“Euphoria” is getting off the chaos train. The HBO series is officially ending with its third season, which wrapped us its run Sunday with the death of its main character — Zendaya’s Rue Bennett.
Creator Sam Levinson confirmed the show’s end in an interview with Popcast Sunday. The character overdosed on painkillers laced with fentanyl in a tragic twist in the now-series finale. Viewers watched as a drug-induced haze featured old footage of Rue with his sister and her friends, as well as Fezco, played by the late Angus Cloud.
“It just felt like the honest ending,” Levinson said in a post-episode look inside the Season 3 finale that played after the episode. “The honest ending is people like Rue don’t make it.”
The decision doesn’t come as a surprise given Rue’s death. Zendaya had previously said in interviews that she believed Season 3 to be the end of the series, but speculation rose after HBO referenced Sunday’s release as a season rather than a series finale.
The penultimate episode also killed off Jacob Elordi’s Nate Jacobs — leaving only Sydney Sweeney’s Cassie, Hunter Schafer’s Jules, Alexa Demie’s Maddy and Maude Apatow’s Lexi left to potentially continue the story out of the series’ original characters.
Rue’s death put Colman Domingo’s Ali in the spotlight, as the troubled woman’s sponsor took matters into his own hands and killed druglord Alamo Brown (Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje) for supplying the laced drugs to Rue. Then he headed to the remote home of the family in Texas Rue met back in the beginning of Season 3, the last place she had said she’d known peace, to honor her memory.
“I knew that I wanted to experience Rue’s death through [Ali],” Levinson said. “There’s a sort of helplessness. Letting Colman articulate that for us as an audience is really important.”
“Euphoria” Seasons 1-3 are now streaming on HBO Max.
