‘Euphoria’ Season 2 Finale Recap: An Underwhelming Curtain Call

Overall, I’ve really enjoyed the second season of HBO’s Euphoria – the show is a hazy high school dreamscape that often descends into nightmare, and there have been many times where the plot has veered into genuinely unexpected, wonderfully ridiculous directions. 

The finale had too many loose ends to wrap up, and couldn’t possibly cover all the plot twists that have taken place over the last few episodes, but it seemed like most of the time was spent running in circles, recycling stories we’ve already heard, and stretching out Lexi’s excruciating play.

Fez’s tense situation provides the most compelling scenes of the episode, with Faye finally having her hero moment (better late than never), choosing the safety of the brothers over her dirtbag boyfriend, Custer. Fez instantly understands that Custer is trying to record a confession, and tries to communicate that with a purposeful glance at Ash. And Faye does a pretty good job misdirecting the crime towards Laurie, who definitely deserves to be used as a scapegoat.

But Ash’s violence proves infuriatingly short-sighted here, even more so than usual, as his reaction to the bad vibes permeating the room is to go straight for the jugular – literally. At this point, Ash isn’t so much a character as he is an attack dog, capable of only one reaction.

Fez nobly offers himself to the police in a bid to spare Ash jail (although, something tells me the little psychopath would thrive behind bars, and rise up to kingpin by the time he hits 15), but Ash doubles down, locking himself in the bathroom with an armful of powerful weapons. 

I’m not sure what Ash’s plan is here (didn’t he watch the ending to Scarface?), but Ash actually shoots through the door that Fez is standing behind, seemingly more willing to accidentally murder his own brother than see him go to prison.

That last shot of Grandma Fez tells us everything we need to know, that the reactionary violence and fiery temper she installed in her boys leads only to injury and death, and Ash has finally faced the consequences. Maybe there wasn’t much more to do with such a one-note character, but it would have been nice to see a more human side to the kid before he got gunned down.

Back to the play, which has taken up an incredible amount of screentime at this point. A hilarious shot of Rue grimacing at Cassie seething against the window sets up her slow-motion power-walk down the stairs, as she gets ready to ruin her little sister’s big moment.

There’s a strange tonal shift underway here, as Cassie is clearly being framed as the villain, and Lexi the hero – the audience even cheers her name toward the end, while Cassie seems to be portrayed as overly sensitive.

But I’m firmly on team Cassie in this situation – the girl might have made her share of mistakes, but Lexi has written a montage of Cassie’s most embarrassing moments and broadcasted them to the whole school, on a literal stage, with zero effort made to cover her source of inspiration. The play doesn’t seem like an explosion of repressed creativity, but an underhanded act of revenge from a sidelined sibling.

Really, Lexi comes across as incredibly sneaky and bitter here, while Cassie’s furious rant is cruel, but accurate – Lexi is free to judge her big sister’s mistakes because she never made any of her own. Instead, she’s been sitting in the shadows, silently judging. Is it any wonder that Cassie found it deeply humiliating?

It culminates in a hilarious slap-fight between her and Maddy, and a very meta moment as the big plot point of the season is resolved in front of an audience, a play inside a tv show, being disrupted by fictional characters pushing aside their lookalikes, transforming the fiction into “reality.”

At least Maddy and Cassie finally seem to cool off, as Cassie admits that Nate broke up with her, and Maddy offers words of support. It seems like all that slapping got the rage out of her system, although the drama is far from over, as Cassie will probably get back together with the abusive control freak.

Cassie, however, isn’t the only person who Lexi has mercilessly mined for material – the most sensitive, raw moments of Rue’s life are also stripped bare on that stage, and luckily for Lexi, Rue seems fine with it.

More than fine, in fact; there’s even a scene where Rue validates Lexi’s artistic inclinations and claims that the play helped her put her life into perspective, although it’s unclear if that scene actually happened, or if Lexi imagined it to be the case. I think we can infer it’s the former, judging by the fact that Rue encourages the audience to cheer Lexi on.

Indeed, the play feels like it doesn’t quite belong in this show, as though Euphoria creator Sam Levinson was using it as a soapbox from which to shout his opinions about the sacredness of art, or whatever; the audience reaction feels gratingly insincere, as does Rue’s “happily ever after.”

That being said, it is genuinely nice to see Rue seemingly narrating from a place of peace, admitting that she and Jules never managed to make it work, and that she ended up being ok, despite everything. But the suitcase full of drugs wasn’t acknowledged at all, which seems strange – surely it will return in season 3?

Perhaps the weirdest ending to a messy plotline was the return of Elliot, who explained his role in getting Rue addicted to drugs, seducing Jules, and destroying their relationship through a romantic song, which plays for no less than 4 full minutes. It’s a nice song and all, but I wish that that precious screentime had been used for, well, literally anything else. Maybe Kat could have had another scene, or Jules? Both were criminally underused this season.

Nate’s story also took an odd turn, as he takes the pistol and drives drunk again, still burning from rage after Lexi outed him in her play. He arrives at Cal’s new hangout spot and meets his orgy friends, then seems to grow infuriated by the fact Cal has achieved some semblance of peace. All Cal wants, it seems, is to have sex until the sun goes down, then have more sex.

But Nate does what he so desperately tried to avoid just two episodes previously, and puts his dad in prison, having copied all of Cal’s tapes and sent them to the police (we can assume that Cal had more than one underage encounter).

So, that’s it. Nate undid his own plan, and Cal finally faces consequences for what he did to Jules. “All My Life, My Heart Has Yearned for a Thing I Cannot Name” proves a strangely sloppy finale to an inconsistent, but incredibly entertaining season.

Who knows what to expect for season 3? Euphoria is the kind of show that can go in literally any direction – hopefully, that’s the last we see of Lexi’s writing.

Check out my recap of the previous episode of Euphoria here