SPOILER ALERT: This story contains spoilers for “In God We Trust,” the Season 3 finale of “Euphoria,” now streaming on HBO Max.
It all ends with Ali.
Played by Colman Domingo, Ali has been a constant source of light in “Euphoria,” despite only appearing in 11 of the HBO series’ 26 episodes. As an addict several years into his recovery, he is the sobriety sponsor to Rue (Zendaya), whose struggles with drugs “Euphoria” has followed throughout its run. In the Season 3 finale — which appears to also be the series finale — the show finally follows Rue into the abyss. Ali nearly goes with her.
After the penultimate episode revealed a bit of Ali’s backstory, the finale picks up with Rue escaping Laurie’s (Martha Kelly) ranch before the DEA raid and somehow making it safely back to Ali’s apartment. On the news, they learn that Fez (played in Seasons 1 and 2 by Angus Cloud, who died in 2023) has broken out of prison, and against Ali’s wishes, Rue scrambles to her car to look for him. In her mind’s eye, she flashes through her memories with Fez, then drives to her childhood home, dashing past police tape as officers scream and chase after her. There, she tearfully greets her mother (Nika King) and reaches out for her hand. But then we see Rue shrouded in darkness, laying on her back and reaching up. All of this has been a dream as her brain reels from an overdose on the Percocet provided to her by Alamo (Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje). In real life, by the time Ali wakes up, Rue is already dead. Calmly, but in pain, he asks God to give her peace. Then he finds the pills on the coffee table and tests them for fentanyl; the test comes back positive. He slams his fist on the counter and calls Rue’s mother to give her the news.
When we next see Ali, he’s at an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting — his last one ever, he says. In an expertly acted monologue, Ali tells his fellow recovering addicts that he used to believe empathy was the key to redemption, that if people had more empathy for addicts, they could all begin to heal. But he realizes now, he says, that if you can empathize with the addict, you can empathize with the dealer. He no longer wants to be part of that passive cycle. He says he’s going to find another way to be of service. It becomes clear that he’s planning to avenge Rue. Back at home, he saws off the end of his shotgun and suits up in his old Army uniform. He has nothing left to lose.
“Once we get his backstory and unpack who he is, we have that to propel us into this final episode. It’s a beautiful stroke of genius from Sam Levinson,” Domingo tells Variety. “And he gave me so much faith and trust that I could deliver, and trust that the audience will be with me and understand. Knowing what Sam has been exploring for all these young people who suffer from the disease of addiction, he always gets back to the would it be the moral center, which Ali has been holding and making available for Rue.”
Ali drives to Alamo’s strip club, the Silver Slipper, and demands that Kitty (Anna Van Patten) go get her manager. G (Marshawn Lynch) emerges, and they sit across from each other at a table, where Ali discreetly presses his shotgun against G’s crotch and threatens that he better not lie. But when Ali asks G where Rue got the fentanyl, G lies and says he doesn’t know. As promised, Ali shoots him, and as everyone panics and hits the floor, Ali shouts that Alamo Brown needs to come out.
With several strippers, patrons and employees cowering in fear, the two men talk. Ali reveals that he’s there to avenge Rue. They agree to handle their business “the old-fashioned way,” drawing their guns at the same time like an old Western movie. But when Alamo tries to shoot — a few seconds early — nothing happens. He looks to Bishop (Darrell Britt-Gibson), who was supposed to load his gun, and realizes he’s been betrayed. “I’ll see you in hell,” he says as Ali shoots him to death with all three of his remaining bullets. Though there are several other armed men at the club, Ali walks out unscathed.
Ali then drives to El Paso, Texas, to the homestead Rue told him was “the most peaceful place she’d ever been.” He tells the family that “Ruby,” as they knew her, was “in a better place,” and they offer their condolences. He introduces himself as Martin McQueen — his given name, from before he converted to Islam — and they invite him in. At dinner, he sits at the head of the table, and imagines Rue sitting in the empty seat across from him as he prays, “Let her memory be a blessing.” As the episode ends, the camera zooms out on the house, with an American flag waving in the wind. In voiceover, Rue says, “May God bless us all.”
Domingo spoke to Variety in depth about the people in his life who informed his work in “Euphoria,” his collaboration with series creator Sam Levinson over the years, and how it felt to say goodbye to Rue and Ali.
How did it feel for you to watch the finale and say goodbye to this character and story?
It felt incredible and purposeful and clear. It felt honest to Ali’s journey. I loved it. I saw a cut of it with Sam a couple months ago, and I was floored. I thought it followed what Sam said in the very beginning, when he was just casually talking to me about what he wanted to do with Season 3. He said, “I’m going old school. I’m going to the Old Testament. Because this is where we are in our society, in our world.” Even the landscape and his idea of shooting it in a Western form, it’s very clear it’s an American story, and it’s about right and wrong. The characters have such size now. They’re outsized, but they’re still nuanced. You know who the villains are, and you know who the good people are, and you know the people in the middle who are just trying to navigate all of this.
It unleashed another version of Ali that I thought was really useful. Like, that’s underneath him as well. He told you he was built this way. He told you what troubles he had, what dark side he had. One of my favorite things I created with Sam for this episode was, at some point, I was like, “What is he wearing when he does this?” So we went back to our brain trust from Season 1, saying that Ali was a former firefighter and in the military. I said, “What branch? Let’s decide.” We said Army. I said, “What if he’s in his Army dress?” And Sam said, “Oh my gosh, I was going to pitch that to you!” I said, “Because he’s ultimately trying to be in service, so he’s going back to the service. That’s important to him.” All those little bits were important and strategic.
When Ali discovers Rue’s body, there’s no big shock or breakdown. He’s devastated, but calm and unsurprised. Walk me me through your approach to that scene.
I made a very conscious choice. I’m very expressive, naturally. I’m very emotional. Ali is a bit more sober, no pun intended, about his emotions. Going through the pandemic and losing a lot of people, and a lot of people losing faith and hope, and being someone who also performed military service, Ali’s a person who has to be a bit more pragmatic about death. When we filmed that, I wanted to be as quiet as possible. It’s almost like he knew just by looking at her body language [from across the room]. He assessed it very quickly, and then went over to her. You can barely see her, but I was able to see what makeup had done to her face, or whatever was coming out of her mouth. It was very private. Then he saw the pills. This loss is deep, but he’s still activated to find out what happened. Who are these people? What’s behind this?
What I love is that we jump to him two months later in that meeting, and there’s all these subtle cues. He’s not wearing a kufi anymore. He looks like an ordinary guy, and he tells you he has to do something different, that there’s good guys and bad guys, and the good guys are gonna have to take out the bad guys, but I’m gonna have to arm myself the way the bad guys arm themselves. It’s about him being very measured about it all. The sawed off shotgun, putting on his army dress, saying goodbye to his old life: “I’m gonna have to right some wrongs, and it’s life or death, and I’m willing to die for it, because I’m not tethered to anything else.” I think he believed that Rue was his last chance. If he could help her, he would feel redeemed for his own tragedies and faults and addiction. If he could do good with Rue, he felt like a better person.
You think he’s been seeing Rue as his last chance for redemption the entire time he’s known her?
Yes. Once he got to know her, he was trying a different tactic of listening and trying to be honest. He doesn’t have a relationship with his own two girls, so Rue was like a surrogate for him and he was a surrogate for her. He was like, “Maybe I can be the man that I need to be with this young woman and help her live to her fullest potential. I can take this young person who’s struggling and make them better.” He started to invest himself in Rue and got to know her tenderness and her hopes, her dreams, her aspirations, her faults. He fell in love with her. That’s like his daughter.
We don’t see much of Ali’s anguish after he discovers Rue, but there’s a moment where he presses his arms against the doorway and bows his head. Can you tell me about that? It’s a Christ-like image.
That literally was the intention. I just found it in the moment. The secret of that scene is that Rue’s body is still lying there. She has not been removed. He’s doing all of that while her body is still on the couch. He’s trying to process. There’s no calling anyone to do anything just yet. Sam and I both wanted it to be quiet anguish. And then when I walked up andput my arms up there, it felt right. It felt like on the cross. It felt like I did everything I was supposed to do. That image, in that moment, is when he turned into the other Ali. Into Martin.
I just found it in the moment. There are moments that I think are just divine. Working with Sam and Marcell [Rév, cinematographer], divine moments just start to happen. I looked at them like, “Oh my gosh, that’s a Christ on the cross moment.” He needed a moment of rest, and he stretched his arms out and laid his head down, and that was it. It wasn’t tears and screaming. It was all internal.
How do you picture Ali spent the months in between Rue’s death and his final Alcoholics Anonymous meeting? How do you think he came to the decision to leave AA and avenge Rue? And he mentions that he relapsed — what do you think that was like for him?
I think he probably walked the streets of L.A., searching. I think he drove through L.A. searching for something meaningful to make sense of all of this. A purpose. There are people who feel like they have nothing left, people who feel all this doubt or angst in their lives, and he was the one always trying to comfort them and say, “No, it’s going to be OK. You gotta believe in something bigger than yourself.” And suddenly, he doesn’t. I think he was very quiet for a couple months, and I think that he was deeply in pain, but he didn’t know what to do with it. And then at some point, he just felt so numb, he’s trying to feel something, and he started drinking. I like to think he just picked up a bottle and sat with it, probably to quiet his mind.
I pull Ali from people that I know, and I have someone close to me who did two tours of Iraq. I used to have some judgment, like, “You got a drinking problem.” But now I’m like, “Actually, I know you probably need something to quiet your brain. Hopefully you can measure it in a way that’s healthy for you, but I don’t know what horrors you’re revisiting and you can’t get rest from.” That’s where I think Ali was. And I think by the time he got to that meeting, he’s dissecting what he believed and what he has now adjusted to believe in to help justify his next actions.
Let’s move onto the showdown. When Ali gets to the strip club and argues with G, he calls him a monkey, which is an extremely charged insult for a Black man. Why did he say that?
98% of the dialogue is Sam Levinson, and 2% is when I’m in the moment and it’s me and Marshawn Lynch coming at each other. I will add some colloquialisms. “Sit your monkey ass down” — that came from Ali understanding what he’s dealing with, and what Marshawn was playing. It’s not something Sam wrote, but it’s my perspective of, “As a Black man, I can say this. I see what you’re doing.” Ali’s gonna puff up and let him know, “I’m not scared of you.” I use the N-word at some point too. It just made sense.
I want to applaud Sam. This season, to see such robust, propulsive Black characters — all very different — in scenes together was extraordinary. I love Darrell’s character [Bishop]. You’re like, “What happened to him? Is this guy on the spectrum? I can’t tell if he’s good or bad or how he’s playing this.” He’s a beautiful part of the season. And Adewale is extraordinary. I feels like it harkens back to Blaxploitation, people taking on these ideas that have a little bit more size of who they are. He took on this whole persona, this cowboy, western way of presenting himself in the world, and I’m very aware of that. We have versions of ourselves that we present in the world, especially as African American men, and all these men are colliding at the Silver Slipper. It’s extraordinary, all these different ideas of Black manhood around Rue’s character. Her character does not have a Black father, but she’s being influenced by all these different Black men in a different way.
How does Ali feel once he’s finally killed Alamo? He intentionally used up all of his bullets and knows there’s a good chance he’ll get shot as he leaves the club, but he’s accomplished his mission.
In that scene, Sam and I worked on a vacant quality of Ali. He’s sort of… I wouldn’t say dead, but deadened. But he feels like, “At least I killed off a big part of this system. Maybe that will resonate in some way. People will stand up and say, ‘No, you can’t use women like that. You can’t treat humans like that.’” He’s making a statement. And that liberates him. As he’s walking out, he does not know what world he’s going into.
Everyone will unpack this episode the way they need to, but in my mind, there’s a version where Ali died the day that Rue died, and all of this is Rue’s perspective. It’s part of her dream that Ali would avenge her death. He does meet her at the Promised Land. It’s very much in that surreal world.
Like, in a practical sense, what happens to Ali? He shot up this place, and then he just walks out and drives to Texas and goes to the homestead? No police, no nothing — what happens? And after he’s at the homestead, does he stay there? My husband, who watched the episode with me, said, “Well, where does he go after this?” I don’t know. I think he goes off somewhere in a very anonymous way. That’s his redemption. He probably just walks this earth.
That’s very biblical. Very Old Testament.
Very Old Testament. He just walks the earth, possibly looking for something of truth and love and grace, and he’ll find small moments. I love that Sam gave me, at the homestead, that small moment of watching the calf, and the little girl saying, “Come on. Dinner’s ready.” All those tiny moments of him just smoking cigarette and looking out at the land. I think that that’s where he will go from now on.
Religion and faith — and the difference between the two — are a big theme in this season and Ali’s arc in particular. This is a man who found Islam late in life, although he seems to have left organizes religion since he’s taken off his kufi and goes by Martin again. There’s also lots of Christian imagery: Rue’s bible, that moment with Ali in the doorframe, the Christian family at the homestead. And Ali closes the season with a Jewish phrase: “Let her memory be a blessing.” Ali clearly still has some amount of faith, but it’s different now. What conversations did you and Sam have about faith? What has that theme meant to you?
I want to talk about my brother Rick. When we were growing up, my brother Rick was always searching for religion. I went to a mosque with my brother because he was curious about different religions and philosophies. I took a lot of that to Ali. I’ve watched my brother stay up and read the Bible, and listen to what [Nation of Islam leader Louis] Farrakhan has said. All these ideas about how to be in the world, about trying to be a good person in service to humanity. I think it takes a curious heart, and Ali has that curious heart. He’s searching.
A lot of the people who suffer from the disease of addiction that I’ve known also get very addicted to religion. It becomes an addiction. There’s a greater euphoria when it comes to religion. And I think Ali exhausted himself with that, because he’d been searching for it in so many books and testaments and research, and he also was trying to search for it, trying to find the God in Rue. He said in the monologue, “I stopped. I didn’t believe in anything. But that’s not the way to be.” He knew that you need something to tether you to this world, otherwise, you can’t live. That’s also me. I believe that. You got to believe in something. If you don’t believe in God, believe in the Cinderella Suite at Disney World or something, you know what I mean? But it’s hard. I have conversations with people who feel lost or lonely: “Do you pray? Do you meditate? What do you think about? How do you put yourself through this world?” And people don’t have that.
It’s been a great, great journey playing Ali. Someone who is really trying move with grace, with larger thoughts about religion or being spiritual. And the world keeps doing what it’s doing, which is challenging him at times and failing him at times. Things and people you believe in wrong you. Destroy you. Destroy your faith. He’s talking to people who have been turned around or wronged by religion, but he keeps saying, “You got to keep going. You got to brush yourself off and believe again.” Because he knows, ultimately, that’s grace. That’s love. That’s being part of something, feeling connected to each other.
What a beautiful character, you know? I’ve enjoyed playing Ali, and if this is indeed the final season, I think I’ve given Ali everything. He’s been a gift to me, and hopefully a blessing to others. He’s a character that I think will stay with me for a very long time. He’s incredibly human and complicated like everyone else, but he’s always searching for the light.
This interview has been edited and condensed.
