Everyone (!) Gets Naked in the 'Euphoria' Season Two Premiere
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Between easing back into its trippy teen world or dunking your face in an ice bath of Tupac singalongs, heroin, and Fez's gunslinging grandma, which path did you think Euphoria would choose when it returned? (Both answers are perfectly acceptable, depending on your Euphoria tolerance level.) Just 15 minutes into the premiere of Season Two, we were all in the same room at some drug house, watching characters we do and don't know strip naked. Keep in mind: this is well after we saw our first dick of this Euphoria season, when Grandma Fez shot the guy in the strip club.
Euphoria! How we missed you. After a nearly two-year hiatus, excluding the bridge episodes, the series returned to HBO this Sunday night. And if you can't already tell, it didn't miss a beat. Following the bridge episodes' revelation that Rue didn't overdose during her relapse—and is very much not sober—Season Two picks up with the teenager in the middle of another bender, bugging Fez and Ashtray with her (rather haunting) a cappella rendition of Tupac's "16 on Death Row."
When you've cooled down from your reentry into creator Sam Levinson's orbit, here's a quick recap of the episode, and what we think the premiere's impact will be on the rest of Euphoria Season Two.
Did anyone guess a Fez-centric first episode? He finally gets the cold open treatment, in a flashback sequence where we learn that his grandma indoctrinated him into his unlawful business. Ashtray even gets a backstory: Grandma Fez took him as collateral for a drug deal, and his mom never came to pick him up. ("Ashtray" = He chewed on a cigarette as a baby.) At the end of the intro, we find out that Ashtray killed Fez's dealer with a hammer, prompting the opening adventure in which Rue, Fez, and Ashtray have to pay the dealer above that dealer a visit. Cue everyone getting naked. The premiere swings back Fez's way near the end, as he chats up (you probably also didn't guess this) Lexi, and you know, smashes in Nate's face with a bottle of Tito's.
Speaking of Nate, our tall friend is back to a relatively moderate level of teen-villain chaos: Chugging beers while pushing 110 miles per hour, hooking up with his best friend's ex, Cassie, and doing back-to-back-to-back shots of whiskey. Plus, you wouldn't think, really, that they'd kill off Nate in the first episode of this season, but watching a bunch of Euphoria partiers pull Nate away in their arms with Cutting Crew's "(I Just) Died in Your Arms" is enough to wonder. (Unless Jacob Elordi lied to us in his Esquire interview, Nate will be around for at least a little bit longer. He teased more time at the Jacobs household in Season Two, so maybe we'll find out the identity of his little brother after all.)
As for our main heroes, Rue and Jules? After their reunion-gone-wrong in Jules's bridge episode, they circle each other at the New Year's Eve party until they share a brief conversation, where Rue admits that she relapsed the night of the train station incident—and that she still wants to be with Jules. In a mesmerizing, weirdly lit, slo-mo scene that's classic Euphoria, Rue and Jules kiss. We'll have to wait until the next episode to see whether that means they'll actually try out long-distance while Jules is at college, but consdiering that we glimpse Rue dragging around Fez's drug-stuffed suitcase in Season Two's trailer, we're betting that she might be too deep in trouble to make it work.
Regardless, it's great to have Euphoria back in our lives. Between the extremely Hereditary-esque Cassie-Nate drive, the swirling camera at the party, and the opening scene at the drug house, Euphoria looks like it might go heavier on the action this time around. Let's just hope that Rue stays out of the general vicinity of drug deals for the rest of this season, at least.
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