‘Euphoria’ Season 3, Episode 6 Recap – Rue’s Religious Awakening

Here I was, claiming that Euphoria doesn’t have a great deal going on in Season 3 beyond the obvious viral sensationalism of Sydney Sweeney’s kaiju boobs. With very credible arguments floating around that this show has exceeded the purpose of its existence, Episode 6 is reassuring in its way, since it’s the first chapter that feels less designed to court controversy and more intended to offer a sliver of hope to these woebegone fools.

Sure, there’s no guarantee that hope will amount to anything, but it’s nice to have it all the same. Despair can be compelling, but it needs a counterpoint. Rue’s endlessly stupid decision-making only makes sense if she imagines, even if it’s only in her own head, a future where she isn’t a drug mule or a strip club enforcer. Cassie’s brainless self-exploitation only becomes compelling if there’s something resembling a real person in there. “Stand Still and See”, whether it’s earnest or not, at the very least shows these characters a glimmer of a different, better life.

Alamo’s Backstory

This approach of underpinning the absurdity with genuine sentiment starts with a string of ‘70s-set flashbacks exploring how Alamo came to be the strip club mogul we know today. Guided by Rue’s omniscient narration, we meet him as a kid learning a harsh lesson through his mother, played by a guest-starring Danielle Deadwyler, late from a stint on another recent HBO show, Rooster.

Back in the day, Alamo’s mother shacked up with a nice man who had been badly disfigured in a workplace accident and was due a sizeable settlement. She waited until he got it, lived a brief life of luxury with him, and then tipped off a better-looking paramour about his expensive belongings. While they were on a family vacation, everything was taken, and Alamo’s mother took him to live with the next guy. That night, he made a promise to himself that he’d never let another woman pull the wool over his eyes.

This doesn’t bode well for Rue, given that we left her buried up to her neck, with Alamo about to use her head as a polo ball.

Rue Completes Her Mission

Rue is able to spare herself from the polo mallet by revealing she knows Faye, who was driving the car on the night Harley and Wayne raided Alamo’s safe. She asks Faye to take a photo of the key to Laurie’s vault, which Faye is reluctant to do since she believes that she and Wayne are earnestly in love. Their romantic endeavours include him tattooing a Swastika on her lower back.

Rue gets her way by invoking Fez, not for the first time this season, which means that Alamo can replicate the key and use it to steal his money back. In the meantime, he sets up a peace summit with Laurie, during which she pitches an agreement whereby he uses one of his other businesses as a cover to bring eighty kilos of fentanyl across the U.S.-Mexico border before that opportunity – due to the current administration, it’s implied but never stated outright – dries up.

Unbeknownst to everyone else, Rue is recording the conversation for the DEA. This constitutes enough of a smoking gun that her work with the administration is technically complete, and when Alamo is eventually apprehended, the U.S. attorney general will look favourably on her case. She might have secured her future.

Nobody’s Listening

Rue becomes newly contemplative in Euphoria Season 3, Episode 6, but nobody is treating her lived experience especially seriously. Maddy is riding high on her new deal with Alamo and isn’t inclined to listen to any warnings to the contrary, although to be fair, Bishop does at least vouch for her (whether that’s because he trusts her or because he’s making an oblique point about Rue being a rat isn’t entirely clear, but I think we can probably guess).

Jules doesn’t want to hear any advice either, especially since it seems to be shrouded in judgment of her own circumstances. Rue doesn’t necessarily intend it that way – she’s actually right, and I think on some level Jules knows she is – but the forthrightness upsets Jules enough to slap Rue across the face and leave her buried beneath her latest painting. Expect to see the .gif of that on your social media feeds a countless number of times.

Rue’s Redemption

While she’s waiting for the key to be duplicated, Rue stops in at a local church and gets a call from her mother, excusing a return moment for Nika King. It’s brief, but it carries an emotional sentiment that Euphoria isn’t typically inclined to deliver. Zendaya shoulders the burden of the scene, but her monologue is genuinely great, and the writing calcifies her desire to find redemption after all the bad decisions she has made.

It takes an effort to remember now, but this used to be a show about an addict trying to navigate high school. It very much isn’t that anymore, but grounding Rue’s silly organised crime arc in the same terms, as someone who doesn’t know how to live with themselves, trying to reckon with the mistakes they’ve made to survive, works wonders. The reintroduction of Leslie is tasteful and effective without being overdone, and the fact that this scene takes place in a church reflects Rue’s ongoing come-to-Jesus arc, which we’ll talk more about in a minute.

Danielle Deadwyler in Euphoria Season 3 | Image via WarnerMedia

Cassie’s Big Break

In the meantime, let’s talk about Cassie. After being reduced – or perhaps expanded, I suppose – into a destructive giant-sized airhead, the idea of her building some kind of future for herself that didn’t involve giving men instructions on how to jerk off felt like a pipe dream. But “Stand Still and See” reveals a bit more humanity in her as her real-life experiences begin to peep through the cracks of the veneer that she presents to the world.

This happens during her brief scene on L.A. Nights, where she acts opposite Dylan Reid and ends up improvising a bunch of lines when she’s accidentally triggered about what happened to Nate on their wedding night. This is remembering, not acting, but Patty doesn’t know that, and decides to write Cassie’s character into the show, much to the chagrin of Lexi, whose resentment of her sister reaches a fever pitch here, especially since she’s tasked with writing the character Cassie will be playing.

The only condition of Cassie’s new employment is that she deletes her OnlyFans account, which will obviously have some implications for Nate’s well-being. Ultimately, though, perhaps in part because she can’t get in touch with him, she deletes the page, marking the beginning of a new stage of her life.

She’s not free and clear yet, though, as a bit later, a deliveryman drops off a package containing a note imploring her to answer the phone and Nate’s severed ring finger as an incentive to do so. All we see of Nate is him rampaging through the retirement home construction site, crushing the endangered flowers that have halted the project, and being approached by another of Naz’s goons. Cassie might be receiving some more body parts sooner rather than later.

Rue Is… Moses?

At the end of Euphoria Season 3, Episode 6, Alamo gives Rue the duplicated key with instructions to retrieve his stolen money. To the audience, it seems pretty obvious that he and Bishop – who delivers a lengthy metaphor about a hungry snake to make the point – knows that Rue has been working with the DEA, but she’s still imagining her potential future. So, she drives, listening to her Bible audiobook as she goes.

During the drive, the radio cuts out, and while Rue tries to fix it, she sends the car careening off-road. When she gets out of the vehicle, she spots a Joshua tree burning nearby, and takes it as a sign that God himself has answered her prayers. Knowing Sam Levinson, there’s every chance that He might have done.