Euphoria Season 3, Episode 4 Recap: Fairytale’s Over
The episode opens where we left off, with Rue in the back of a cop car waxing poetic on the nature of truth while a DEA agent and a dog search her car. As the blue and red lights flash on Rue’s forlorn face, and the K9 gets a positive on the drugs in her trunk, Rue spells out her predicament (and the theme of the episode): “People love to argue about the truth. Some say it’s just the facts. Others say it’s what’s right. Some even claim there’s no real truth at all, just opinions. While we may disagree about what the truth is, we all know when we’re telling a lie.”
She finds herself telling multiple lies as she’s fingerprinted and brought into a brightly lit room to be questioned. The DEA knows that she knows Laurie, and they know she’s been to Mexico. They even have photo evidence of her talking to a cartel member. Rue does her best to lie her way out of the situation, but she’s terrible at it. Soon, they’re telling her she’s facing 20 years in prison without parole—at least—with an additional 20 for every death she might’ve been involved in. After breaking down in tears, Rue cuts a deal. “And that is how I became a snitch,” she narrates.
The DEA gives Rue her bag back, but not before swapping out the drugs for sugar pills and laxatives. She heads back to the club, waiting for them to “be in touch.” She’s so freaked out that she can’t even be bothered to check out Alamo’s newest worker, a girl posing in a thong that we come to know as Kitty from Kansas (Anna Van Patten). Alamo is happy because he believes he’s destroyed Laurie by killing her bird, Paladin. He wants to celebrate by taking Kitty into a backroom and having sex with her, and it’s even more ominous than usual.
In a flashback, we get more details on Rue’s deal with the DEA. They hope the fake drugs will lead Alamo back to Laurie. They also installed an app on her phone to track everything and keep her bugged. The catch is that she needs to keep her phone out in the open in order to capture everything, which could easily be read as suspicious. She opts for a very conspicuous fanny pack that TK takes from her and puts in the safe. Things are not looking great for Rue, as usual.
Things also aren't looking great for Nate, but he seems delusional about his fate. Back at the mansion, we see the newlywed sitting on his couch with stitches on his face and his bruised, bloodied toe sewn back onto his foot. “The toe is a metaphor,” he tells Cassie. “I thought that I’d lost it forever. But we were smart. We put it on ice. We took it to the hospital. And they were able to put it back on.” The metaphor, he tells a skeptical Cassie, is that “when you break something, you gotta pick up the pieces.” In other words, it’s them. Cassie sees things differently. As she kneels down to tend to his wound, she tells him that, actually, “the toe is never going to be the same.” The metaphor doesn’t mean what Nate wants it to mean. Nate is motivated by the toe to “build back better,” but Cassie points out that everything Nate has built has been built on a lie. He finally admits one truth to her: the real amount he owes is a million dollars. “You have to keep faith in me, us, our life,” Nate says. But according to Cassie, “The fairytale’s over.”
Having been brutally let down by one love of her life, Cassie called the other love of her life—“the one person that could help her,” according to Rue. Cassie packs her bags and leaves Nate in shag-carpet misery, telling him she’s “going to work” and jumping in Maddy’s fabulous convertible while a pair of young girls that resemble the two old friends look on. “Let’s do something about your look,” Maddy says. Finally. Maddy assembles a team to take Cassie from “the suburbs to the city,” and as the two drink champagne, Cassie gets a makeover to become her fully realized version of a glambot, and the two drive down Hollywood Boulevard in Thelma & Louise-style bliss.
We head over to the studio lot, where Lexi is offering Jules a work opportunity (at least something good came out of that wedding). She wants to commission Jules to make a painting for LA Nights, which gets 7 million viewers a week. Lexi explains that the character is inspired, improbably, by Georges Seurat, so they want Jules’s take on something in that vein. Presented with a blank canvas, Jules goes to work, and, unfortunately, her vision does not match what Lexi and her boss, Patty (Sharon Stone), wanted, to say the least. She’s painted a disturbing take on A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte, one that includes no fewer than 14 penises. Lexi tells her boss that Jules is trans, you see, and can’t be blamed for having such a unique vision. Despite being horrified by her work, the team handles her with kid gloves. Jules can’t fix it in time, and the scene gets pushed to the following week.
Lexi gets chewed out by her boss, who explains that Lexi’s failure to communicate with Jules cost them an hour and a half of shooting, or $56,000, or $191,000 total, all things considered. As Lexi chokes back tears, she tells her not to be a “net negative.” It feels like a meta commentary on Levinson’s own history, perhaps; the first season of Euphoria famously included a scene featuring so many penises that it became the main recurring headline about the show, and his work on The Idol, not to mention Euphoria itself, has been plagued with delays, reshoots, and going over budget. It’s a hard lesson for Lexi to learn, and Jules, too, who takes the painting home and destroys it with red paint.
Back at Laurie’s ranch, there’s a very somber bird funeral for Paladin. Laurie’s crew vows to get revenge on Alamo. The DEA agents call Rue and threaten her with going to prison if she can’t arrange a meeting between the mortal enemies, even when she explains they’re unlikely to ever do business together again. She offers to set up a buy with a different dealer.
We learn that Cassie has taken up residence at Lexi’s apartment while she works on getting famous. She pawned her wedding ring—“took the cash, and invested it in herself,” Rue narrates. Maddy helps her create content by the pool, and Lexi is shocked by how much money women and girls make online. Maddy cites Bhad Bhabie as an example for making $53 million her first year on OF after turning 18. Rue shows up out of the blue and tells Maddy she needs drugs—coke, molly, heroin—“for her boss.” Lexi is again scandalized, thinking that Rue is using again (well, to be fair, she is). “Do you guys hear yourselves right now? What is wrong with you right now?” Lexi asks. “You’re looking for drugs, you’re selling yourself on your porn site, and you’re like some internet pimp? It’s sad, and it’s pathetic, and it’s really disturbing, honestly,” she says, before storming off. As always, Lexi’s not wrong.
Nate finds himself before the permit board, quoting the Bible and begging for reconsideration of his Sunset Settlers plan. He does his best to ask whether they can rebuild around the endangered flowers, but the motion is denied. Nate goes off on the board, asking them if they’re trying to ruin his life, and literally gets on his hands and knees to beg, but they aren’t budging. He breaks down in tears, sobbing on the floor. Oh, how the mighty have fallen.
Back at Alamo’s house, Rue is playing poker with Alamo and the guys while the DEA listens to her tapped phone. She starts nervously questioning Alamo about where they’re going to get drugs now that Laurie isn’t an option, and offers a connect in Mexico. Alamo isn’t buying what she’s selling, and quickly becomes skeptical, telling her “something doesn’t add up,” and asking why she would ask him “something so catastrophically dumb.” Rue is literally and figuratively sweating, as Alamo accuses her of hiding something.
Rue says she’s got a good poker hand, but Alamo accuses her of having a look in her eye “like a motherfucking rat.” Luckily, though, he just thinks she’s using again. Relieved, Rue goes all in on her hand and celebrates her win, with Alamo warning her to stay away from hard drugs.
Back at the club, Rue removes Angel’s name from her locker. Sadly, it doesn’t look like she’s coming back from that scary rehab place. Magick (Rosalía, with a bigger role this episode) says Angel “disappeared” and “ran away from rehab.” But, she says, “life goes on.” Kitty takes her locker instead and dances for the crowd while Rue watches, unsettled. “It’s almost like Angel knew she was never coming back,” Rue narrates. “And just like Tish, everyone would soon forget.”
Dressed in a backless catsuit with matching gloves, Cassie hops in an Uber with Maddy, who purrs approvingly, “You look good, bitch.” Maddy is taking Cassie to the house of someone named Brandon Fontaine (Jeff Wahlberg). She tells Cassie that he has 20 million followers, and their goal is to get him to post a video of Cassie looking hot. They make their way through the crowd in a scene reminiscent of early Euphoria high school parties.
Maddy gives Cassie her best pep talk about dealing with Brandon and his scene: “All he cares about is pussy. You’re gonna tempt him with pussy, you’re not gonna give him pussy. The moment you do, he’ll never speak to you again.” She directs her further: “Don’t trust these girls. These bitches are dogs. Stray dogs.” Cassie is the “cute new bitch” on the block. “Stay sharp, stay focused, and let’s fucking win.” Cassie says it feels like they’re going to war, and Maddy smiles deviously.
Cassie does her best work, getting up on a table and dancing and making out with another girl to draw attention to herself. It works, and she jumps up and down as he puts her on film. There’s a stark juxtaposition with a scene back at the club, where a group of youngish dudes in polos and backward caps have taken Kitty into a private room to have rough sex with her while they high-five and slap each other’s asses. Rue watches on the surveillance camera, again rattled.
It turns out the girl Cassie made out with is Katelyn, the TikToker that Maddy turned into a porn star earlier in the season before being forced to drop her. Cassie goes off with Brandon and Katelyn to do drugs (“I love coke,” Cassie says brightly). They go up to Brandon’s room, and as Katelyn has Brandon sniff coke out of her belly button, Maddy bangs on the door in a callback to the infamous bathroom episode. Cassie jumps in and does the drugs first, and they hit her a little too hard as she screams and gets Brandon to do a line off her crotch. Ever the hustler, Maddy returns to the locked door with a crew of guys with cameras in tow. Just as Brandon takes his shirt off and straddles Cassie, Maddy bursts into the room with the cameras, and Cassie blows a kiss to the camera, saying, “It’s me, Cassie, and that’s my handle.” As Cassie’s phone blows up with followers, Maddy tells her, “You got their attention, now you gotta keep it.”
Rue finds Kitty in the bathroom, swilling mouthwash and asking for ketamine. Rue asks her if she wants to be doing this, and if she’s being forced. But Kitty just says, “I like to dance.” Magick comes whistling out of a stall, having heard everything, and it’s hard to know if she’s friend or foe. She immediately tells Big Eddy what she heard Rue asking Kitty. “I don’t trust this bitch,” she tells him.
Rue enters the office where Big Eddy is sitting with Magick, and her “Mom,” or the DEA, starts calling her phone. She picks up, and they tell her what just happened, that she’s been compromised. As she does her best to discredit Magick, a group of masked, armed men break into the club—Laurie’s crew, presumably. They put a gun to Rue and Magick’s heads, telling Big Eddy to open the safe. He doesn’t and is totally willing to let them die. But instead, the gunman shoots him in the stomach. As he bleeds out painfully, with his blood spattered over Rue’s face, they threaten him again: “It’s either your balls, or the motherfucking safe.” Big Eddy gives up the safe, opening it for them. They take what’s in the safe and run giggling to their getaway truck.
Rue calls Bishop, who tells her that rather than take Big Eddy to the hospital, they need to check the cameras for footage. Magick says the driver is a woman with “gigantic lips”—who could it be, but Faye? Rue immediately gives her up as Laurie’s worker, and the war is officially on.
