Queer Arts & Entertainment

‘Euphoria’ Series Finale Leaves Lesbian Fans Heartbroken

June 1, 2026
Zendaya in Euphoria season 3

“I’m actually sick,” wrote one fan on X.

Featured image courtesy of HBO

Spoiler Warning: This article contains major spoilers for the series finale of Euphoria. Proceed accordingly.

After seven long years and three short seasons, Euphoria has finally come to an end. And viewers are not okay about how everything went down with our favorite self-destructive lesbian.

Season three of the popular HBO series picked up five years after the characters left high school and largely went their separate ways. For Rue (Zendaya), this meant a transition from the world of drug addiction to becoming involved with drug and firearms trafficking.

Unfortunately, it also meant that her story was destined to end in tragedy. The series finale initially makes viewers think Rue learned that Fezco (the late Angus Cloud) escaped from prison and ran off to meet him, only to ultimately learn it was merely a dream. Instead, she has died from an overdose after taking painkillers intentionally laced with fentanyl.

It’s been a decade since outcry against “Bury Your Gays” effectively put a moratorium on queer TV characters getting killed off. LGBTQ+ representation has shifted a lot since then, and it might be unfair to compare Rue’s death to those that kicked off that conversation. On the one hand, the argument can be made that this is a logical conclusion to a story that has often revolved around drug use and addiction. On the other, seeing the beloved lesbian protagonist get killed off while so many of the straight characters get to keep going is a serious downer.

Show creator Sam Levinson subscribes more to the former way of thinking. He admitted that this wasn’t initially the end he had envisioned for Rue, but Cloud’s death (from an accidental overdose) changed the trajectory.

“Once he passed away, I had to reconceive the script, and I thought, you can’t tell a story about addiction today without the very real consequences,” he told The New York Times’ Popcast. “Most people don’t get a second chance. Fentanyl can just take you out in an instant. It wasn’t like when I was growing up; you could literally take pills off the street, and you might have a bad trip or something, but you’d be fine. This is something that hits close to home for a lot of people in this country. So it felt like the responsible thing to do.”

So much of Euphoria has been marked by larger-than-life twists and turns throughout its run, something that’s been particularly true of the final season. So grounding the ending in such a harsh reality for Rue was bound to be controversial. And sure enough, viewers were left grappling with a range of emotions after that last episode.

One thing that seemed to particularly frustrate fans was the lack of reactions from the characters Rue spent time with over the course of the first two seasons. While some argued that it was more realistic because everyone expected Rue to die eventually, others simply found the narrative arc unsatisfactory.

And fans who hoped there would be another moment between Rue and Jules (Hunter Schafer) before the end were possibly the most let down. In fact, Jules barely appeared in the finale at all.

Zendaya and Hunter Schafer in season 3 of Euphoria
Courtesy of HBO

It’s certainly not the ending Euphoria fans wanted, even though Levinson may think it’s the one the show needed. But one thing a lot of viewers who have been sucked in from the start seem to agree on: they’re just glad the ride is finally over.

You might also like...