Euphoria Season 2 Finale Recap: As Lexi’s Play Ends, Who Exits Stage Left… Permanently? — Plus, Grade It!
The bedlam that breaks out during the second half of Lexi Howard’s Our Life during Euphoria‘s Season 2 finale is the most beautiful trainwreck of a theatrical experience I’ve ever witnessed, and I saw Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark.
But Lexi’s onstage fantasia and the Big Feelings it engenders in her sister are nowhere near the most dramatic turns that the HBO drama’s season-ender takes. Nate turns Cal in to the police! The cops raid Fez’s place, with a fatal outcome! Read on for the highlights of “All My Life, My Heart Has Yearned for a Thing I Cannot Name.”
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Fez is about to leave for Lexi’s play when he picks up on the looks Custer and Fay are shooting each other. Custer soon admits what he’s known for a while: The cops found Mouse’s body. There’s some back and forth with Fay about how he told her Laurie killed Mouse, but then Ash puts a knife into Custer’s neck before Fez can stop him, and that’s that. Realizing that someone may be listening in via Custer’s phone, Fez puts his hand over the dying man’s mouth while he bleeds out, then makes sure Ash and Fay stay quiet as he drops Custer’s phone into a half-drunk Big Gulp in the kitchen.
We immediately flashback to phone calls between Lexi and Fez where they talk about Little House on the Prairie, social media and how they have dissimilar lives but share similar character traits. “That’s the important s–t,” he tells her, and it’s so sweet and pure… then we go right back to Fez, who is near-hyperventilating in the kitchen after everything that’s gone down.
We rejoin Lexi’s play at the point where Cassie is dragon-breathing on the door at the back of the auditorium. She marches in, and the look on her face causes her mom to whisper, “Oh God.” Various audience members take notice as Cassie sashays down the center aisle toward the stage and gets right up on stage. God bless the guy running the follow spot, because he lights Cassie from the very first moment she crashes the action. Cassie mocks her sister’s play, then pulls the playwright out on stage, with Lexi quietly begging her to stop the whole time. Mama Suze also gets up there to try to help, but it just pushes Cassie farther into her tirade. “You’re just a f–king bystander,” Cassie screams at her sister, which earns her boos from the crowd.
At one point, Cassie and Maddy are going back and forth in front of everyone about who’s the bigger see-you-next-Tuesday. And then, when Cassie attacks the girl who’s playing her in the play — during the carousel scene based on Cassie’s Season 1 carnival O — Maddy decides it’s time to get in on the action. Eventually, she chases Cassie off stage and starts beating on her in the school hallway.
The whole thing leaves Lexi in a puddle of tears backstage, but her stage manager helps her get her mojo back. Soon, the audience is chanting Lexi’s name. So she comes out on stage, thanks everyone and says they’ll be back in a few minutes. Then she dedicates the show to Fez (though she doesn’t mention him by name).
Speaking of Fez: He’s going to take the blame for killing Custer and he’s going to do it soon, because the police are about to bust down the door. He tells Ash to leave, but the boy won’t listen; instead, he piles all of their weapons in the bathroom and prepares to make his last stand. When there’s a noise at the front door, Fez drops his guard for a moment, which gives Ash just enough time to hit his brother in the head and then lock himself in the bathroom.
The police bust in and train their sights on Fez, who begs them not to shoot. “There’s a kid in there!” he yells, begging Ash to come out. But when Ash hears a flash bang grenade go off, he’s so keyed up that he starts shooting through the door — and hits Fez in the side. The cops return fire, and it gets very ugly. Fez ie bleeding heavily on the floor, still shouting for his brother to stop shooting, when the kid goes for broke. There are SO MANY BULLETS, and poor Fez is lying there on the dirty carpet shouting for Ash to answer him.
Things get quiet, so an officer opens the bathroom door and shouts that Ash is down. But he was faking! He sits up and takes down the cop right in front of him, then watches as another officer’s laser sight climbs up his face to his forehead. A bereft Fez hears the final shot and knows what’s happened.
How’s Rue doing? She tells us that a few days earlier, she went to see Elliot. “I think you might’ve accidentally saved my life,” she says; when he asks, she says she’s not currently doing any drugs. She hasn’t talked to Jules yet (“I think that one’s going to take me a little longer,” she says with sadness), then he sings her a song, accompanying himself on the guitar. The tune, which has a refrain of “I hope it was worth it in the end,” brings tears to Rue’s eyes. At the end, she tells him she likes it. He wonders if they can still be friends, and when she points out that he was the one who said they’re not good for each other, he says he still thinks that.
Later, we see her call Lexi and tell her that her play — which included a scene based on Rue’s eulogy for her father — was good. Rue winds up coming over and tells her friend, “I’ve been through a lot, and I don’t know what to do with it. You’ve been through a lot, and you do know what to do with it.” Seeing the play “meant the world to me,” Rue adds. They share how much they miss their fathers, and all of the other complicated emotions that go along with it. Rue guesses that Lexi’s dad, who’s an addict, “loves you a lot more than he loves himself,” but then admits that’s probably not much comfort. They both cry, and then Rue scoots over next to Lexi and hugs her close. That scene is also the final one of Our Life — don’t think about the sequence of events too hard, because this show sure didn’t — and the curtain comes down as the audience gives Lexi and her cast a standing ovation.
In the ladies’ room, a beat-up Cassie tells Maddy that she and Nate have broken up. “Don’t worry,” Maddy says (by way of comfort? warning?), “This is just the beginning.” And as everyone clears out of the auditorium, Jules sits down next to Rue and tells her that she loves and misses her. Rue kisses her on the head, then leaves. Jules cries.
In a voiceover, Rue tells us she stayed clean for the rest of the school year. “I don’t know if this feeling will last forever,” she says, “but I’m trying.”
Elsewhere, Nate loads his gun, drinks some beers and drives to the construction site for one of his dad’s homes, where Cal is having a little get-together with some half-dressed friends. “You know what we have in common?” Nate tells his dad. “We both get off on hurting other people.” He asks if Cal is happy. “I’m figuring it out,” the older man responds. Nate is angry that Cal blew things up and then left; he says he found Cal’s sex videos at 11 years old, then started having nightmares that his father “was f–king me like he was f–king them.” Right around then, everyone whose last name isn’t Jacobs hustles it right on outta there.
Cal says he messed things up, but he loves his son and should’ve kept him safe. “I don’t want your apology,” Nate says, pointing the gun at his dad’s torso. “I just want revenge.” Then he pulls a thumb drive out of his pocket. Cal asks what’s on it. “Everything,” he says as police lights start to flicker outside. Cal begs his son not to do what he’s planning to do, but Nate tells him that he’s never going to change. Then the teen walks to the door, allows three cops to enter, and watches as they arrest Cal.
Now it’s your turn. What did you think of the finale? Grade the episode — and Euphoria Season 2 as a whole — via the polls below, then hit the comments to expound upon your thoughts!
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