In 'Euphoria' Season 3, Episode 4, Can Rue Keep a Secret?

Jen ChaneyMon, May 4, 2026 at 4:51 PM UTC

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Euphoria Season 3, Episode 4 RecapHBO

Spoilers below.

Lexi (Maude Apatow) thought she was playing it smart by commissioning Jules (Hunter Schaefer) to create some artwork for the set of L.A. Nights, the inexplicably retro primetime soap run by her boss, Patti Lance (Sharon Stone): Jules would get a high-profile showcase for her work, and Lexi would impress Patti by adding something edgy to the L.A. Nights look. Everybody wins!

What Lexi did not anticipate was the 14 penises. Specifically, the 14 penises Jules paints as part of the abstract female figures in her take on Georges Seurat’s Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte. “I told her to paint a picnic,” Lexi says, dumbfounded, when Jules’s masterwork is revealed to Patti and other members of the crew.

At first, Patti seems almost disgusted by what she’s looking at, but then Lexi notes that Jules is trans, and the tenor of the conversation shifts immediately. Patti seems to realize she can’t criticize the nature of the art without seeming like a bigot, but she can point out that, even in this day and age, you still can’t show 14 penises—or even one, for that matter—on primetime network television. Jules is asked to redo the piece; the scene it was supposed to appear in gets punted to another day; and Patti gives Lexi a dressing-down that is somehow more chilling because Patti is so calm and unwavering as she delivers it.

After noting that Lexi’s decision to hire Jules cost the show $191,000, she pointedly offers the following piece of advice: “Lexi, don’t be a net negative.”

Jules’s painting feels like a metaphor for Euphoria itself. For what is this HBO drama if not a piece of television posing as high art while also putting gratuitous nudity (and violence) in front of our faces, all while costing a network tons of money and aggravation? Who is the corollary for Sam Levinson in this situation? Is it Lexi, the young upstart trying to do a good job? Or is it Patti, the brilliant showrunner who wants to push boundaries but can only push them so far in this media landscape? Or honestly, is it Jules, who takes a blank canvas and creates something meaningful to her, only to be forced to neuter it? (She splashes red paint all over her original work, covering up the genitalia and making a piece that now, instead, suggests a Jackson Pollock painting throwing up all over Seurat’s.)

Hunter Schafer in Euphoria season 3, episode 4.Eddy Chen

Maybe Levinson is none of them, or maybe he’s a little of all of them. All I know is that, at this point, Euphoria season 3 seems to be more of a “net negative” than a net positive. After the climactic bloody chaos of Nate and Cassie’s wedding in last week’s episode, it feels as though the show is treading water as it continues to develop storylines that are only quasi-intriguing, including Cassie’s continued foray into influencer-ville, and the seemingly never-ending showdown between Alamo and Laurie, or as Rue hilariously refers to her, “the monotone lady.”

The theme of this episode, “Kitty Likes to Dance,” seems to be consequences. Several characters are forced to face the consequences of their actions: with their bosses (Lexi), in planning board meetings (Nate), and with the law (Rue).

Rue’s decision to turn into an undercover informant for the DEA is certainly the most consequential thing that happens this week. Not that she has much of a choice. When she’s brought in for questioning, she’s so strung out that she doesn’t have the wherewithal to ask for an attorney. She can either become (her words) a “snitch,” or she can go to federal prison for twenty years due to the abundance of illegal drugs that were found in her car. So she opts for snitch.

She doesn’t help her case at all by repeatedly lying to the DEA agents: She acts like she doesn’t know Laurie well and claims she hasn’t been to Mexico. (“Is it nice?” she asks innocently.) “While we may disagree about what the truth is,” Zendaya-as-Rue says in a voice-over narration, “we all know when we’re telling a lie.” We all know when Rue is telling a lie, too, because she’s a really bad liar, and Zendaya is fantastic at conveying the character’s mix of ineptitude and sheer panic when confronted with what she’s done.

“We know the fentanyl you’ve trafficked has killed people,” says one of the detectives, adding that every death they can link to her adds another 20 years to her hypothetical prison sentence.

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“If you want to turn a curse into a blessing,” adds Detective Jimenez (Hemky Madera), “I would say this is your opportunity.” If that doesn’t sound like a sign from God—or at least Rue’s version of God—I don’t know what does.

Hemky Madera, Zendaya, and Bill Bodner in Euphoria season 3, episode 4.Eddy Chen

Rue’s attempt to clandestinely record some good dirt on Alamo (Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje) and Co. yields one of the more tense and effective sequences in this episode: a poker game in which Alamo appears to be onto Rue. “You got that look in your eye like a motherfucking rat trying to figure out where he’s gonna go next,” he says in a line that sends a chill up Rue’s spine. But he only deduces that Rue has started using drugs again, a thing that anyone with a pair of working eyes and some basic powers of deduction could have figured out weeks ago.

While it’s true that Bishop (Darrell Britt-Gibson), killer of Laurie’s beloved bird Paladin, has resting skeptical face, he looks extra-skeptical about Rue and what she might be hiding. Ultimately, though, it’s Magick (Rosalía), the volatile stripper with the bedazzled neck brace, who directly accuses Rue of being a spy after she overhears Rue asking Kitty if she’s being forced to work at the Silver Slipper. They are in the midst of arguing their respective cases with Big Eddy (Kadeem Hardison) when they’re interrupted by Laurie’s crew, who, while wearing Barack Obama masks—these people are truly the most grotesque racists—burst into Eddy’s office, shoot Eddy in the abdomen, and steal some loot from the safe. This is yet another escalation in the feud between Alamo and Laurie, and things seem destined to only grow more violent in the forthcoming four episodes.

“I feel like we’re going to war,” Cassie (Sydney Sweeney) says to Maddy (Alexa Demie), who has now officially made Cassie her pet project in the same way that Cher Horowitz once made Tai Frasier her project. She gives her a makeover—“The goal is to take her from the suburbs to the city,” Maddy instructs her team of stylists—and sets up Cassie with an opportunity to woo a hugely popular influencer named Brandon Fontaine (in the grand tradition of Euphoria nepo babies, he is played by Mark Wahlberg’s nephew Jeff) by seducing him on-camera in a video that inevitably goes viral. Why is Maddy, who was so upset quite recently about watching Cassie and Nate tie the knot, so interested in bolstering Cassie’s profile? To some extent, it’s because this is a game to her, and, as she makes blatantly clear to Cassie, she wants to win. But honestly, I think she takes Cassie in and tries to launch her influencer “career,” if you want to call it that, for the same reason Cher Horowitz can’t resist a makeover: It gives her a sense of control in a world full of chaos.

As for Cassie, she absolutely loves the attention and, more urgently, needs to help raise the $1 million that Nate (Jacob Elordi) owes to Naz (Jack Topalian). It is abundantly clear that Nate is not capable of making that money back—or even of functioning on a basic level. I could not decide which scene made me more disgusted with him: the one at the planning board meeting, where he has a complete emotional breakdown when his revised plans for his senior living development are not approved; or the truly inane conversation he has with Cassie about the pinky toe that was reattached to (some might even say Frankenstein-ed back onto!) his foot.

“The toe is a metaphor,” he says, sounding exactly like that emo pothead you had a crush on in tenth grade. He then adds that the surgically engineered return of his littlest piggy represents how “when you break something, you gotta pick up the pieces, put it back together.”

Sydney Sweeney in Euphoria season 3, episode 4.HBO

“So the toe is us,” Cassie says.

“In a way,” he responds. Then he delivers what is an early front-runner for the dumbest line spoken on scripted television in 2026: “When I look at my toe, it motivates me to build back better.” I’m sorry: Did Nate just quote Joe Biden? Nate, who I assumed was MAGA now? Euphoria is nuanced, man. Mostly ridiculous, but a teensy-tiny bit nuanced.

It seems less than accidental that the phrase Nate uses after the planning board’s rejection—“I can’t be bad”—is echoed and flipped on its head by Cassie, in a scene where she and Katelyn take turns snorting cocaine out of Brandon’s belly button. “I’m no good,” she says, naughtily, blowing off any sense of shame while Nate fully internalizes his sins. Levinson engages in a similar juxtaposition when he interweaves Cassie’s makeover scene with imagery of Jules painting her salute to the penis, a suggestion that both are attempting to create things that will ultimately exist in a fake L.A.

He takes that approach again when he toggles back and forth between the Cassie/Katelyn/Brandon threesome scene and the moments when Rue witnesses Kitty being assaulted in a private room at the Silver Slipper. Placing these two sequences in tandem implies that, in both scenarios, women are being exploited, though certainly Cassie and Katelyn have far more agency in their situation than Kitty does in hers. The dynamics that are halfway explored here are interesting, but they’d be more interesting if it were more clear exactly what Levinson was trying to say and, as always on Euphoria, if he were saying it in a way that felt less voyeuristic and exploitative.

“What is wrong with you people?” Lexi asks her sister and their friends as Maddy tries to shoot some provocative content with Cassie that involves the extremely loud use of a leaf blower. In the wake of getting chewed out by Patti, Lexi is extra-sensitive to the lack of responsibility that Rue (who is asking Maddy for drugs, even though she insists she’s not using), Maddy, and Cassie are all exhibiting. Lexi is the only one among them with a traditional, professional job, and she’s realizing that her errors in judgment have consequences that extend beyond herself. Basically, she’s maturing, at least more than her friends are. When she looks at them, at this point in Euphoria’s third season, all she sees are net negatives.

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Source: “AOL Entertainment”