‘Euphoria’ Ends a Surreal Season 2 With Riveting Highs and Emotional Lows

Alci Rengifo

HBO’s “Euphoria” has become such a pop culture phenomenon that the pressure for it to hit high notes every week is increasingly heavy. Expectations grew when fans had to wait two years after the first season for new episodes following the usual pandemic delays. Creator Sam Levinson didn’t simply set out to make another Gen Z show. He wanted to make a feverish vision about countless themes and moods. Such ambitions rarely deliver fully cohesive results and after a dynamic first season, this second round was a colorfully unbalanced blend of characters, storylines and twists. Zendaya remained the key, yet this season was much more about the lives in her orbit and the finale gives some of them closure and others uncertain horizons.

“All My Life, My Heart Has Yearned for a Thing I Cannot Name” flows out of last week’s dazzling “The Theater and Its Double,” when Lexi (Maude Apatow) finally debuted her long-gestating high school theater production based on all she has observed swirling around her involving family, friends and memories. The seat she reserved for Fez (Angus Cloud) remains empty because he’s held up in his apartment with Ash (Javon ‘Wanna’ Walton) dealing with Custer (Tyler Chase), who has outed them for killing Mouse. Things get out of control when Ash takes a knife to the traitor and now Fez and the kid wait for what they know is coming in the form of a police raid. Back at the play, an irate Cassie (Sydney Sweeney) can’t take anymore of her life being dramatized, especially her recent romance with Nate (Jacob Elordi), and storms the stage to slam Lexi as someone who has never lived and so has to use the more active lives of others. Nate also has scores to settle with his father, Cal (Eric Dane). Only Rue (Zendaya) seems to have found some momentary peace after her recent relapse into drug use. 

Even more than the first season, “Euphoria” season two acted as if it could care less about what anyone was expecting or demanding of the show. Levinson never even bothered with the criticisms about his Gen Z creations knowing the lyrics to Sinead O’Connor songs. This also adds to its fascinating appeal which fuels endless online chatter. Even when viewers are frustrated they can’t help but obsess over the latest developments. Levinson and his team crafted a second season that amounted more to chapters and memorable moments as opposed to a one seamless whole. Individual episodes could work like absorbing short stories, such as the episode about Cal’s memories as a closeted ‘80s teenager, pulsating to the sounds of INXS, gradually entrapped by suburbia. Then there were the small stories within stories. Rue’s relapse became an emotional explosion when she faced an intervention by her love Jules (Hunter Schafer) and new friend and fellow addict Elliot (Dominic Fike), along with her mother and sister. A chase through the neighborhood found Rue not only evading the cops, but setting fire to Cassie’s world by exposing her relationship with Nate to Nate’s ex, Maddy (Alexa Demie). As an audience we cared even amid the chaos because Levinson did give each side story its own space. We spent time with Cassie as her rather mad obsession with Nate developed and quieter moments with Rue let the character face the stark reality of the adults starting to give up on her. There was also that frightening, ill-conceived deal she made with local dealer Laurie (Martha Kelly).

It is the play by Lexi, staged like a stunning phantasmagoria no high school could possibly afford, that threads everything together. Cassie’s outburst inspires Maddy to chase her onstage and a hilarious brawl ensues that spreads into the school’s hallways. Lexi’s eyes keep searching for Fez, who never claimed his free seat. They talked at a party in the season premiere and since then developed one of the season’s strangest attractions, based on a sincere liking for each other almost devoid of the hormonal wildness typical in the show. Fez may be a drug dealer, but he has a brain that rarely gets to open up to anyone. Tragically, the most intense centerpiece of “All My Life, My Heart Has Yearned for a Thing I Cannot Name” is Fez missing the play since he’s facing a police raid with Ash, who gets armed and barricades himself in a bathroom despite Fez’s pleas. Levinson does not forgive these characters for their likability. Fez takes a bullet to the stomach while Ash gets taken down with a bullet to the head, after firing at a cop. What the fate of Fez will be, as well as that of crimson-lipped junkie turned buddy Faye (Chloe Cherry), remains to be seen.

The finale teases us with unexpected turns. Scenes begin with cliché set ups that seem to be moving down familiar territory. Nate loads a pistol and arrives at a warehouse where his father Cal, who walked out on his family after admitting he’s a sex addict and homosexual, is hanging out with some new partying friends. In another show Nate, established earlier as a jock with a perturbed psyche, would shoot Cal. Instead, after admitting he wants revenge for what his father has wrought in his life, we realize Nate’s called the police and has damned Cal with video evidence of his pedophiliac encounters. Even the fight between Maddy and Cassie cools down to the two girls and their friends standing around a school bathroom, tending to small wounds, seeming to have reached an understanding. When Cassie reveals Nate had dumped her during the play, Maddy warns her that this is just the beginning. 

Season one famously ended with a grand musical number involving Zendaya singing Labrinth’s “All for Us,” backed by a gospel chorus and marching band, as Rue relapsed. This season closes much more quietly. Rue gets up after Lexi’s play ends with a memory involving the two of them. She has a moment of forgiveness with Jules that suggests there’s still hope for some sort of future between them. Her voiceover tells us she stayed clean for the rest of the year. She believes Jules was her first great love, but can’t be sure of it since she was high for most of their time together. Rue walks down a street and into the uncertainty of what the third season, already approved by HBO, will bring. Zendaya sings, “Hey Lord, You know I’m trying,” on Labrinth’s subdued “I’m Tired,” as the season finale credits roll. In a way, it’s bold for Levinson to close on a softer note when some of us might have been expecting a visceral crescendo. Zendaya carries real empathy in her final moments in the finale, while everyone around her is boiling. 

The second season of “Euphoria” felt both chaotic and more personal when it came to its showrunner. Levinson seemed to be chasing after arthouse cinema more often than the fevered, neon imagery of earier episodes. Moments involving Lexi’s play even felt written as if Levinson were speaking to us about the role of a writer from his perspective, and it worked better than his sluggish Netflix exercise in pretension, “Malcolm & Marie.” What the series also didn’t lack this season was melodrama on a seismic scale. It’s the only way to really capture the essence of suburbia’s edgier corners. Family portraits are mirages of harsher truths. When we’re young, curiosity, sexual awakenings and just plain selfishness make for a firestorm of experiences depending on where you’re coming from. It may be too soon to call “Euphoria” the show of a generation, yet if it returns packing better heat it could easily earn that distinction.

“Euphoria” season two finale airs Feb. 27 at 9 p.m. ET on HBO.