“Euphoria” is finally back, after a four-year break. The first episode of the long-awaited season three dropped April 12, and fans are loving it, scratching their heads and everything in between.
In the new episode, titled “Ándale,” there is a major time jump of five years, where the main characters are now adjusting to life after high school. Everyone’s lives look different from each other’s and the show begins to explore and dive deeper into these once familiar characters’ lives.
Before the episode began, a tribute was paid to Eric Dane, a key supporting actor on the show, who passed away due to ALS earlier this year.
The first scene opens on Rue (Zendaya) driving down a Mexican desert, windows down and music blasting. She then faces her first of many dilemmas in the episode; the tall, looming border stands in her way of crossing back into the United States. Rue ends up putting a makeshift rail across both sides of the border and attempting to drive her car up. When this fails and her car gets stuck at the top, she abandons it and begins her trek across the desert on foot. This scene set the tone for the episode: chaotic, unnerving and completely unpredictable.
As the episode progresses, we then learn what Rue has been up to since high school. In season two, she got in some trouble with Laurie (Martha Kelly), a woman she was previously working for, selling and supplying drugs. Laurie gave Rue a suitcase filled with $10,000 worth of drugs to sell, but Rue ended up using a portion, and Leslie (Nika King), Rue’s mother, flushed more down the toilet. This meant that Rue had no more product to sell, and that she owed Laurie $10,000 because of how much the drugs were worth.
In this new episode, Laurie finds Rue at her job and greets her with a bone-chilling, “Hello, Rue. You owe me money.” Laurie explained that because it had been five years since the suitcase incident, the amount of interest had accrued to $40 million, but that she’d settle for $100,000. Since Rue cannot pay this, she forces Rue to come work for her as a drug mule until she can pay it off.
This pays as an explanation as to what Rue has been up to, and we then learn that the car Rue had to abandon at the border was Laurie’s, so she’s digging herself a deeper hole by the minute.
As for the rest of Rue’s friends, Faye (Chloe Cherry) is her partner in crime— literally— a fellow drug mule under Laurie. Lexie (Maude Apatow) is working for Warner Bros. and living alone. Her sister Cassie (Sydney Sweeney) is living a much different life, living with her fiancée, Nate Jacobs (Jacob Elordi). She spends her days filming provocative videos as an adult content creator, including dressing up as a puppy to attract the interest of her male viewers. She is also considering joining a porn website in order to help fund her extremely high-budget wedding. Nate, who is extremely against this idea at first, has taken over his father’s construction business and is working to support both him and Cassie. Maddy (Alexa Demie) is now an assistant at a talent agency for a famous actor. This leads her to cross paths with Lexie, as they are both in the entertainment industry.
The main plot of the episode includes Rue and Faye performing an elaborate drug deal, where they have to swallow multiple little bags of fentanyl in order to cross the border, so they are hidden. They managed not to get caught, but it was a gruesome task.
Rue then has to drive to a secluded mansion for a separate deal, where she eventually ends up in the middle of the party that’s being thrown. After striking up a conversation with the owner of the house, Alamo, she makes a connection and asks to work for him. This friendliness does not last long when one of the girls at the party overdoses from the drugs Rue had originally delivered to the house. Unknown to Rue and the rest of the partygoers, they had been laced with fentanyl. These were separate from the fentanyl Rue had swallowed earlier in the episode, as these drugs had been laced accidentally.
Alamo, obviously upset, drags Rue to his office. She claims she did not know it was laced, which is the truth. Earlier in the episode, she spoke about wanting to rebuild a relationship with God and getting back into her faith. She tells this to Alamo, pleading for a deal for her life. He offers a solution — for Rue’s punishment, he is going to shoot an apple off Rue’s head and if she really believes in God, then he will spare her life, and Alamo won’t miss.
After a very suspenseful couple of moments outside, with Alamo drawing his gun and Rue fearing for her life. The gun goes off, and the apple is shot and Rue is spared. She falls to the ground in relief, and the episode ends.
Since this is just the beginning of the season, fans are expecting a lot more episodes similarly tailored to this theme of survival and searching for identity as an adult.
