one of my favorite characters in season one. She’s also the one I found myself relating to most for many reasons. Navigating weight gain and its relation to one’s evolving sexuality was a storyline I connected to. Being pressured externally to engage in sexual activity, being exposed for said sexual activity, turning that around into something meant to be empowering, but ultimately feeling even more unsafe, was a compelling arc, and I was so excited to see where they took her character in season 2 and beyond.
However, season 2 Kat was a big, empty void. Her big fight with Maddie at the end of season one was resolved off camera, which felt so unfair because those two were way overdue for an on-screen crash-out.
Her breakup with Ethan gave me second-hand embarrassment. I’m not saying her breaking up with him was wrong. I think it felt right for her character, especially given the shallow state of mind she was going back and forth in. She is a teenager here at the end of the day, and she cares a lot about appearances.
Also, it is perfectly within her rights to want a big Khal Drogo-looking boyfriend who would make her feel safe and all that. More power to ya, sister. I feel the same way. Even the way she went about it, lying about the cancer, was fine. Again, she’s meant to be a dumb and immature teenager at this point. Scenes like this remind us of that and pull us back down from those camgirl montages they loved giving us.
Kat’s character went from one of the main characters in season one to barely visible in season two to completely written out in season three. Some of the questions I had about her character were whether she’d reconcile with Ethan, whether she’d fully quit porn, whether she’d pursue writing as a career, and what a healthy romantic relationship could look like for her. Let’s explore how we could’ve incorporated her in season three and given her a well-rounded arc with a satisfying ending.
Kat’s Season 3 Rayewritten
It’s established early in Kat’s story that she loves writing. She got Tumblr-famous writing One Direction fan fiction in high school, so it makes sense to further develop this in the time jump.
Similar to Lexie working in the Hollywood gutter to make it in film, I’d have Kat working at a publishing agency. If you’ve seen Pretty Little Liars, think season 7 Aria, before the Ezria book deal. The difference is that Kat would have several manuscript drafts primed and ready, but would be struggling with her asshole boss, who won’t give her the big break she’s fantasized about for years.
We always got these fantastical moments with Kat, especially in season one, so I’d keep that trend up here. I’d have her fantasize about giving her boss her manuscript, his falling in love with it, and her becoming rich from all the fans and royalties.
In reality, though, her boss will dismiss her work as bad writing and insist that the only way he’d push her work out is if the kitty kween agreed to sleep with him. For those of y’all who forgot, Kitty Kween was Kat’s porn star alter ego.
He’d confess to knowing about her online persona, and even admit to having paid for her content in the past. He’d basically do the typical pervert boss move and try to pressure her into sleeping with him, and she’d consider it for a minute. It’s hard not to when he has the power to give her everything she ever wanted. She’d slept with guys for less before. But disgusted by his appearance, age, and overall sleazebag mannerisms, Kat decides to evade his reach and quit her job.
This would leave Kat in a depressive slump where she goes into another depressive eating binge. I’d have Kat and Jules be roommates in my alternate timeline. We’ll talk more about Jules soon, but I’d have her help Kat get out of her head and meet Maddie and Lexie for drinks. Lexie would mention that Ethan had recently gotten a job at the studio. He was really excited to do the play in Season 2, so I think this would’ve been a cool way to keep his character in the story, even though he and Kat were broken up.
Kat would be intrigued with his photos, seeing that he got a bit of a post-high-school glow-up, but she’d fall into a slump of insecurity from her recent weeks of binge eating. Maddie would recommend her personal trainer to help Kat lose weight, but Kat would remind her that she was unemployed and couldn’t afford a trainer. Lexie would recommend that she start writing her fan-fiction again, and she would. The newfound spark of confidence from her success in writing would push Kat to start taking better care of herself.
I’d have her organically meet a man whom she found attractive out in the world. Maybe a coffee shop where she spent the afternoons writing, maybe even at the gym, or a library. The point is, we’d get to see Kat in a healthy relationship with a man she likes. But when she goes to sit with Jules for the penis painting, she runs into Ethan, introducing a love triangle where she has to choose which man feels right for her.
I like the idea of Kat, the girl who was dumped by Daniel for gaining weight, becoming this confident woman who feels so sure of herself that she isn’t willing to settle for a love she isn’t satisfied with. Ultimately, I’d have her pick the other man. Ethan was cool, but I just don’t see him, bulked up or not, as her final person.
I also think it’s so funny to explore the extremes these characters end up at. We’ve got Kat in a rom-com essentially, juggling a love triangle while Rue is a snitch for the DEA and Nate is being ripped apart by gangsters. Speaking of Nate, let’s dive into his storyline. It’s one I’ve been eager to discuss.
Nate
Seasons 1 & 2
We’re introduced to Nate when he buys drugs from Fez for a party he’s convinced McKay to host. The two boys are riding together in Nate’s car when he catcalls Jules, damn near running her off the road on her bike. Their next interaction is at McKay’s party, where he goes on a full rampage after spotting Maddie hooking up with a random in the pool.
Off the bat, Nate is shown to be an immature, narcissistic, manic, closeted homophobic gay man-baby. Let me be very clear: Nathaniel Jacobs hates women. He only likes what they provide him in terms of boosting his own masculinity.
Nate didn’t like his mother. He said she was weak and a pushover. I guess that’s more internalized self-hatred and projection regarding his father having all the affairs. It’s hard to imagine that after all those years, she never knew. Plus, we never learned the lore on the third brother from the family photos. Maybe it was tied to that? We’ll never know.
Leaving Nate in season 2, we had a mountain of things to explore with him. For instance, I wanted to know if he’d ever finally admit to himself that he is attracted to men. I wanted to know what would come of his relationship with his father after he turned him in to the police and how the rest of his family responded to that. I wanted to know if he’d ever make amends with Jules, Maddie, or Tyler. I doubted he’d make amends with Tyler, but I would’ve loved to see if the man Nate forced into jail time would be spinning the block in vengeance against Nate. How did McKay react to discovering Nate’s relationship with Cassie? The most fascinating mystery to me regarding the Jacobs family was what the hell was the situation with Nate’s younger brother?
There were literally so many things to discuss, but do you know what Sam Levinson wanted to focus on? Cutting off his body parts and lobotomizing the character altogether!
Canon Season 3
Nate is barely in the season beyond the first three episodes. I can’t even say that one of the show’s most dynamic personalities has become a shadow of his former self, because that’s not true. He isn’t a shadow of his former self. He’s a completely different character.
The Nathaniel Jacobs we grew to hate fell off the face of the cinematic universe when he walked out of the auditorium during Lexie’s play. He was replaced by a lazy yes-man who did nothing to drive his own story forward but pimp out his wife and spew excuse after excuse. Mind you, in season one, he was threatening to kill mfs just for Maddie knowing they had a bigger dick than him. How did we go from that to this? It’s maddening.
At the wedding, Cassie puts on a whole scene demasculating Nate, and he does nothing but beg and plead with her to stop. Even when she pops him in the eye with the bottle cork, he just goes off alone to sulk. This could be seen as character growth. Maybe he learned from the incident at the carnival with Maddie that he can’t be beating up women in public and carrying on like that. But I think it’s because Levinson just wants him to be a passive punching bag this season as retribution for all his crimes.
There’s genuinely not much to even say about season 3, Nate. He’s taken over his father’s real estate company, which he’s pummeled into debt with this plan for a retirement community on land he can’t build on. So when he can’t pay back the investors he’d swindled into funding said retirement community, they crash his wedding, give his bride a bloody nose, and cut off his toe.
Now I know what you’re thinking. Season one Nate would’ve found a way to turn this whole situation around and make the Armenian asswipe pay for embarrassing him like that. Humiliating Nathaniel Jacobs in front of his friends, his neighbors, and his bride, he would’ve lived, eaten, and breathed vengeance for that.
But no, he doesn’t even try to run away. He just stays at the same mansion he was attacked in without any protection; he allows and even encourages Cassie to pimp herself out for money, while groveling and begging for her forgiveness. Then, he doesn’t even attempt to make any money on his own to help speed up the repayment process. He just waits for Cassie to send him money, hoping it’s frequent enough to avoid other body parts from being chopped off! Which it isn’t.
Eventually, the poster boy for toxic masculinity gets shoved in a coffin and buried alive at the site where his retirement community was supposed to be built. When his brother comes to search for him, since he’s been missing for who knows how long at this point, he screams too late, attracting a rattlesnake that kills him. His death is also the catalyst for Maddie, the girl he loved so much that he stalked and beat the shit out of Tyler over in season one, becoming a sex slave to Alamo for trying to save Nate’s life in the first place. What the #%$!
Nate’s Season 3 Rayewritten
First and foremost, I am not against Nate becoming this docile, complacent, broken-down individual. However, we needed way more on-screen development to show how Nate got there.
It is a real-life phenomenon for someone who felt as if they were on top of the world in high school to have a hard shift into adulthood. It might even be considered normal. He took over his father’s company, proposed to the girl society deemed the prettiest, and bought the biggest house he could manage, and still it wasn’t enough to make him feel alive. Never enough to make him feel as alive as he felt during those three weeks he spent getting to know Jules back in the 12th grade.
I would’ve had Nate scrolling on his phone during one of the scenes where Cassie was complaining about the wedding flowers, and I’d have him looking through Jules’ Instagram feed. He’d be distracted by Cassie saying she’d sell her body for flowers if she had to, and Nate would accidentally like an old high school photo. Nate would obviously panic, unlike the photo, and check back into his conversation with Cassie.
I like this because we left things in season 2 with Nate still having unresolved feelings for Jules. While he was still very homophobic until his end, Nate deep down wants to be with men. Jules could’ve been something of a middle ground for him, considering how feminine she was, just with a penis. I would make that the catalyst for his mental health decline and the reason why he was sleepwalking through his life at this point. He’d be functional, but severely depressed and unable to come to terms with why. Cassie would be oblivious to this and in her own bubble of expectations.
So when his real estate plot fails, and the Armenians take his toe, it makes sense for him to wallow in self-pity for an episode because he is genuinely fucked in the head. At the wedding, when Cassie and the corkscrew explode, I would’ve had Cal go talk with Nate instead of his brother, Aaron. I’d give Nate a mini version of the Cal breakdown we got in season 2. He wouldn’t confess to his money problems or even to liking men, but he would vent about his transition to adulthood and about realizing how much harder the real world is than high school.
This would be a tough-love moment from Cal. He’d tell his son that he was proud of him for what he had been able to do for himself. He’d grab Nate’s shoulder in a paternal way and mention how proud his little brother would’ve been, too. The two men would share a moment of eye contact, broken first by Nate, then by his own shame. This would actually prompt Nate to leave mid-convo, essentially leaving his father behind. That would be the last interaction the two men would ever share.
He’d find himself breaking down privately and severely damaging his hand by punching a wall. This gives plausibility to buff ass Nate Jacobs getting the absolute shit beaten out of him without even landing a decent punch at the end of episode 3.
But breakdown or not, Nate Jacobs is a narcissist. He would never truly go down like this without a fight. So in episode 4, I would have him put on his big-boy stalker boots and start trailing the board members who denied his building permits. He’d been looking for blackmail or anything at all that could get him what he needed.
That would be when I’d have Nate discover that the person denying Nate’s permit was actually Tyler’s father. So during his meeting, when Bill insists on denying his appeal, he’d try to take a swipe at his credibility. When Nate asked if Bill was trying to ruin his life on a personal vendetta, he would mention his son being put in jail for attacking his ex-girlfriend in high school. This would be a shock to the other board members, and Nate would insist on a conflict of interest, but ultimately he’d still lose the appeal. This feels so much more authentic than having him plead to these strangers on his hands and knees in a room full of witnesses.
Nate would also be entirely too prideful to be okay with Cassie on OnlyFans, and when the video of her in some guy’s bed doing coke goes public, he’d go ballistic. Just when he was headed to deal with Cassie and assure her that he had a plan to get everything under control, which would be a lie, he’d be knocked unconscious and subdued by the Armenian bodyguard guy.
Levinson was intent on physical torment, so I’d let him have his time to shine here. Nate could be zip-tied or handcuffed, but unable to escape for an episode or two. I think he’s the type of person who would break his own fingers or hand to get out of that situation, so I’d have him do that. Of course, he’d be caught, and we’d watch him getting knocked unconscious once again by a punch to the face, and we wouldn’t see Nate again until the second-to-last episode.
I do like killing Nate off, but I don’t like the rattlesnake-in-the-coffin thing. Instead, I would tie his demise to everything his character represented in the first two seasons. Toxic masculinity, homophobia, misogyny, and perfectionism all wrapped up in a tight little bow. We will get to exactly how I would’ve killed him off in a later section.
In the moments leading up to his death, though, I’d have Nate’s life flashing before his eyes. He’d see all the things he’d done that led him up to this moment. Finding his father’s tapes, meeting Maddie, abusing Maddie, stalking Tyler, his affair with Cassie, his failings with the real estate business, and finally, we’d see the face of his brother. The show never gave us a name for this character. We only see his face in the family picture that Cal takes at the end of season 2, when he leaves the family.
In his final moments, I’d reveal that Nate tried to replicate what he saw in Cal’s video with his younger brother. He was young and confused, experiencing puberty and trying to figure out his own feelings around his sexuality, and so this was how he decided to do that. He didn’t think about the consequences of what he was doing until it was done, and the boy was broken and crying and curled up in a ball, terrified of the brother he’d once looked at as his protector.
Ashamed of what he’d done, Nate would try to convince his brother not to say anything, but the boy would insist that he had to tell. Distraught and determined to keep it a secret, Nate gently carried his brother to his bed, tucked him in, kissed his forehead, and smothered him with a pillow.
We’ll say that Cal learned what Nate had done from the medical examiner, but used his influence to protect Nate, and kept it a secret from Marsha and the rest of the family. This adds so much weight to a story that’s already way too heavy, but I think it brings a lot of context to the raging fire between the two men from the very start of the show.
Jules
Seasons 1 & 2
The writing around Jules in season one, and even parts of season two, was outstanding. Her story felt like it was made with genuine love, care, and commentary on femininity and how a person can go about reaching its peak, if such a thing even existed.
What is femininity? Does a person need to conquer men in order to be feminine? What does that even mean, conquering men? Is it being admired by them? Lusted after by them? Loved by them? What does it mean for someone’s femininity if they’re not attracted to men or if men aren’t attracted to them? These were great questions to ask, especially when you contrast her story to and rub up against someone like Nate. Let’s talk specifically about Jules’ special episode at the end of season one.
In her therapy session, Jules described herself as philosophically uninterested in men, declaring them boring and having no authority over her relationship to womanhood. This is what prompted Jules to stop dressing so performatively in season two, as she no longer felt the need to fall under the male gaze. She talked about wanting to feel deep like the ocean, so she planned on removing the implant in her arm that had been blocking her from puberty.
Jules also talked about Rue and what she liked about Rue. Which, let’s be honest. Wasn’t for Rue. Jules loved the way Rue loved Jules. She also hated the responsibility that came with being around an addict, especially with her mother’s history. In hindsight, it makes sense that their relationship didn’t last. There was just no way that Jules wouldn’t outgrow Rue.
I can understand characters like Lexie, Cassie, Maddie, and even Kat… I can understand them sticking by Rue through all her crap in season 3. At the end of season 2, though, Jules and Rue weren’t even talking anymore.
The questions I had for Jules at the end of season 2 were what her relationship with men would look like moving forward. She had that weird slip with Elliot, which, in a perfect universe, I’d remove him completely and devote his screentime to Kat’s arc. I would also want to know if she’d ever be able to forgive her mother and repair their relationship. What about Nate? He terrified her, yes, but they kind of loved each other, too? It was such a complex dynamic, and seeing them interact more in season 3 would’ve given it some much-needed Euphoria grit. I’ll be honest, I didn’t see Jules and Rue becoming friends again after the episode at Rue’s home, so I was fine leaving their relationship where it was at the end of season 2.
Before we get into the changes I’d have made, let’s talk about what Levinson decided to do with Jules instead.
Canon Season 3
Jules was a complete nothingburger in Season 3. Levinson literally gave that girl nothing to do after the wedding. Actually, yes, it’s about time we discussed the best episode of the season: the wedding.
The episode starts with Jules painting. Go figure. We quickly dive into her montage of serial dating older rich men until she lands on a married plastic surgeon who gets her a huge apartment in exchange for letting him enact his weird, claustrophobic fetishes on her. She stopped caring whether or not she’d become a successful artist. I guess that’s because she felt financially taken care of by this guy? There seemed to be no concept of the future, though. Did she expect him to cover the rest of her life? I guess. I think it’s supposed to be empowering for Jules, but it just doesn’t translate well for me.
Anyway, Jules shows up at the wedding in a 30-inch buss-down, wearing 3 pieces of string stitched together as Rue’s plus-one. Don’t get me wrong, I love Jules’ new look. I love the vibe. Hunter Schaffer did that. However, there was no explanation for how she got there from the end of season 2, where she explicitly decided to stop dressing for the male gaze.
I love that moment with Martha and Cal spotting Jules as they walk in, and Martha questions him, eyeing her, but he just lies. He calls her an old friend of Nate’s, knowing he and his son both did nothing but stress that girl out.
It’s an acknowledgment of the history that I appreciate, though. Especially considering they even get a minute later on in the episode to speak. Jules calls him out for all the crap he did to her, and he complains about being rightfully put on the sex offenders registry for it. These two scenes give a lot of insight into what’s happened with these two since the time jump, especially Cal. In terms of where we left this dynamic, it feels like a complete arc.
The situation with Nate, though, is a different story. I was initially annoyed that she outed Maddie for getting emotional and leaving. I’m like, girl, you couldn’t save your friend some dignity and come up with a lie? It makes sense, though, for Jules to use it as a jab at Nate. She was probably hoping he’d feel bad, but he just responded with “you love who you love,” maintaining eye contact with her, and it was giving high sexual tension. But of course, this goes nowhere in canon, and the two never see each other again.
One of the strangest storylines with Jules this season is the painting she’s asked to make for Lexie’s show. It’s not an X-rated or explicit show, yet Jules feels it’s appropriate to make a painting of naked trans women running around freely at a picnic. Whether they were cisgender or not, dicks out and swinging is just not appropriate, yet Jules frames this as problematic and just ruins the painting altogether before storming out. If I were Lexie, I’d never have spoken to her again, because what is actually wrong with Jules here?
There is a very real chance that, as a cisgender woman, the meaning behind this flew over my head, but it still just feels so clumsy and awkward. There’s no resolution or confrontation between the two characters. Neither of them talks about it with anyone else, except Lexie trying to explain it by simply acknowledging, “she’s trans,” as an explanation when she’s embarrassed in front of her bosses with the painting.
Are we trying to show Jules’ very complex understanding of her own identity and explore how she feels about it in the time jump? If so, you might have to spell it out a little clearer, Levinson, because I don’t know what the hell you’re trying to say here. If any of my readers have some insight on this, please feel free to leave a comment and enlighten me.
The rest of the season is just Jules in her apartment, where Rue comes to visit her. Jules questions Rue’s intentions and asks if she’s been in a serious relationship since high school. She finds it hard to believe Rue is capable of building genuine connections and maintaining them. Rue mentions Angel, whom she still thinks she dropped off at rehab.
Rue calls Jules out for being a wind-up toy locked in a glass cage disguised as a pretty apartment, and Jules pimp slaps Rue before kicking her out. This is the last interaction she has with Rue before her death. Even worse than that, we don’t see Jules’ reaction to finding out about Rue’s death. In fact, the only glimpse of Jules we get after Rue’s death is her painting Rue while her sugar daddy interrupts the scene to kiss her.
I’m not even joking. It was horrendous. She didn’t even have a single line of dialogue. She just looks sad while she’s making her only art of the season that doesn’t feature a penis. It just feels like such a slap in the face to the girl who loved Rue and made the conscious decision to decenter men.
Rather than sticking to that idea, though, her entire life ends up revolving around men under the guise that they take care of her financially. We didn’t hear a single line of dialogue about her mother, which, I guess, implies that they never repaired their relationship and are probably no contact.
Jule’s Season 3 Rayewritten
I do like that when Rue tries to show up in Jules’ life, Jules does acknowledge how ridiculous it is. I’d have expanded on this. I’d have Jules ask when the last time was that she did drugs, and Rue would bring up Jesus and the Christian farm. Yes, I would actually keep aspects of that storyline, but let’s save that for Rue’s section.
Jules took a leap of faith by attending the wedding with Rue, who ditched her halfway through, resulting in her having uncomfortable conversations with both Nate and his father, both men she despises. I think there should’ve been at least one episode where Jules and Rue fought about this.
Another thing I liked was that we got a scene with Jules, Cal, and Nate. She got to call them both out for their shitty behavior, and she kept it classy the whole time. One thing I would change about her conversation with Nate, though, is when he says “you love who you love,” while maintaining eye contact with her, she’d address the elephant in the room. This could’ve been an interesting opportunity to circle back to the photo he liked on Instagram.
This could be a conversation where they talk about those three weeks in high school, and Nate is vulnerable enough to confess how much he truly cared for her. She’d brush him off, but he’d talk about how he’d been sleepwalking through life for years, haunted by how he hurt her. He’d be hunching his wife and Jules’ face would be the one he’d imagine. She was the only person he’d ever been able to genuinely just be himself with. Jules would respond with, “But you weren’t yourself, even then, Nate,” and walk away. He’d be left standing there, and the camera would stay on him as she left.
I would remove Jules ‘ sugar baby storyline completely. I don’t feel like it was the right direction to go for her character. Instead, I would have her share an apartment with Kat. I would have her fail out of art school rather than make the decision to leave. I think season three was the perfect opportunity to explore the theme that life after high school is harder than people typically expect, and I’d center Jules’ arc on that.
During Rue’s house visits with Jules and Kat, the three women would have philosophical conversations, which could be another place for Levinson to spout his ideas about Christianity. The three women could debate the existence of God and share their unique perspectives on the topic. It’s during one of these conversations that we’d learn that Jules and her mother are still no contact. When her mother opted not to attend graduation, we could say that was the last straw.
I like the idea that Rue is looking for a larger purpose in life and constantly asking herself how to achieve it. She talks about wanting to start a family so she could have something bigger than herself to live for and focus on. I’d keep the scene where Rue and Jules are alone in the apartment, and Jules eggs her on to make a move, implying they could start a life together and be happy.
Instead of having the women fight over Jules’ lifestyle, their last conversation and fallout would be Jules calling Rue out for her toxic behavior. She’d say that Rue hadn’t really changed, still disappearing and being chaotic. Rue would try to explain this away with the same confession she gave Lexie in the canon timeline. Similar to the canon timeline, Jules would think she’d relapsed, and Rue would storm out of the apartment.
Cassie
Seasons 1 & 2
Cassie felt like a real person in seasons one and two. Deeply flawed and controversial, especially in season 2, she still felt very much like a human teenager navigating life and making mistakes. Season 3, Cassie is not a person. She is a fantasy wrapped up in the package of Sydney Sweeney’s boobs.
Cassie was a male-centered girl who was driven by her need to feel loved by men. We see that this internal conflict stems from her drug-dependent father abandoning her and their family. We see her navigate relationships with boys like McKay and Daniel and suffer heartbreak when they ultimately abandon her, or feel ashamed of her, or just use her like she’s nothing more than her body.
Even when they want her for more than her body, it’s the only thing she really knows how to offer them. We see this when McKay tries to vent to her about football, and the only way she can think of to comfort him is with sex. He calls her out, and she gets upset, but he was right in that scenario. Even she oversexualizes herself. It’s like she only feels worthy of love when she’s using her body to experience it.
Even with Nate in Season 2, he doesn’t actually like her, and I think she knows that. That’s why she was waking up at 4 in the morning to maintain this perfect image for him, and when that didn’t work, she pivoted to channeling Maddie. She tied her identity and self-worth to whether he’d choose her, which made the pool scene so devastating when it turned out Nate wanted to get back with Maddie.
Cassie was willing to sacrifice all her fulfilling relationships with the women in her life, like Maddie and her own sister, over Nate because the male validation was the only thing that made her feel whole inside. That is why I do think her moving toward OnlyFans in season 3 makes sense. It gives her the opportunity to receive the attention she’d been craving in a much larger capacity, filling a void she didn’t know how to fill otherwise.
By the end of Season 2, I wanted to know if Cassie would ever be able to decenter men in relation to her own self-worth, if she’d be able to repair the female relationships that were damaged in response to her destructive behaviors, and if she’d be able to find something in herself that she liked outside of her ability to turn men on.
Canon Season 3
Season 3, Cassie is very interesting, but like, in a bad way. She starts off the season hounding Nate about $50,000 worth of flowers she’s demanding he buy for their wedding. Which, you know what, slay queen. This man had you uproot your entire life and forsake the truest friend you ever had. If $50,000 worth of flowers is going to justify that for you so you can sleep at night, get your flowers.
But where she loses me is when she decides to sell her body online to get these flowers if Nate refuses to pay for them. What about the Cassie we knew in the first three seasons implies that she would do this? Yes, we’d seen her allow boys to record her in the past during intimate situations, but she was devastated when those videos were leaked. It was the opposite reaction to Kat, for instance, who found empowerment in porn, however misguided that may have been.
Season 3, Cassie is all about using her body to gain fame and fortune. Whilst before, she only cared about using it to earn love. You may be inclined to argue, well, Nathania, OnlyFans gives her that love a million times over what Nate could provide her. I have to disagree. At the end of season 2, she told Nate that she would always follow his lead and essentially categorized herself as a submissive partner.
So while I can understand Cassie becoming this person determined to make it on Onlyfans after Nate’s money debacles are revealed, I’m struggling to see how she got there beforehand. Again, it may just be underdeveloped concepts that we didn’t get to explore during the time jump. Cassie does use the lack of household renovations and the desire for the flowers to justify this, but I’m just not buying it.
Even still, she’s dressing up like a dog and wearing baby clothes because even bad attention is good attention. That is an angle I wish they’d explored more. I’ll talk about what I would do differently in a bit, but I do think we would have benefited from more information about what occurred between the time jump. It didn’t necessarily have to be full flashbacks, but even simple pieces of dialogue would’ve helped to fill in a lot of these character gaps.
But the wedding happens, and the newlyweds are attacked in their home, causing Cassie to move to LA near her sister and seriously pursue a career in porn. Maddie manages her and introduces her to the right people to boost her following. Cassie runs with all of this and wires Nate increments of $30k-$40k as often as she can, so he can pay off his debt.
The part in episode 4 where Maddie comes in and finds Cassie just passed out with the vibrator on and she’s just surrounded by dildos is hilarious. It feels exploitative and wildly inaccurate to what online sex work actually is, but this particular moment is just so funny to me.
Cassie’s Season 3 Rayewritten
I mentioned before that I felt Cassie’s sudden interest in OnlyFans was forced, but I think it could have been handled more organically for her character. Cassie has always been a lover girl. All she ever wanted was for a man to look at her, choose her, and love her. It stems from the abandonment wound she developed from her father.
Somewhere along the way in Cassie’s story, it stopped being about being loved deeply or chosen unapologetically, and it turned into being lusted after and paid for. I feel like we missed out on the chance to see how she got from point A to point B.
A great opportunity for this arose during her conversation with Nate, when he was focused on Jules’ Instagram. Cassie could’ve been talking about how much she loved him and how she couldn’t wait to marry him, and he’d be barely listening, enamored with his phone. I’d show the excitement draining from her face as she watched him ignore her.
Cassie would bring up the wedding flowers, and again he’d be uninterested in the conversation. This would be the first time I’d have Cassie mention OnlyFans. She’d announce her interest in the site here, only after failing to receive the love and attention she needed from him.
This would be when Nate accidentally likes Jules’ old photo, panics, and remembers the fiancée in front of him. He’d question her about OnlyFans and shut it down immediately, but she’d challenge him by asking whether he could afford the wedding she deserved. He’d insist that he could, and the OnlyFans conversation would be shelved until after the wedding.
In episode 4, when Cassie leaves Nate to pursue OnlyFans in LA, he’d be firmly against it, but she insists she needs to save him. She’ll still be reliant on her body to earn the love she thinks she deserves from the men in her life.
OnlyFans was an idea she had when she wanted to get her husband’s attention, but it became a reality when she realized it could save his life and their marriage. That feels so much more genuine to Cassie’s character than just giving her a big head about other women’s husbands checking her out at pool parties, and deciding she should be famous because of it. This also makes Cassie and Nate’s ending even more tragic. She did all that to save his life, just for him to die, and she ended up without the love she desperately sought from him anyway.
In canon, Maddie and Cassie repaired their relationship through the business, but since Maddie is a Pilates hottie now rather than a grunt-work manager farting in jars, they’ll have to repair their relationship another way. We can say she asked for Maddie’s help getting into TV and film after Lexie rejected her, and that’s the interaction we got in episode 2. Maddie would refuse Cassie at first, telling her she doesn’t trust Cassie around her husband with a ten-foot pole, but when Cassie moves to LA to pursue OnlyFans, Maddie would pity her ex-best friend and throw the girl a bone. Rather than going through her producer husband, though, she’d go the canon route and hassle Lexie for the audition.
As mentioned earlier, I wouldn’t have dropped the storyline about Cassie getting the acting gig. I’d have let Lexie write it, and when Lexie killed her off, I’d have given Cassie more acting opportunities, only annoying Lexie further. She’d just keep failing up. She’d be eager to share the news with Nate, but by this point, he’d already be kidnapped by the Armenians.
Instead of having them tie Cassie up in her home, I’d have them abduct her, too, and keep her where they’re holding Nate hostage. When they take the hood off her head, she’d be tied to a chair opposite Nate, and he’d be bloodied and bruised up so badly that he’d barely be recognizable. Naz would threaten Cassie, saying he should sell her to make up the debt. Nate would use the little bit of energy he had to spew homophobic slurs at Naz in response to hearing this. Naz, taking full offense to this, would laugh at Nate and pistol whip him before loading the gun with a single bullet. He’d go back and forth between Nate and Cassie in a game of Russian Roulette, which would ultimately result in Nate eating the final shot, and his brains would be splattered all over a deeply traumatized Cassie.
Maddy
Seasons 1 & 2
The very first line of dialogue we get from Maddy showcases her insecurities, which is interesting because she seems so confident throughout the show. Even in season one, where she grapples with so much, insecurity never felt like it was at the top of her struggles. Yet, there she was, calling herself disgusting and complaining about how Nate’s constant criticisms have completely ruined her confidence.
The toxic relationship Maddie shared with Nate in seasons 1 and 2 was genuinely great writing. He loved her because of how feminine and beautiful she was. She loved how he made her feel safe and bought her everything she wanted. They were opposite her parents, whose relationship she deeply resented for how lackluster it was.
Canon Season 3
Maddie’s character is all over the place in season 3. I really don’t have much to say about her here. At her core, she still feels like the Maddie Perez we’ve known all along, but some of her outlandish decisions feel so out of character that they just take me out of the show.
She’s working as an assistant at an agency in LA and managing porn stars as a side hustle. Then, she reconciles with Cassie and attends her wedding to Nate. She even agrees to manage Cassie’s porn career, despite the warnings from her boss, which takes up the majority of her screen time. She doesn’t even have a real arc or story of her own. She’s just Cassie’s manager and part of the friend group.
The most brain-boggling decision that Maddie makes in season 3 is getting involved with Alamo despite Rue’s warnings that he is dangerous. Not only does she ignore Rue completely and go into business with this man anyway, but she also outs Rue as a snitch and becomes indebted to him for his attempt to rescue Nate from the Armenians. Not indebted, as in she owes him money. I mean, indebted, like he essentially keeps Maddie as a sex slave. Alamo even talks about wanting to breed Maddie and force her into a white picket fence American dream life where she’d be forced to raise his children. Gross.
Maddie’s Season 3 Rayewritten
Through Rue’s narration, we learned that Maddie never wanted any job. She grew up watching her mother serve women whom she aspired to be like. Maddie would study these women, mimic their mannerisms, and learn how to attract the best suitors from as early as she could remember. That’s how she was able to attract Nate like a bee to some honey as soon as he laid eyes on her.
Rather than having Maddie go the corporate route and swear off men, I’d have her do the opposite. One may argue that this would be a character regression, given how her relationship with Nate failed; she probably grew distrustful of men and was determined to make it on her own. Especially, when you consider the whole russian roulette debacle.
While I do think Maddie would have learned from that experience, I don’t think she would have allowed it to change the trajectory of what she wanted for herself. That is why I’d have given Maddie the sugar baby storyline that Jules had. We’d say by episode one of the season, they’re already married and living in a mansion in LA. She’s essentially a trophy wife who does whatever she wants.
Maddie would still be close with the girls, but her relationship with Lexie would be strained because Lexie would make snide comments about her lifestyle. The fire in Maddie Perez would spark, of course, and she’d cuss Lexie out. I want this to resemble the scene where Jules slapped Rue and told her to leave. I wouldn’t have Maddie actually hit Lexie, but she would definitely make the threat.
Obviously, the grass ain’t always greener on the other side, and being a sugar baby is still just a high-end prostitute, which Maddie does eventually realize in an unfortunate series of events. In canon, the worst that Jules got was Rue’s boxers thrown in her face, but this storyline is a great way to show how an arrangement like this isn’t always as glamorous as it seems on social media.
I’d have the producer be the person that Maddie would go to instead of Alamo regarding rescuing Cassie and Nate. She’d find out about Cassie’s kidnapping when she went to Cassie’s apartment and found Nate’s fingers with a note demanding a million dollars.
Maddie’s husband would come up with the money, but the Armenians would take it and kill him anyway. He’s a Hollywood movie producer, not a gangster like Alamo, so the poor guy never stood a chance against them. That’d leave Maddie and Cassie both as broke widows by the end of episode 7. At least in this timeline, Maddie wouldn’t fall victim to creepy ass Alamo before his demise.
This is when I’d plant the seeds for Maddie to pitch herself to Cassie as her acting career manager. The women would go into business together and grow their net worth without ever having to be dependent on or subservient to men again.
Rue
Seasons 1 & 2
We’re introduced to Rue through her own narration, where we see that she struggled through life pretty much from childhood. Psychologists deemed her as obsessive-compulsive, anxious, and maybe even bipolar before she was even 12. She was heavily medicated to help ease these symptoms, which caused her to sleepwalk through her preteens between anxiety attacks and a never-ending exhaustion.
In high school, she started experimenting with drugs and spent the summer before her junior year in rehab because her younger sister found her overdosed. Upon returning, she met Jules, whom she also became addicted to in a way, as a means to stay sober.
Rue and Jules’ relationship is passionate and beautiful, but also toxic and overbearing. Rue becomes dependent on her, and Jules feels the weight of Rue’s sobriety to be too heavy. It’s triggering, considering her own mother’s battles with addiction and their complicated relationship. Ultimately, Jules outs Rue to her mother, and the two have a brutal fallout.
The first two seasons are Rue essentially battling her fight with addiction, relapsing, crashing out, sulking in regret, and repeating the cycle over and over.
Under the watchful eye of her mother and a lack of funds, Rue hatches a plan for how she could get drugs for free and tries to pitch it to Fez first, who rightfully shuts it down before she can even fully get it out. Instead of taking the loss, though, and moving on, Rue goes to Fez’s supplier and asks the woman to front her $10k worth of drugs. Laurie does this, and this is effectively the decision that trickles down, costing Rue’s her life.
Canon Season 3
This might be an unpopular opinion, but I actually liked Rue’s story this season. While I did miss the glitter, I don’t mind the western theme. I will say, I did miss Labrynth score tremendously this season, though. I think his music was such a core part of the show’s identity, and I do wish they were able to work together effectively for the good of the art.
Alas, Rue is forced to be a drug mule to pay off her debt to Laurie, but switches over to Alamo’s side when she catches sight of the strip club.
I will say, it was jarring to see Rue being so overtly sexual with the girls this season, considering she was damn near asexual prior to this. Jules did assume that Rue’s sex drive was fried from all the drugs, and she was cooling off from them this season, so maybe that’s the explanation. I’m not too bothered by it because it was previously established that Rue was interested in sex and in women. She just wasn’t very active in terms of participation with Jules.
Anyway, I do like the journey Rue goes through this season. I don’t mind her falling for the Christians or going down the religious rabbit hole as she searches for a deeper meaning in life. Some of my favorite scenes of the season are when she is sitting in the church, crying to her mother on the phone, and when he comes across the burning tree on the side of the road.
Zendaya is such a phenomenal actress, and she does an amazing job conveying this deep emotion within Rue. I’d be watching these scenes, and I just want to reach in and hug the girl. Despite all her flaws and mistakes, she is genuinely trying to do better this season, but her past keeps catching up to her.
Rue gets approached by the DEA and decides to become a snitch so she can be free from the drug life and start over on the Christian farm. She reads the bible and tries to find something bigger than herself to live for. She fantasizes about having a family and starting a life, maybe with Jules, maybe with someone else.
But the most tragic part about her journey this season is that despite her genuinely working towards becoming a better person and staying sober, everyone around her is still so jaded by her past that she can’t escape it. Her own mother refused to answer her calls, that was until Bishop paid her a visit and convinced her that Rue was doing better. This was just a tactic to make sure Rue didn’t stray or betray them. Jules felt so burned that she pimp slapped the girl for speaking up about her poor decisions. Maddie was working with Alamo for some reason, and Lexie accused her of still being on drugs.
The only person who was still in her corner after everything was Ali. A man who understood Rue to her core. He’d been where she’d been. Rock bottom.
Ultimately, Rue’s cooperation with the DEA is exposed to Alamo, and he kills her with Fentanyl, the same drug she described as providing the best feeling in the world back in season one. Ali quits NA and avenges her with a traditional Western shoot-out at the strip club.
Rue’s Season 3 Rayewritten
I mentioned earlier how much I disliked how Levinson gave all these religious monologues to characters who have never been religious. I talked about Fez and Rue being the ones who had Lexie second-guessing her own beliefs, and how forced her final conversation with Cassie felt.
A character that Levinson could’ve used more organically for these discussions was Ali. Yes, he was there, but given his role in the final episode, I wish we had given him and Rue more time to just talk.
I loved their special episode, and if we had gotten another between seasons 2 and 3, I think that would’ve been amazing. Maybe instead of Jules, it could’ve been one with Nate hiring a prostitute and just spilling his guts, giving us a better insight into how he’d changed so drastically. It doesn’t even need to be a prostitute. It could literally be him spilling his guts to one of his workers at the construction site who doesn’t speak English well. The point is, special episodes with Nate and Rue before season 3 could’ve helped their stories a lot.
Anyway, instead of focusing on how I would’ve changed Rue’s arc throughout the season, I’d like to cover the other characters’ responses, which we were essentially robbed of.
First and foremost, we should’ve gotten Leslie’s pov of her hearing about Rue’s passing from Ali. Their showing him dial her number and then walk off-screen was diabolical, especially when you consider that Leslie was in that episode. I wanted to experience the despair in her eyes, and witness the tears, and breakdown from this mother who we spent the first two seasons desperately trying to save her daughter. It would’ve been nice if we’d even gotten to see Gia in the background, overhearing this and just crying silently, as she often did.
We also barely got any reaction from any of Rue’s friends. As I mentioned before, I think Lexie should’ve been the one who broke the news to Fez over the phone. This would be where they have their conversation about religion, and Levinson could’ve hammered in his point about Jesus being the answer, or whatever he was trying to say with this shitshow of a final season.
I’d have had Jules, Maddie, Cassie, Kat, and Lexie gather at the complex where Lexie and Cassie lived to say a final goodbye to Rue. I don’t think we necessarily needed a funeral scene, but some form of acknowledgment from all the girls together, showing distress, would’ve been nice. A montage of behind-the-scenes footage from the first two seasons would’ve hit the nail on the coffin for sure. Any reaction from them bigger than the one from the farm girl who met Rue once would’ve genuinely been better than what we got.
Speaking of the farm girl, I think the idea of Rue being reincarnated as a cow is absolutely hilarious. I genuinely had to pause the show because I was laughing so hard at this reveal. It’s even funnier, because I don’t hate this. I think reincarnating Rue as an animal on the homestead makes sense because the girl clearly couldn’t handle humanity, she’d have a larger purpose in terms of providing nourishment with her milk, and she’d be close to the Christian girl, who you cannot convince me didn’t cash in her v-card to Rue.
However, I wouldn’t have made this the final shot of the show, closing out with “God Bless America.” THAT felt like a troll, and I was gagged. In a bad way, a very bad way. Instead, I’d have rounded the show back to the beginning of the pilot episode, where Rue’s voiceover discusses her own birth being a cruel act that destroyed her happiness. In this case, she’d be referring to her death and to feeling at peace, which would be when I reveal her farm-life reincarnation. Yes, it’s genuinely so funny that after all that, this is where she ended up, and I’d actually keep that.
Final Thoughts
All in all, I had so much fun breaking down the Euphoria series for you guys and rewriting these characters’ stories. I’d love to know which parts of the rewrite you guys enjoyed the most. Were there aspects where you preferred the canon timeline? Let me know in the comments!