Zendaya in the 'Euphoria' season three premiere. Patrick Wymore/HBO Logo text Euphoria finally caught back up with Rue and her high school friends when it returned Sunday night with the long-awaited third season. Creator Sam Levinson had promised a five-year time jump for the characters of HBO’s buzzy drama, and the premiere peeked into the lives of the chaotic core ensemble now as young adults, while dropping hints at what the rest of the group has been up to since we last saw them in the season two finale, which aired back in February 2022.
The new season opened with protagonist Rue (portrayed by Zendaya) attempting to drive her car over the border from Mexico, but getting dangerously stuck. Levinson told The Hollywood Reporter the season-setting scene was inspired by his research into DEA drug busts, once he decided to make Rue a drug mule for kingpin Laurie (Martha Kelly) when the show returned. “I see this one photo of a Jeep stuck on top of a border wall,” Levinson said. “I said to the head, ‘Well, what happened here?’ And he said, ‘Some idiot tried to drive a car over the border loaded with drugs, and it got stuck.’ I thought: That sounds like something Rue would do.”
“We’re seeing them out in the world, in the wider world,” he added of the season as a whole. “We wanted to see them fending for themselves.”
Below, The Hollywood Reporter rounds up just how this group is now fending for themselves — some with jobs in Hollywood, others with OnlyFans aspirations — and how the series kept alive Fezco (the character played by the late Angus Cloud) and honored the late Eric Dane as the 10-episode likely final season of Euphoria begins. (This story will be updated as more is revealed.)
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Rue (Zendaya)
Image Credit: HBO Logo text After leaving Southern California’s fictional East Highland, Rue was working for a local smoke shop until her former drug kingpin Laurie popped by to remind her of her debts from high school. Rue never paid Laurie the $10,000 she owed her, and that sum has now grown to $43 million-plus, after 46 months at a 20 percent interest rate. “I’ll settle for $100,000, but I bet you don’t have that either,” says Laurie. That massive debt turns Rue into a top drug mule for Laurie, and the premiere shows Rue body packing from Mexico, along with Faye (Chloe Cherry), as she swallows balloons of fentanyl to drive across the border (and then graphically release).
Rue meets with her NA sponsor, Ali Muhammad (Colman Domingo), in the premiere and talks through her recovery and the 12-step program, getting stuck on the faith required from her for Step 3. Ali pushes her to open her mind to believing in a power greater than herself, and finding her faith. Rue also works as an Uber driver, and begins listening to the Bible during her rides. “I’m choosing to believe,” she tells him.
She then receives a massive sign from above when she’s saved from a bullet. After unknowingly bringing fentanyl-laced drugs to the home of new rival kingpin Alamo (Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje), a guest overdoses and dies. Alamo tests her, to see if she set her up with Laurie, by shooting an apple off the top of her head. When Rue realizes the bullet missed her, she laughs with euphoric glee at surviving another day. “Straight tweaker,” sums up Ali’s right-hand man.
