Women's Lifestyle May 25, 2026 0 Comments

Euphoria Drops a Bombshell: You Won’t Believe Who’s Vanishing Forever from the Show!

Ever catch yourself wondering if these A-list actors secretly wish they were off filming a big-budget blockbuster instead of tangled up in the whirlwind that is Euphoria’s third season? Honestly, I’ve been mulling this over the entire saga—how many golden movie scripts got shooed away just to squeeze in those intense scenes? And spoiler alert: looks like one star has quietly drawn a line in the sand this week. The latest episode dives deep—unraveling Ali’s raw struggle with addiction against the backdrop of a pandemic, while Rue’s spiritual confessions and Cassie’s high-stakes hustle add layers to the chaos. Amid the glitz and grit, the tension ratchets up, leaving us questioning alliances and fates. Intrigued? Dive into the wild twists and emotional undertows shaping this penultimate chapter of Euphoria’s rollercoaster ride. LEARN MORE

7 min read

Do any of these actors actually want to be making Euphoria? The quiet question has lingered on my mind over the duration of this third season, wondering how many A-list blockbuster films this cast had to turn down or reschedule in order to make this season of television. Whether or not a purely story-driven decision, it’s become clear some of these actors would rather spend their time elsewhere—and one in particular has sealed their fate this week.

The (long, 77-minute) penultimate episode of Euphoria’s third season opens in a flashback with Ali smoking crack in a hotel room with… Natasha Lyonne as an unnamed sex worker! They discuss their children and inevitably have sex. Later on, Ali has dinner with his daughter and her mother, who is not thrilled by Ali’s absenteeism. Then things turn violent off-camera before we get more shots of him getting high and boxing around with Lyonne’s character in the hotel room. Not long after, he wakes in a hospital after open heart surgery, pleading with the nurse to spare him from feeding his addiction with morphine. This is presumably his rock bottom—and a welcome backstory to a character that we’ve spent a lot of time with without knowing that much about.

Ali joins AA with the hopes of changing his patterns. Eventually, as he gets further in recovery, he begins sponsoring others who are just as lost as he used to be—an integral part of the recovery process (becoming a sponsor is the 12th step). He sees many of them heartbreakingly succumb to their addiction, especially during the pandemic when meetings couldn’t occur in person. It’s a foreboding start to the episode.

Over at Lexi’s apartment, Rue is confessing her newfound spirituality and belief in God. Lexi doesn’t seem particularly convinced, but she’s also a little busy working on her scripts. Rue is literally reading the Bible and reminisces about the “evil” acts she has committed in her life, and for some reason, despite having kept this a secret from literally everyone else in her life, tells Lexi that she’s an informant for the DEA. Wtf, Rue?! Rue doesn’t even preface this with a warning not to tell others. Lexi doesn’t believe her for a second and actually assumes she’s using again. Hopefully she turns this all into a blockbuster movie some day.

Eddy Chen

Maddy is low-key the season’s mastermind.

Afterwards, Rue stops by Cassie’s apartment and almost gets shot by someone behind the door. What’s going on here? Turns out, a few days earlier, Naz reached out to Cassie directly. He wants his money, obviously, so they make a deal. Cassie tries—and fails—to get her deleted OnlyFans back to make the money she needs to pay him and get Nate back in one piece (well, minus a few chunks). Worse still, Patty gets pushback from the network for hiring a “real porn star,” so she actually gets fired from LA Nights. Then Maddy also gets fired when her boss catches wind of Cassie’s situation. She tries to swoop in to help Cassie and finds out she deleted her account so then Maddy slaps her (what’s up with everyone hitting each other on this show?!) with strict instructions to follow her new rules to the letter.

To work on getting her following back up and rebuilding her empire, Maddy arranges for Cassie to have dinner with LA Nights star Dylan. They hit it off and get snapped by paparazzi before taking shots back at her place. They take selfies while snuggling (allowing Cassie to memorize his lock screen password) and have some, ummm, crazy loud sex afterwards. Cassie strategically exhausts him to the point of needing a glass of water, and as soon as he leaves the bedroom, she snaps up his phone and uploads their selfies to his Instagram. Over in the kitchen, drunk Dylan scoops up some ice with his water glass, neglecting to notice Nate’s frozen finger makes its way into the glass. He gulps it down regardless, EW. The plan works, though: Cassie gains 100K followers overnight, which Maddy points out when she stops by the next morning. When Maddy notices Nate’s finger resting in a half-empty glass in the sink, Cassie finally tells her the full story.

Jack Topalian and Sydney Sweeney posing together

Eddy Chen / HBO

Cassie, in a pickle.

At Naz’s headquarters, he is impatiently awaits for Cassie’s wire transfer by getting Nate’s exact measurements—apparently being 6’5” is too tall for a standard coffin. Luckily, Cassie’s newfound Instagram following gives her new OnlyFans a solid boost. She doesn’t get very far in making new content before one of Naz’s goons shows up and smashes her through her coffee table. When she wakes up, she’s hogtied on her bed and given 72 hours to get Naz $1 million—the amount of time it’ll take Nate to die of dehydration. What I don’t get: Wouldn’t Cassie have some money to send Naz? What else has she been doing with everything she made from her previous OnlyFans venture?

Poor Nate ends up buried alive in a (custom extra-long) coffin at the Sun Settlers construction site, while his family desperately tries to find him. He is yelling and pounding away inside the coffin, and though his brother gets close, he only manages to attract a venomous snake, which crawls down the pipe they installed as a source of oxygen. We get a very claustrophobic scene where it wraps itself around Nate’s body, before it pounces for his face—uh oh.

Maddy’s way of helping Cassie get her $1 million is to go ask her new bestie, Alamo. We can assume that some off-camera sexual favors are exchanged, and after making her get in the hot tub with him, he agrees to help. She conveniently lets it slip that she heard from Lexi that Rue is dealing with the DEA.

Alamo and Maddy meet Naz for a late-night deal over where Nate is buried and they exchange a bag of cash for Cassie. But surprise, there was no cash in the bag after all! It’s an ambush: Alamo shoots Naz in the neck and his accomplice gives up immediately. It’s a small win in what will probably be a bigger battle—there’s no guarantee Naz’s folks won’t keep coming after them, and now Maddy is very much in debt to Alamo.

They dig up Nate’s coffin only to find, he died after being bit by the snake Oh no! It’s not that Nate was a good person, but it’s sad to see Elordi officially exit Euphoria. After all, this is the role that truly made him one of the most in-demand actors in the industry.

Anyway, over at Ali’s apartment, Rue stops by for pancakes. “I ain’t got shit but the people I love,” he says. This is not the same man we see at the beginning of the episode, now living humbly to be of service to the people he loves. That said, he does say he has a 12-gauge shotgun, if needed. Rue is trying to figure out how to handle this mission to return to Laurie’s and raid the safe, and whether it’s worth risking her mom’s life, while simultaneously trying to decipher her spiritual revelation at Joshua Tree. Her plan right now: get this final run done and then move to the Texas homestead (“the promised land,” as prophesied by what she says is God’s voice). Their evening ends with Rue making pledging to Ali that she will change after she gets out of this situation. They decide they’ll pick up her mom in the morning, but when the time comes, she sneaks out before Ali can stop her.

We embark on the journey to Mexico on the Gold Rush Medical Services ambulance with two dancers on their way to get their BBLs (plus the drug pick-up along the way). The DEA is watching closely with the plan to intercept the fentanyl on its way back into the U.S. Rue, meanwhile, is on her way to Laurie’s house, when she bashes her head to fake an injury that would make her plea for them to let her into the house somewhat believable. It kind of works, but the gang makes sure she knows that they do not trust her, as they mull over her appropriate punishment for betraying themm, trying to decide between cutting off her eyelids or selling her. They resolve to make Rue shoot Alamo when he arrives the next day—and Wayne takes the opportunity to cut into Rue’s hand when he goes in for a handshake. Ouch.

Toby Wallace and Chloe Cherry posing together

Eddy Chen

Will Faye save the day or make Rue… rue it?

Wayne locks her up in a room and as Rue is trying to get some shut-eye, Faye wakes her up—it’s time to bust open the safe! It feels risky for them to do it in the middle of the night like this, but earlier in the evening, Wayne tells Faye he wants to watch her kill Rue, so it might be now or never kind of thing They tiptoe their way into the basement but the 3D-printed key isn’t working to get the safe open (shocker). Faye snatches up the keys from Wayne’s bedside—they’re lucky he’s a deep sleeper—and they’re finally in.

As Rue is about to start loading a garbage bag with the contents of the safe, she realizes that there’s no cash in the safe, just a stack of ID’s—including Angel’s. (It makes sense as Alamo had hinted that there was something more valuable than money when the safe was originally stolen.) Faye starts melting down when she realizes she’s not getting money out of this, and in the final shot of the episode we see her screaming at the top of her lungs for Wayne. Oof, I guess we know which side Faye is truly on now—and there’s no way Rue is making her way out of this unscathed.