Last episode’s cliffhanger is cliffhung
Last week’s episode ended with Faye Valentine letting out a scream, exposing Rue right as she’s on the verge of escaping Laurie’s hellish drug compound. It’s got to be the fourth or fifth cliffhanger this season, which has gotten old. But “In God We Trust,” Season 3’s much-anticipated finale, begins with a quiet pre-dawn silence before cutting right in with that deathly scream.
Running for her life, Rue dodges shotgun blasts before climbing through an opening in the ceiling and taking off into the open road. Then in a scene straight out of a Wild West movie, she gets lassoed by one of Laurie’s henchmen and dragged along the dirt—only to be saved by a sharpshooter from Alamo’s crew.
The DEA tie the knot around Laurie
Maddy and Cassie are back at the diner where they usually hang, silently eating breakfast while mourning the brutal demise of Nate in “Rain or Shine.” Maddy’s attempts to play pimp have crumbled in her hands—the man they both loved is dead and they’re now both in debt to the ruthless Alamo Brown. But Maddy still has a unique relationship with Alamo, later sitting down with him in a back room at the Silver Slipper to talk life and dreams, as he tries to convince her that they could be an Adam-and-Eve type special pair.
Across the border in Mexico, Alamo and Laurie’s conflict finally comes to a close as their cronies load up an ambulance with a batch of fentanyl and later pick up two Silver Slipper dancers from a plastic-surgery clinic. Without anyone noticing, Bishop performs a switcheroo, taking the ambulance full of fentanyl and replacing it with a different vehicle. Everything seems to be going smoothly and the crew make it back safely. But Rue’s intricate plot with the DEA, after building up for half the season, falls into place. Most of Laurie’s crew gets busted and she dies in a dramatic suicide, hanging herself from the roof of a building as authorities descend on her compound.
Rue’s fate is heartbreaking, and predictable
Back at Alamo’s mansion, Rue brings back the bag from Laurie’s safe, which is filled with ID cards and driver’s licenses from some of the Silver Slipper’s dancers: Including the ill-fated Angel Martinez, who disappeared at the end of a hallway at a spooky rehab facility in “Àndale.” Rue has regained Alamo’s trust, popping Percocet while he praises her as his “employee of the year.” Rue pockets a container of the painkillers, and she later contemplates taking them after meeting up with her NA sponsor, Ali Muhammad—torn between competing impulses.
In a surreal scene, Rue sees on the news that Fezco, played by the dearly departed actor Angus Cloud, used parkour to escape from prison. Seemingly in a doped-up daze, Rue races off to find him, and nostalgic visions flash before her eyes of the life she once lived in East Highland. She ends up in her old house, seeing her mom read the Bible.
And then the camera cuts to Rue, now lying down and dying, breathing her final breaths resulting from an accidental overdose. The Percocet she took was actually fentanyl, and after nearly dying a hundred times this season, her fate finally catches up with her. Ali Muhammad now has another name he has to add to his list of dead addicts.
Things are good now between Lexi and Cassie
Lexi has no idea that Nate is dead. She’s been reading the Bible and seems to have patched things up with Cassie in the wake of Rue’s death. She’s in a quiet, contemplative mood, feeling guilty about the fight she had with Rue in their last conversation. Even though bad things have been happening all season, Lexi realizes the futility of letting that get you down: “In the Bible, everyone’s dying, of all different things, and they just keep going.”
Clearly haunted by Nate’s death, Cassie is living out her days in their old mansion, now emptied of riches and staff. Her head is haloed in a ring light as she sits on her bed, weeping silently before going back to work as an OnlyFans model.
At the Silver Slipper, Maddy has taken over where Rue left off, making regular cash deliveries to pay off her debts. But Bishop doesn’t like how this is going—she and Bishop share a brilliant repartee, and she’s managed to bring out Bishop’s playful side as he carries around a puffy white dog named Snowflake.
A shootout leads to a mushy ending
Vowing revenge for Rue’s death, Ali Muhammad shows up to the club in a full military dress uniform, ready to raise havoc. Alamo bursts through the club’s one-way mirror like a supervillain and arms up for an old-fashioned duel. Bishop hands Alamo a gun that turns out to not have any bullets in it, giving Ali the chance to pump Alamo with multiple loads of buckshot. The Google reviews at the Silver Slipper are definitely taking a hit after this, but justice has been done, and Bishop runs off with Maddy and Kitty to safe harbor.
Ali ends up back at the Texas homestead from the first episode, eager to mend his pain by starting over with the help of the kindly Christian family that first took Rue in. The tone gets incredibly sentimental at the end of the episode, which is not normally how Sam Levinson does things on “Euphoria.” We were half-expecting the Christian family to turn out to be some kind of freaky death cult, but nope. They’re just good people full of love and light, and Ali brings the season to a close on an uncharacteristically positive note, saying grace around the dinner table with tears in his eyes while looking across at Rue’s ghost.
