Rue’s Fate In The Euphoria Series Finale Is A Terrible Ending

Spoilers for Euphoria Season 3 ahead. While critics and social media roasted the long-awaited third season of Euphoria, I’ve been the HBO show’s biggest champion, arguing how every character’s storyline makes sense for them (yes, even the late Nate Jacobs). But even I can’t defend the series finale, where Zendaya’s central heroine, Rue Bennett, met her demise in the saddest way possible.

After escaping from Laurie’s (Martha Kelly) drug ring and successfully getting back what they robbed, Rue’s boss, Alamo (Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje), gives her a week off and some Percocet to recover. However, he laced those pills with fentanyl after realizing that she was secretly working with the DEA in the previous episode (thanks, Maddy), and Rue’s sponsor, Ali (Colman Domingo), finds her overdosed on his couch. Filled with grief and fury, Ali stops being a sponsor and makes it his mission to take down Alamo. And when Alamo’s team betrays the strip club owner, all bets are off.

Sam Levinson explained the ending to the New York Times’ Popcast podcast, revealing that his plans changed for Rue’s journey after the 2023 death of Angus Cloud. “I had to reconceive the script, and I thought, you can’t tell a story about addiction today without the very real consequences,” he said. “Most people don’t get a second chance. Fentanyl can just take you out in an instant. This is something that hits close to home for a lot of people in this country. So it felt like the responsible thing to do.”

While the circumstances are understandable, Rue’s fate ultimately didn’t align with the arc that Levinson had already built with Zendaya across the first two seasons, nor did it seem true to her wishes for Rue.

Zendaya has previously stated that she wanted Rue to have some semblance of a happy ending. In 2022, she remarked during a special screening and Q&A that her one wish for Rue’s Season 3 journey “is literally just to be able to be alive and maybe enjoy it,” according to The Hollywood Reporter.

Rue was on this path at the end of Season 2, being sober for her longest period yet and therefore hopeful about the future after high school. It makes sense that she’d have to deal with the consequences of her past at some point (namely, her $10K debt to Laurie that ballooned to $43 million). But even while caught in between Laurie’s and Alamo’s dueling crime rings, by working with the DEA, staying (almost) clean, and finding solace in the Bible, she saw a path forward.

This made Rue’s shocking death even more devastating. Levinson is correct that it reflects many people’s experiences with addiction, but it doesn’t do justice to his beloved character, nor does it align with the first two seasons that he wrote. While her death did set off a series of events that helped her friends Maddy (Alexa Demie), Cassie (Sydney Sweeney), and Lexi (Maude Apatow), Rue’s manner of death stripped away her agency to make that choice on her own (and for those girls, she might’ve chosen to sacrifice herself).

Admittedly, Ali’s explosive shootout with Alamo was epic and made Domingo deserving of another Emmy. But there was a way to stage a similar showdown without taking Rue’s life first. Rue deserved the ending that Zendaya envisioned, where she doesn’t skirt accountability for her actions, but gets at least one chance to live the life envisioned and do some good in the world. Maybe those rumors about creative differences were true after all.