For its season opener, Euphoria paints a grim picture of the life of a drug mule, which is where we sync up with Rue, played by Zendaya Coleman, as the third and presumably final season explodes onto the scene.
When we left Rue four years ago, she seemed to be on the path to living a clean life. But drug-dealing honcho Laurie, with that unsettling robotic demeanor, has forced Rue into servitude to pay back her $10,000 drug debt, which has multiplied into $100K over the past five years.
We witness Rue going to great lengths to cross a border wall (via a rickety stile ladder), how gross (and fatal) it can be to swallow drug balloons to smuggle into the U.S., and the even more disturbing retrieval process.
She’s then sent on a drug run to the lair of Alamo Brown, the head honcho of a strip joint empire.
“He is a Black man who has pulled himself up from his bootstraps on the frontier and built this empire through these established strip joints, and it’s glamorous and exotic,” explained Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje, who has joined the cast in this mysterious new persona. “There are drugs, there is music. It’s freedom,” he exclaimed during an interview inside a Beverly Hills Hotel.
Even though she’s warned by Almo’s henchman Bishop (played by Darrell Britt-Gibson, along with fellow newcomers Marshall Lynch and EBONY Young Hollywood listee Asante Blackk) not to touch anything she’s not supposed to, Rue can’t resist partying it up with Alamo’s harem of scantily clad exotic dancers.
Rue has been trying to find meaning in a higher power and is convinced this is her salvation. When confronted by Alamo, she tells Alamo that she wants in on his world, to which he replies that the beauty of being in America is:
“Anyone can reinvent themselves.”
For Akinnuoye-Agbaje, this is at the heart of Rue’s journey.
“How Rue navigates this world shows the depths of the darkness that is revealed in what she has entered and whether she can extricate herself from it,” he stated.
After the fentanyl-laced drugs she delivered kill one of his strippers, Rue’s life is once again in jeopardy. Alamo and his henchmen take her to an abandoned field, where an apple is placed on her head. Bishop suggests she stay still as Alamo pulls out his gun.
“So you believe in God? Let’s see if [God]’s belief in you is so profound, and it challenges everybody’s faith,” declared Akinnuoye-Agbaje during the interview, channeling his chilling lines from the episode.
Surmising Rue’s predicament, Akinnuoye-Agbaje shared: “She is not only dancing with the devil in Alamo; she is dancing with the devil in herself.”
In the episode’s opening scene, we watched Rue crawl out of a car teetering on the border wall between Mexico and the U.S. as she went on another countless, mind-numbing drug run.
We’re not shown what happens to the vehicle after her escape, but if it’s a metaphor of how Rue’s life will be over the next several episodes, we’re in for a seesaw of a ride.
Euphoria airs Sundays at 9 p.m. ET/6 p.m. PT on HBO.