5 most shocking scenes from the Euphoria series premiere
By Reed Gaudens
2. Jules makes a first impression at the party.
Our first introduction to Jules (Hunter Schafer) comes from Rue, who sees her as something of a manic pixie dream girl riding her bike, seemingly having no care in the world. But there’s more to Jules than meets the eye. While scrolling through hookup apps, she decides to skip McKay’s party, which she received an invite to from Kat (Barbie Ferreira), in favor of a rendezvous with an older man, Cal (Eric Dane). Their encounter quickly turns sour and ends with Cal raping Jules.
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She bikes to McKay’s party, where she doesn’t appear fazed by the night’s earlier events. However, Nate’s (Jacob Elordi) violent rampage over Maddy’s (Alexa Demie) revenge turns into a wrongful vendetta against Jules. He doesn’t recognize her, but he seems to recognize that she’s transgender and threatens her safety. To defend herself from Nate’s violence, Jules pulls a knife on him and cuts her own arm. Everyone finds the gesture off-putting, but Rue sees a kindred spirit.
3. Three teens use sex as a weapon.
Euphoria depicts teenagers engaging in sexual activity in a variety of ways without making an overt comment about the behavior as wrong or right, which will surely incite an interesting online debate. But in the pilot, three specific instances of teen sexuality use sex as some kind of weapon, whether it’s deployed for revenge, acceptance, or validation.
Maddy has sex in the pool with a random guy to make Nate jealous, Kat loses her virginity to fit in, and McKay sleeps with Cassie (Sydney Sweeney) to prove himself to himself. Maybe “weapon” isn’t the best term to use, but each of them are using sex as a defense mechanism to combat social pressures and/or larger insecurities they don’t have the emotional intelligence to communicate with just yet.