Euphoria
The Ballad of Palladin
Season 3
Episode 3
Editor’s Rating
Our ensemble reunites for Cassie and Nate’s wedding, which is an unmissable event, even for Maddy.
Photo: HBP
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Nate Jacobs was only 11 years old when he found his father’s sex tapes. The experience changed everything about his life, except for the fact that he was a rich, handsome white boy. As such, Nate could count on the world being on his side. How else to explain the ease with which he threw a man into jail for crimes he himself committed? Up until now, Nate has been able to manipulate every setback he has encountered to his advantage. Even the tapes became a source of power he could leverage against Cal, whose arrest, orchestrated by Nate himself, was a coup to take over the family business.
But it’s high time the big bad world came for Nate, and it arrives in the form of the menacing Naz. This week’s episode is more like vintage, dynamic Euphoria. For the first time this season, we have our ensemble under the same roof at Cassie and Nate’s wedding. Euphoria lost its raison d’être when its characters graduated high school; now it’s struggling to justify their existence in the same world. But the craziest people you know from high school getting married is as good a reason as any to take a trip down memory lane. It’s an unmissable event, even for Maddy.
Jules wasn’t planning to go. She only agrees to tag along as Rue’s plus-one when Rue shoves a handful of dollar bills in her bra: “I’m your sugar daddy now.” Jules, who is now a smoker, has been living a high life tinged with sadness. This week’s episode opens with a primer on her sugar-babying trajectory. Her art-school roommate, Vivian, suggests she give it a whirl; the men won’t expect sex any more than a non-paid date would, and anyway, “it beats retail.” Before Ellis (Sam Trammell), the married plastic surgeon she ultimately ends up with, Jules sees a lawyer with “severe intimacy issues” and a “nylon fetish,” a millionaire Hollywood producer, and a “run-of-the-mill finance guy.” Rue’s narration compares the ease with which girls can now dabble in sex work to historical moments of opportunity, like Prohibition or the California gold rush. That’s a telling indicator of how Levinson is approaching sex work this season, like it’s the same kind of mercenary pursuit as murdering Indigenous people for gold.
Ellis likes Jules because she, like him, pushes the boundaries of what limits others: “Age, gravity, sex.” He marvels creepily at the porelessness of her skin, which he attributes to the fact that she skipped puberty by transitioning at 14. Jules doesn’t seem put off by his Eyes Wide Shut, sex-party-ringleader vibes. She doesn’t flinch when he asks her to strip down to her underwear so he can wrap her in cling wrap like she’s a leftover half-onion or a corpse. “I just might keep you forever,” he says.
Raking in money from sugar-babying even before going exclusive with Ellis, Jules calls her dad to let him know, with all the sage wisdom of a 21-year-old, that she is learning more from life than from school, so she’s dropping out. At long last, Jules sounds like a real kid: lost and confused, but sure she is right. Still, this sugar-babying turn feels unsatisfying, especially because Jules was largely absent from the first two episodes of the season. We never got a sense of her ideas about art or what she wanted from an artist’s life, so when Rue’s narration explains that being a sugar baby did away with “all her fears about making it as an artist,” I’m not sure what that means — those fears were never depicted. That she would be drawn to escorting because of money feels like too easy an explanation. We see her working on a painting at the beginning of the episode, but there is no sense that Jules is using her money to establish any kind of practice.
But in the world of Euphoria, anything can be resolved, explained, or justified by money. That ethos is a better fit for Alamo, who belongs in a Tarantino movie. The influence of Tarantino’s gangster cadence has been there all season, but this week, it dominates the hour. It’s not a bad thing. The character is possibly the best thing to come out of this season. Alamo is phenomenally performed by Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje, equal parts amusing and threatening, but always saving the show from staleness with his mere presence. Alamo has been warming to Rue. After probably sex-trafficking Angel, Rue has been promoted to arms dealer, a post she has taken to with aplomb. In fact, Rue is so comfortable with Alamo that she tells him, happily, that she hopes to turn her experience dealing arms into a springboard for “going legit.” Not sure how she’s envisioning that jump, but the idea bothers Alamo. Bishop asks her point-blank if she has a “moral problem” with what she’s doing. In her narration, Rue justifies profiting off America’s gun problem by reasoning that most of the guns she sells wind up in Mexico anyway. Bishop’s question is a missed opportunity to search deeper into Rue’s character. Wouldn’t she be at least a little rattled by the provocation? She never showed much foresight, but in earlier seasons, her life’s wayward path affected her, for better or for worse. Now Rue seems strangely passive for a protagonist.
Alamo’s soliloquy about power and money is interrupted by the return of the pig he let loose in Laurie’s house last week. Rue ducks and Alamo shoots it square in the head, splattering an innocent bystander with blood. “It’s a beautiful pig,” Bishop says mournfully. The second-best thing to come out of the season is Bishop. I love the guy. He even admits that “technically, the tit-for-tat with the pig, we started it.” But Alamo is dead set on “breaking [Laurie’s] heart” by messing with the thing she loves most in the world: her parrot, Palladin.
Rue ends up getting pulled out of Cassie and Nate’s wedding to aid that mission. Cassie “Never Underestimate Me” Howard gets what she wanted: Her aisle is a flower tunnel that leads to an enormous “C&N” sign made of roses. Photos of Maddy’s and Jules’s chosen attire would go crazy in any number of subReddits devoted to weddings. Maddy’s dress slings so low that when Marsha, Nate’s mom, remarks that she can’t believe Maddy had the nerve to show her face, Cal quips: “I saw a little more than her face.” Jules’s dress, which matches Rue’s powder-blue suit, similarly leaves little to the imagination, covering her body with a pale mesh that emulates skin. As the girls stunt in the venue, Nate throws up in the bathroom.
His brother Aaron tries to reassure him that Cassie is “a good girl,” but that’s not why Nate is hyperventilating into a paper bag. He’s freaking because Naz is blowing up his phone, which he ignores for as long as possible. For all their turbulent history, all the ways in which they hurt others, themselves, and each other, Cassie and Nate’s wedding is, in Lexi’s words, “strangely moving.” Even Maddy can’t contain a smile. Not that anyone thinks they’re right for each other; walking her down the aisle, Cassie’s mom, Suze, all but tries to talk her daughter out of it. She tells Cassie that the moment right before she met Cassie’s dad at the altar, full of hope and excitement for the future, was the last happy moment they ever shared. She couldn’t have foreseen “the brutality of the man” she would come to know, a brutality Cassie knows all too well. Listening to her mother speak, Cassie is frightened. But when she sees Nate, her worries dissipate. As long as she can look up to him, there’s nothing to fear.
That illusion will shatter by the end of the night. Rue leaves to make a pickup at Laurie’s. On the way there, Rue gets a call from Fez, who is scheming to break out of prison, though we don’t hear his voice on the other end of the line. Here is where I admit that I’ve been harboring a secret fear that Angus Cloud’s voice would be AI’d into the show, like the Anthony Bourdain voice-over in that 2021 documentary. I am relieved this didn’t happen, though I’m still not sure what reason, narrative or otherwise, there is to write Fez into the season, besides making us all sad.
In the meantime, as the ice sculptures melt, paths recross at Nate and Cassie’s wedding. BB (!) appears, pregnant, wondering if Maddy changed her phone number. After making a drunk but sincere toast, Cal runs into Jules at the bar. He apologizes for recording their encounter without her consent, and tells her that he got busted for a video of a boy who had lied about his age, like she did. This is how Jules learns that her tape never made it to the police — Nate, who maybe felt something true for her after all, never turned it in. “I just wish everyone didn’t think I was a pedo,” Cal laments. He mostly keeps to himself at the reception; it’s Marsha who comes out with barbed remarks. In her toast, she antagonizes Maddy so openly that even Cassie seems uncomfortable.
Maddy doesn’t react. In fact, she doesn’t interact with Cassie or Nate at all. Before dinner, she gets an idea to congratulate the happy couple, but never acts on it. Their first wildly inappropriate dance is finally too much for Maddy, and she leaves. It feels anti-climactic, not to mention out of character, for Maddy to be such a non-presence at this wedding, but maybe she has really matured. Can’t say the same for Marsha! Maddy leaves at a good time anyway, just before the night goes to shit. Naz finds his way to the wedding, where he marvels at Nate’s gall to throw a party with lobster, caviar, and Champagne when he owes him thousands of dollars. This is Cassie’s first time meeting Naz, who introduces himself as Nate’s former friend and present “worst fucking nightmare.” Nate tries to maintain his cool, but his chin quivers. Cassie begins to unravel in that by-now-familiar manner. Her eyes are bloodshot and overflowing as she tells Lexi that this is the best day of her life. During their dance, Nate reassures Cassie that things will be fine, but they just need to downsize. You might as well tell Cassie that she’s going to die.
Overhearing Naz’s threats to Nate, Heather flips out. She and Fred have moronically invested their kids’ college fund into “Sun Settlers.” Heather is one of Cassie’s bridesmaids, along with Lexi and an extra, which tells us Cassie has no real friends to speak of. Heather immediately turns on Cassie, saying that her “little porno site” makes sense in light of her husband’s shady dealings. Fred confronts Nate, but he doesn’t stand a chance against Nate’s charms. Nate explains that they were in the middle of construction when they found a “white fritillary,” an endangered flower species that halted the development while the city figured out how to move it. It sounds completely made up, but Fred buys it; he will “handle” his wife.
This is exactly the kind of conniving that does not work on Naz. Nate takes a break from his life-threatening pickle to genuinely thank Jules for coming, then resumes enjoying his night. Cassie, meanwhile, drinks a lot of Champagne. She yells at Nate that he’s not a man (“Men provide”), he’s a liar, and they don’t have money for food. She accidentally pops a bottle right in Nate’s eye, and even though all of that happens in front of the guests, they still make a happy exit from the venue to their limo. Cassie has a more appropriate reaction to Naz’s threats than Nate — they are fucked — but her freak-out doesn’t land with the same force as the great Cassie freak-outs of yore (Oklahoma! and Maddy’s birthday), because her character has been so reduced to her body and to histrionics. The Oklahoma! sequence worked because Cassie had been buckling under the weight of her need for male attention since the pilot. This season, we only have the thinnest understanding of what is going through her mind: OnlyFans, flowers, money.
While Nate works to get back in Cassie’s good graces on the way home, Rue and Bishop arrive at Laurie’s. Bishop demonstrates that he will not be stirred as soon as he arrives, hanging his jacket and beads on the barrel of the gun Wayne points at him. Bishop explains that Alamo wants the drugs tested before buying them, because of what happened to Tish, which also gives him an opening to observe Palladin. He calls him a beautiful bird. Laurie likes that he likes animals, and is surprised that he gets the reference to western actor Richard Boone. With his back turned to Laurie, Bishop manages to drop a pill into Palladin’s water bowl. The episode ends with poor Palladin dropping dead as Laurie sleeps.
Naz is waiting for Cassie and Nate when they arrive at their right-wing suburban bubble. Nate doesn’t even get the chance to speak before being beaten to a pulp, like Jared Leto in Fight Club. Cassie tries to intervene, but Naz’s henchman throws her hard, headfirst, into the marble floor. Cassie is shocked, but she only begins to sob when she realizes that she is bleeding. “This is so unfair,” she wails, “it was supposed to be the best day of my life!” The image of Cassie with a bloody nose, her breasts spilling out from her corseted dress, while Nate gets bulldozed behind her, is the kind of tableau Sam Levinson has been building toward: a marbled mansion stained with blood, a beautiful woman ruined. Naz clips off Nate’s pinkie toe and blood comes gushing out. “Some women inherit wealth,” he warns Cassie, “but others inherit debt.”
It’s a fun set piece, funny and violent and well performed, but Euphoria has yet to find its aesthetic groove. Will it be a retro Los Angeles crime-comedy pastiche? Will it be a moody, cynical exploration of sex work? Will it be a drug-cartel, desert thriller? I think it’s reasonable to expect that last mode to crank up in the coming weeks. As Rue drives back from Laurie’s, listening to her God tape, a police car pulls her over. It’s the DEA, looking for Ruby Bennett.
• As Nate and Cassie walk down the aisle in slow-motion, now wed, Nate looks ahead, but Cassie keeps her eyes trained on him. It’s a reminder of who is truly in charge of this relationship, florals be damned.
• When it’s down to just Jules and Lexi at the wedding, Lexi tells Jules she’s still a virgin, reasoning that “it’s better than herpes.” I want more Lexi! Jules, no stranger to sex, reapplies her lipstick right away when she hears the shower running in her penthouse, which suggests she always needs to be ready for Ellis.
• Something weird as hell is going on between Faye, Harley, and Wayne. Harley teases Wayne about being in love with Faye, who “puts bowling balls of dope up her butthole,” and Wayne makes a show of making out with Faye on the couch while Harley mocks them. Harley’s jealousy is creepy. Rue suspects that the two of them are inbred, and I wonder if there’s a slightly incestuous plot beginning to emerge here … Is there a taboo Sam Levinson won’t go near?
• Speaking of Faye and Wayne: I’m thinking Faye and Rue are about to be in cahoots to get some of the money he’s been saving up, if Rue can dodge the DEA. At Laurie’s, Wayne asks Faye to grab the testing kits from the basement, and Rue expresses surprise that Faye is allowed there. We learned, in the first episode, that Wayne keeps his safe in the basement, and the key to the basement on his belt, two locations Faye now has direct access to.
• Right about now would be a great time for Ali to reemerge.
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