Euphoria is back for its third and final trip, and if you’ve been watching, it has border-hopped, time-jumped, and skipped to OF and around the corner. And I’ve taken back the reins to guide us through these final four episodes. Now, this is a recap, so it goes without saying – heavy spoilers are ahead.
Greenlight
So, I am going to assume that if you are here, you’ve watched the first half of the season and are up to date with this past Sunday’s release. We know it’s 5 years in the future, Rue has been a drug mule to a strip club fluffer, and last we left off – in deep shizz with the DEA. Now we all knew she was going to become a snitch because this girl has been trafficking drugs across the border with the finesse of a free-running Titan. She clearly was on the FBI’s low-hanging fruit list because it was just too easy to track and bring her in. Rue is not going to go to jail. She wants rehab but not like that. So she agrees to help the DEA, but the problem is… as I said before, she’s lacking in the finesse department. Always has.
Cassie and Nate are Stepford wives and husbanding, meaning they both are being controlled by radio chips in their heads, making them pretend this homemaking life is some sort of American Dream furnished with 70s decor. The whole experience, complete with disco era movie time gangsters, but owing 2020s-sized debts. After Nate’s mobster storyline went left, Cassie remembered she had other assets and bailed. Lexi is living the film and tv dream of getting coffee and being an ashtray for producers. Maddy is out here hustling like she’s trying to make the elevated reality TV version of The Deuce, while fronting as an agent’s assistant. Now, let’s get into today’s episode.
Coverage
To start off, we begin with light stuff, like over the shirt first base stuff. Nope, just kidding, quite the opposite. We see Cassie out here being “managed” by Maddy, who moves with a hint of seething resentment through her pursed lips in every shot. After Cassie’s planned run-in with influencer “Brandon Fontaine” (played by Jeff Wahlberg), her following is climbing faster than an LA mountain lion.
She’s got 17K then 50K, and the DMs are cumming faster than she can think. The episode proceeds to take us on a daily scroll of OnlyFans kink. I’m talking, ASMR, foot fetishism, self-play, roleplay, JOI (look it up), selling used undies, even GTS or giantess (macrophilia), a giant woman fetish. That’s where people get off on seeing a giant woman doing things like mimicking eating you whole, or in this case, wedging you in between her tits. It’s honestly an ode to some classic kinks found on the site. Not that I know anything about that, I’m just doing my journalistic due diligence. The scene also feels like an excuse to see Sydney Sweeney doing sensual favors. Despite how well her fandom is doing, she is still hung up on Nate and sending him about 35K a month, which Maddy scolds – for good reason.
But since Cassie’s recent growth in popularity, the influencer Brandon reveals Maddy isn’t anything but a phone answering nobody and offers Cassie a contract with his content house. I don’t know which is worse. A house full of 2-second TikTok dancing pranksters who sleep with each other and are CONSTANTLY recording or being the first client of an agent’s assistant…These sorts of life decisions make me want to claw my eyes out.
Cassie is seriously torn (not really) between what to do and first decides to confront her friend for lying and somehow justify screwing her over again. It backfires, of course, because Maddy pretends to cancel an audition she never had lined up for Cassie on the, I guess, elusive show “LA Nights.” I’m trying to figure out what show it’s mimicking. Maybe the LA version of Blue Bloods? Law and Order, or P-Valley? It’s hard to tell. Either way, LA Nights is the show Lexi gets mopped the floor with. I’m sorry…is an assistant to the producers. Maddy pulls that favor, and Cassie gets an audition.
Call Sheet
We then follow up with Rue, our drug runner, trying to go “legit” by working for a drug-inducing gun-selling brothel, and she has been summoned by her new employer, Alamo Brown (Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje). The scene is grim to say the least. We’re in some room of Alamo’s house where Bishop (Darrell Britt-Gibson), Alamo’s fixer, or muscle, or cleaner, all of the above is suiting up in protective plastic and plugging in a bone saw. So – he’s about to Fk somebody up. He proceeds to liken Rue to the devil or a cursed child who brings nothing but plagues wherever she goes. Then let’s her know Alamo’s waiting for her at the bar. So foreshadowing because they are just ITCHING to cut a girl up.
Before this, we had seen Alamo Brown’s raging insecurities flare up when his pants were hemmed for a shorter man. He damn near ice-picked this young blood for getting the wrong pants. Raving about being a big man and being mistaken for a short version of himself. Being not worthy, and yea he definitely spiraled after that. So yes – unhinged to say the least.
Alamo starts talking about speaking to Laurie after their tit for tat has come to a head. Laurie’s bird was killed, she had his money man shot, and robbed his safe. All this time, Rue is just trying to get the DEA what they want so she can get out of this mess. Sweet summer child, she’ll never be out of this mess. She meets up with the DEA in a sketchy ass location with sex workers walking around, and I was like – won’t she get ID’d? She might know these girls. Anyway, she calls up Laurie on the wire and gets nowhere. Then calls up Laurie’s idiot Lachey, who gives it away in the first 10 seconds of talking that they are running drugs outta the place. Where that’s gonna lead – who knows. Nowhere good.
Cold Read
Back at Cassie’s audition, she pulls up in a butterfly boob dress, ready to give her best Cleopatra Shakespeare monologue for the role of “job applicant.” I’ll say this – she commits. It’s an awkward level of commitment for a featured extra role. I’m confused why they’re even having in-person auditions for a role like this. Of course, the directors are watching her audition out loud in the sound stage, clearly mocking and looking sideways at Lexy, saying, “That’s your sister?” I’m sorry, no offense, but this is giving peak LA energy. My New York sensibilities would prevent me from fixing my face.
Fourth Wall
There is one storyline that I will always keep coming back for, and that is Jules. Her character, even through the time jump, is still engaging, full of potential, and holds the gravitas of that first season. Rue’s been grafting (as they say in Love Island UK) a new relationship with Jules since returning into the picture. Jules has a standard to keep up, and she’s pissed Rue disappeared after Nate and Cassie’s wedding, and honestly, Jules is thinking, I can’t trust this witch, but I can’t stay away. They hook up. When Jule’s sugar daddy, Ellis (Sam Trammell), comes over for paid services, Rue’s boxers are on the floor for him to find. He makes it abundantly clear his family comes first, and Jules can’t be messing with that by giving him an STD. So as we know, she’s expendable. Period. I feel like the moral of the story for this season is to diversify your revenue streams. It can’t all come from one place because that one place might drop you in a second to be with their family or find out you’re a DEA snitch.
Back at the Alamo strip club ranch, Rue’s lazy attempt at framing Magick (played by Rosalia), the girl who clearly knows Rue’s a snitch, backfires. This girl doubles down on her theory, letting Alamo know she don’t trust that B Rue. A lightbulb goes off in his head that Rue identified Faye (Chloe Cherry) as the driver of the getaway car after the robbery, so she must have known the robbers. He’s thinking she was in on it. And well – he’s a mad man so…
Day Player
Cut to! Nate gets knocked the F out after he misses a payment to his 70s gangsters and loses a finger this time. Along with the toe he originally had reattached. The hilarious thing is – he had just got the money from Cassie, he just was late wiring it. This is one arc I just can’t get behind. I am searching for the reason to make him a groveling weakling when he was a deranged psychopath the entirety of high school. Granted, he was a coward who hid behind his trauma and used it to abuse people. That’s what made his character a little diabolical. He would have stuck a small needle through that mobster’s eye and done it without blinking in high school. Maybe it’s commentary on how big men in high school are nothing but gutless suckers as adults. Or maybe Sam Levison wanted to satisfy the urge to see the high school bully get the ish beaten out of him. Either way, it’s a weird 180 for this character.
Back with Rue, who I never realized her name is Ruby Bennett until they said it like three times an episode this season. Ruby (lol) is eating at a diner with Maddy when Alamo shows up, with a clear plan. And they’re all here talking about God and Jesus, yea Maddy is preaching about the bible for some reason. But of all the things, Maddy and Alamo hit it off. He sends Rue outside, where she’s whisked away with Marshawn Lynch’s character G, to an undisclosed location in the night to meet Kidd (Asante Blackk) and Bishop, who’s practicing his stabbin’ waiting for them.
They make her dig her own grave. At least that’s what it looks like, while Maddy and her new best friend, Alamo, go to size up the inventory at the ranch. Two lucky strippers are about to become millionaires on OnlyFans and Alamo, and Maddy get 15% each of the profits. I’m also like – is OnlyFans a sponsor for this season? I know there’s a lot going on right now with WB and Paramount merger, so taking any and all sponsors is a must. No judgment at all, it just feels like product placement at this point. But Maddy picks our problematic Latina Magick and newbie stripper Kitty (Anna Van Patten) to begin their OnlyFans content agency.
Lexy comes home pissed that Cassie used her to get a role on that show she works on. All Cassie hears is I got a role on that show she works on. She jumps for joy, wearing the smallest crop top, headlights on. I am honestly trying to figure out how this shirt is defying the laws of physics like Cap’s shield with no nip slip. Between Jules painting ‘rocket ships’ for the props department and Cassie making a mockery of acting, Lexy is definitely losing her job.
Martini Shot
We’ve made it to our final moment. Why is Rue digging this hole?
Honestly, no one is confused as to why she is digging this hole. Until we see Alamo saddle up and grab his best polo mallet. Rue is standing buried up to her neck when Alamo comes a swinging! Cut to black. Is Rue finished? Is this how she goes out? I doubt it. But we won’t see how she gets out of it until the next episode.
This season is truly taking us somewhere no one wants to go. I think it’s safe to say we all thought it was never coming back. Then posts from musician Labrinth appeared vaguely yet very loudly, airing grievances and underhandedly announcing he won’t be working on the Euphoria, I think we all gave the show even more side eye than we did before.
But, if you’ve made it all the way to the end of this recap, you’re either a super fan, a committed skeptic, or a completionist like me. I’ll keep watching each week until we finish this out together. Catch you next week!
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