5 most shocking scenes from the Euphoria series premiere
By Reed Gaudens
HBO’s controversial teen drama series Euphoria delivered a haunting premiere with five brutally honest scenes you won’t soon forget.
Before HBO could debut Euphoria to the world, the splashy new Zendaya-led teen drama series gained media attention for being the second coming of Netflix’s 13 Reasons Why. The thought of another graphically explicit series depicting teenagers having sex, struggling with addiction, harming themselves, and the other harsh realities the world doesn’t want to believe ignited concern. But the series’ premiere revealed raw stories that are hard to watch but need to be told.
Still, Euphoria isn’t a one-size-fits-all viewing experience. It’s rooted in the generation that listens to Billie Eilish and lives on Instagram, and even though the series’ themes are universal, its unfiltered look at the dark side of Gen Z’s filtered world takes the secret life of the American teenager to a whole new polarizing level. From sex and drugs to a soap opera twist, these five shocking scenes from the series premiere set the stage for Euphoria’s season of dysphoria.
(Warning: The subject matter of Euphoria touches on mature themes that can be triggering. Read on and watch at your own discretion.)
1. Rue doesn’t stay sober after leaving rehab.
When we first meet 17-year-old Rue (Zendaya), she’s narrating her life from its very beginning — literally as she’s exiting her mother’s womb. She offers insight into her life, mental illness diagnoses, and descent into drug addiction before catching up with her present circumstances. Following an overdose, in which her little sister Gia (Storm Reid) discovers her lying on the floor in a puddle of vomit, Rue attends rehab for the summer.
Even though she completes her program, she doesn’t intend on remaining clean upon release, putting her lack of an aftercare plan into question. She immediately bikes to her drug dealer, Fezco, and purchases (well, Rue’s on an IOU plan) a handful of drugs. Not even home a week, Rue asks her old friend Lexi (Maude Apatow) for a clean urine sample to appease her mother’s drug testing and continues to get high during McKay’s (Algee Smith) party.