Euphoria returned to the small screen almost three years after the end of its first season. By any measure, its second season is an unqualified success: it has garnered 2.4 million viewers on HBO Max, and it generated tons of buzz with each new episode. While the highs of the second season reach dazzling heights, it’s also slightly uneven, with some characters being sidelined in favor of others.
After the end of the first season- and two specials centered around Rue (Zendaya) and Jules (Hunter Schafer)- the show picks up with the students of East Highland School returning after the summer. As Rue and Jules finally enter a relationship, Rue tries to hide her rapidly worsening drug use from Jules. She quickly strikes up a friendship with Elliot (Dominic Fike) after she meets him in a party and does drugs with him. Things become murkier once Jules and Elliot start hanging out with each more over time.
Meanwhile, Cassie (Sydney Sweeney) enters a forbidden tryst with Nate Jacobs (Jacob Elordi) while he’s supposed to be ‘broken up’ with Maddie (Alexa Demie). Cassie’s sister, Lexi (Maude Apatow) writes a play about the important people in her life that she hosts at her school during the season finale.
Euphoria has always been shocking, but it tries to be a lot of things in its second season, from a Wire like crime saga about tragic drug dealers to a CW-like teen show about horrible people sleeping with each other, in addition to the central narrative about Rue’s struggles with sobriety. All of these are compelling at various points in the show, but taken together they amp up the drama quota for the show to a significant degree. The end result is a show that’s gorgeous and ambitious, but it doesn’t completely come together as a cohesive narrative.
Zendaya and Sydney Sweeney are given the ball this season, and they thrive under the spotlight.
The standout fifth episode is clearly going to be Zendaya’s second entry for Emmys, where Rue’s life becomes a trainwreck you can’t look away from. Cassie, who’s been starved for love ever since her father left his family, becomes increasingly needy and delusional about her Nate and having a future.
Fezco (Angus Cloud) also gets a lot more screentime this season. We see how he became involved in drug dealing and how his adopted brother Ashtray (Javon Walton) became even more ruthless and broken. His romance with Lexi is one of those unlikely yet wholesome relationships that you want to succeed, which makes it all the more tragic when bad things befall Fezco and Ashtray in the season finale.
Yet characters like Kat (Barbie Ferreira) and Jules are dealt a shorthand. There have been reports about Ferrreira having an argument with showrunner and writer Sam Levinson, who subsequently cut her lines and scenes. Jules doesn’t have much to do in this season other than a fling with Elliot and doing something that causes a major rift between her and Rue. After that, she’s mostly reduced to being an audience member in Lexi’s play who throws furtive glances at Rue.
It would be remiss to not mention how ridiculous Lexi’s play, Our Life, is.
It’s probably the most well-produced high school play ever put to screen, and it reaches a crescendo with a very overtly suggestive gym song scene where Nate’s pastiche, Jake (played by Ethan, who himself is played by Austin Abrams) dances to I Need a Hero, grinding and thrusting with his gym mates.
Euphoria is still a strong show, but if it doesn’t plug the holes in its ship, it might as well go under in the future. It’s fortunate that the premise of the show gives its story a short shelf-life. As the season ends with the characters finishing high school, it’s unlikely they will stay together in college. Let’s see how a third season can handle that change in circumstances and still create an engaging story.