Catch up first: read Umnia’s Episode 1 review, Episode 2 review, Episode 3 review, Episode 4 review, Episode 5 review and Episode 6 review before diving into the Episode 7 & 8 spoiler review.
I should have known when they started up with the raw milk.
I think people who have been through immense, dizzying trauma can find a strange kind of stability in conservative values™, so I try not to start from a place of anger and finger-wagging. It’s clear from this season that Sam Levinson finds the sordid, opaque life of California both highly alluring and deeply traumatic. He has forced himself into a kind of self-denial, then unleashed that denial through the show. In doing so, he has his worst fears mirrored back to him: everyone thinks he’s a pervert freak with a hard drive that should be checked by authorities. That reinforces the self-denial, and the cycle starts again.
The reason I know this is because you do not make an entire season of television dedicated to a Judeo-Christian god (Judeo because “May her memory be a blessing” is a saying of Jewish origin), spend the whole season with your cast working in sex work, and then try to endear yourself back to the Judeo-Christian god through homesteading unless you are atoning. There was no message beyond this, no overarching theme of false idols, no deeper resonance with the Bible. The final message we’re left with is that sinners die, basically, and you must turn back to God, I guess. The Judeo-Christian God, by the way. Islam will not cut it.
I said at the start of the season that this might be Levinson’s attempt to go full Taylor Sheridan and appeal to “the masses” of conservatives who watch Yellowstone, but Levinson must know he is far beyond that kind of pivot now. He’s known as the minors-having-sex auteur. There’s no redemption here.
Or maybe there is. We live in interesting times. This season felt like an audition for a new chapter in Levinson’s work, one with a decidedly less progressive fanbase. He has been the subject of ire since Season 2. (He was heralded as a god and Gen-Z translator for Season 1, which I never understood.)
I reserve my anger for things worth saving. Euphoria was doomed from the start, and I’ve only ever really enjoyed one season of the show anyway (Season 2), and even that was disjointed. Back in the day, when people were still talking about the show with reverence, I would say that I did not know a single 40-year-old man who knew that much about teenage life unless he was on Tumblr soliciting nudes from underage girls. It would halt conversations at the time. Now, people see where I was coming from.
Many are talking about how glad they are that the actors are free, but this show really was this difficult to watch from the very beginning, if we’re being honest. There has never been much deeper importance to the narrative, or much care taken outside of key parts of Rue’s storyline. Reluctantly, I even hold Zendaya’s involvement against her a little, though many say it launched her as a serious actress. I find it hard to believe there were not other opportunities she could have taken to showcase her talent.
Now the show is dead, put out of its malformed misery. Levinson, who often uses minorities as human discourse shields, will lobby for another chance, and knowing the industry, he’ll get one. In recent history, we have seen a lot of men like this make a rightward, Christian shift toward the homeland in an attempt to join the club where loyalty is valued over accountability. I am interested to see if Levinson gets admitted.
I really hope we never have to hear his name again.