“Euphoria” Tackles Two of the Most Critical Gen Z Issues with Sheer Honesty
Warning: Major spoilers for the television series Euphoria (up until its upcoming season finale), as well as heavy topics including drugs, addiction, and mental illness, are discussed throughout the piece.
I began the new HBO series of Euphoria only one day after its initial air date, both excited to start a show with some of my favorite actresses, but also knowledgeable on its already public controversies. To give a rundown for those who are not familiar—Euphoria follows the life and narration of Rue (Zendaya), an anxiety-ridden teen who would rather self-medicate than take those prescribed to her. Her drug addiction not only makes for a fascinating and at times over-the-top narrative, but also forces viewers to question her reliability as the narrator as she deep dives into the lives of other peers at her school—Jules (Hunter Schafer) is the new trans girl, Rue’s best friend and soon-to-be romantic interest; Kat (Barbie Ferreira) is the previously Tumblr-famous-turned-cam-girl attempting to reclaim her body positivity; and Nate (Jacob Elordi) is the hypermasculine football player with a troubled family history and overly violent disposition.
From this initial description, it’s already obvious that Euphoria is, well, a lot. Its exaggerated quality is where much of the controversy comes from, where the series shows sex, in an oftentimes triggering manner, even more than the average HBO series (anyone remember True Blood?). Not only was I worried that it would follow a similar approach to 13 Reasons Why, a show criticized as essentially being “trauma porn,” but do high schooler’s really have that much sex?
Yet, I was pleasantly surprised after my first watch. Rue’s complex character was perfected by Zendaya’s talent to master the performance of a teenage drug addict, a trope that is often misrepresented, and I was blown away by Schafer’s debut acting role of Jules, where she herself as a transfeminine person is able to put pieces of her own identity and experience into her character. Euphoria’s aesthetic is also what hooked me, from the characters’ offbeat makeup and Rue’s undeniably queer style to the show’s trippy, and at times beautiful, cinematography, making everything feel like a drug-induced fever dream. It was nothing like the played down teen series I usually gravitate towards, like SKAM; it was actually the opposite, where its exaggerated aspects only highlighted those real teen experiences I had never seen portrayed in such a way on television.
So, I continued to watch every Sunday night while simultaneously texting my twin, who is equally obsessed, for the full hour, unpacking the show’s intricacies but mostly saying how in love we are with Rue. With the season finale airing this upcoming Sunday, I can’t deny that I’ve fallen into a Euphoria-shaped hole that I don’t necessarily want to escape. While the drama keeps me on my toes, as I’m constantly on edge whenever Nate intends to ruin someone’s life (protect Jules at all costs!) or during chaotic scenes such as the infamous carousel one from the carnival episode, it’s not this frenzy that keeps me coming back. Instead, it’s the way in which they successfully depict very real, and at times harsh, aspects of teendom with care, accuracy, and nuance. Hiding behind the chaos that many seem to miss is this component, revealing that Euphoria doesn’t just exist to add too much noise to this genre—it rather creates meaningful representations and depictions that are relevant to a Gen Z audience, both in the ever expanding notion of what it means to be queer and the brutal truth of mental illness.
Euphoria’s Representations of Queerness Continue to Expand our Previous Conceptions of Gender and Sexuality
The series dives into several layers of queerness, and not just due to Jules being a transfeminine character who primarily sleeps with cis men. Her character actually transcends what many expect from trans teenagers on popular television, which is already a lacking category. Rue’s complex characterization also explains why the show is arguably queerer than most teen dramas.
High school is a time where it’s more common to not know your sexual identity than to be certain of it, particularly if it’s not straight. Many depictions of LGBTQ+ teens represent them as already being certain of a static identity, or instead focus on their linear journeys of coming out. Rue fits neither of these tropes—we don’t necessarily know how she identifies, she may not know how she identifies, but that doesn’t seem to be the biggest of her worries, especially as she’s tackling her addiction and other mental health issues. It’s this lack of labels, that we see with both Rue and Jules, that “lets the characters breathe,” as Schafer notes in an interview. Instead of her queerness being portrayed through labels of identity, it’s manifested through her budding relationship with Jules, who begins as her best friend and gradually turns into something more.
Jules and Rue in “Shook Ones Pt. II”, ℅ HBO
This falling-in-love-with-best-friend trope, especially with gay characters, could be brushed aside, but Euphoria instead decides to investigate what would happen if the non-reciprocater decides to reciprocate. When Rue kisses Jules for the first time and both viewers and Rue herself are heartbroken when Jules can’t seem to return the favor, it was assumed that nothing could ever happen between the two due to Jules’s preference towards men. However, that’s immediately subverted the following episode in one of the show’s best scenes to date. Jules decides to throw away her previous assumptions about her own sexuality and femininity and see if the connection she has with Rue could be more, that maybe her queerness can mean more than what she once imagined.
In an arc such as this one, we would assume Rue to be the one questioning everything—she has the least amount of sexual experience and her anxiety makes her uncertain of most aspects of her life. Yet, in this case, she’s certain of her attraction and feelings towards the girl, where Jules’s trans identity is never questioned or exploited. Even her mother and sister don’t view this as a non-normalcy (that is, being involved with someone other than a cis man)—they welcome it as a possibility, and encourage Rue to pursue it, especially if it helps her not relapse.
Jules, on the other hand, begins as an entirely confident character before she meets Rue, who turns her world upside down (literally, as some filming decisions show). She moves to this new school, certain of her own gender and sexuality, until Rue shows interest and allows Jules to see another side of herself. Schafer says herself that Jules has always “want[ed] to be treated a certain way by a man to feel like a woman,” yet this relationship with Rue can be a way for her to “find a new, healthier intimacy without violence,” as all of her interactions with men as of late have been abusive.
Jules in “The Next Episode”, ℅ HBO
But it’s a teen drama, on HBO of all networks, so it can never be that simple. Their relationship is only complicated when Jules doesn’t confide in Rue about Nate catfishing and blackmailing her, and she is still attempting to understand how this encounter impacts her shifting sexuality. Rue’s anxiety and newfound soberness leads her to thinking and feeling the worst, their communication is entirely off, and at times it feels that Jules uses Rue just to escape toxic masculinity. I wouldn’t call their relationship, if it can even be called that, “goals,” but the very intense emotions they feel, as well as their convoluted journeys of self-discovery, feel similar to any teenage heartbreak that we all know so well.
These realistic but often painful depictions peaked in last week’s episode, where their relationship was challenged through Jules’s trip to visit her friend in her former town. Jules’s ultimate queerness is reflected in a scene among herself and other queer characters, where one asks, “Why do you need a guy to make you feel more feminine?” after Jules explains her tactics of “conquering” and even “obliterating” femininity through her anonymous hookups with men. Jules’s friend ends the scene by saying, “Queerness is infinite,” a phrase that seems to carry on through all of these conversations of gender and sexuality throughout the entire series. Instead of her taking this notion to furthering her connection with Rue, she instead experiments with a different woman in a drug-induced haze, showing that Jules’s journey with herself is far from perfect, portraying a heartbreaking yet nuanced illustration of the struggles of finding oneself.
Mental Illness and Addiction are Not Romanticized, but Instead Frankly (and Grimly) Depicted
Rue isn’t having an easy time, either. Throughout the series, we’re constantly reminded of her own struggle with anxiety, where she self-medicates to drown the noise out. As someone who highly relates to finding coping mechanisms for anxiety, where those methods usually fail, Rue’s tactics realistically depict the lengths that people who suffer from anxiety might go to, no matter how dangerous. In Euphoria’s first episode, we understand this tragic cycle when Rue narrates her own panic attack, fixating on her breath, noting how the drugs she took would give her “two seconds of nothingness” that slowed her breath and her own anxiety-driven functioning. While our initial exposure to Rue’s addiction feels like a glamorization of anxiety and drugs, we understand that Euphoria attempts to do the opposite with later moments that show the true horrors of mental illness.
Rue in “Pilot”, ℅ HBO
Her addiction is most tragically not portrayed through her overdose, but through a conversation she has with her drug dealer, where she’s desperate for drugs after being rejected by Jules after that first attempted kiss and consequential emotional spiral. “You did this to me… You ruined my goddamn life,” she dismally yells at him. I shed tears for her and everyone suffering from addiction in this scene, and I continued to shed tears when understanding the complicated intricacies that come with how addiction can be paired with other mental illnesses and foster a fatal cycle that is often glanced over. Addiction is a mental illness, not a crime, and Euphoria is successful in showing that in a thoughtful, yet all too real, manner.
Her mental spirals are also shown through other lenses besides addiction that may be more relatable for viewers like myself who have never suffered from the illness. Seeing her anxiety materialize in her budding relationship with Jules felt the most relatable, as I too see my anxiety worsen when I become codependent on anyone (friends, romantic partners, even family). I can vividly see this same pattern in Rue’s attachment to Jules, as she is basically a healthier version of what the addict used to receive from drugs. So when things get bad, which is bound to happen in any high school setting, but especially in the context of Euphoria, this codependency brings about another form of anxiety-induced spiraling, as seen in Rue’s sob-filled anxiety attack at a Halloween party when Jules’s drunk behavior makes Rue think the worst. Euphoria once again depicts a very real component of mental health—dating and falling in love with anxiety is hard!
Just as I thought the series was already doing the most they could in successfully making me cry for a solid hour, its most recent episode delves into another aspect of Rue’s mental health—her bipolar disorder. “The Trials and Tribulations of Trying to Pee While Depressed” is exactly what one would imagine from a title such as this: we see Rue’s depressive episodes hit an all time low when she’s stuck in her bed watching 22 hours straight of Love Island and is literally unable to get up just to pee. It first feels like a lighthearted joke—who hasn’t spent days binging the best reality show on television?—until we hear the chilling words of “previously, on Love Island” at least ten times throughout the episode and her inability to pee brings about a painful-to-watch scene of her mom finding her lying on the floor in a fetal position, unable to move.
The episode also features her manic episodes, where she spends days (and nights) manically attempting to crack the case of Nate blackmailing Jules. Yet, her depression is what feels the most hard-hitting, especially where most portrayals of bipolar disorder only focus on the manic states. It doesn’t just show her sadness or apathy; it dives deeper into the complicated variations that can manifest from depression, successfully told through the episode’s most depressing narrations from Rue:
“The other thing about depression is, it kinda collapses time. Suddenly you find your whole days blending together to create one endless and suffocating loop. So you find yourself trying to remember the things that made you happy. But slowly, your brain begins to erase every memory that ever brought you joy. And eventually, all you can think about is how life has always been this way. And will only continue to be this way.”
Like, damn. That hurts! And while these bits of the series, which are probably more abundant than its moments of, well, euphoria, can be a downer and at times extremely difficult or triggering to watch, Euphoria also gets Gen Z spot on in a positive way—in the way they treat queerness, as I quoted before, to be “infinite.”
Many have said that the show is “too much.” But can it really be considered “trauma porn” when it gets so many critical matters on point? It’s often too many tears; it’s a plethora of anxiety-inducing scenes and imagery that may not be suitable for all. But sometimes, these scary topics need to be scrutinized under a violent light. Because when else would we start the conversation on drug addiction, on mental illness, on the ever-expanding definition of queer, if it’s not served in the realest way possible?
If you are facing a medical or psychiatric emergency, please dial 911. If you need immediate support, you can call the specific support services listed below. The Trans Life Line Crisis & Suicide Hotline is 1-877-565-8860. If you’re thinking about suicide, please care for yourself and reach out for help. Here are some resources that can help support you below. If you are suffering from drug addiction or substance abuse, SAMHSA has a confidential, free, and 24/7 helpline to seek further assistance and treatment. If you’re uncomfortable using the phone, the National Suicide Prevention Helpline and the Trevor Lifeline also have a chat feature on their websites. We love you.
National Suicide Prevention Helpline: 1-800-273-8255 (or chat on their website)
The Trevor Lifeline for LGBTQIA+ Youth: 1-866-488-7386
Trans Lifeline: 1-877-565-8860
SAMHSA National Helpline: 1-800-622-4357
About the Author
Natalie Geisel is in her third year at The George Washington University studying women’s, gender, and sexuality studies with a minor in communication. Her love of writing sprouted from starting her fashion blog in high school, and her current written work spans from topics such as style, LGBTQ+ content, and music. She is interested in intersecting gender and sexuality into the world of wellness, hoping to add a queer voice to its editorial side. When she’s not writing, she spends her spare time at dance rehearsal, attending local indie shows in the DC area, or finding the best cafes that serve oat milk. She’s passionate about inclusive sex education and sustainable fashion and thinks everyone should be, too.
