It’s Halloween on HBO’s Euphoria, and things are getting emotionally scary for the group of teens.
Last week’s episode showed the ramifications of Nate (Jacob Eldori) and Maddy’s (Alexa Demie) fight, where he got physical with her and left bruising around her neck. Nate doesn’t admit to the crime, is suspended from school indefinitely and banned from seeing Maddy until the whole situation is resolved.
However, the pair quickly find a way around that by meeting every Friday night at a motel. Maddy convinces Nate to make a plan so they can stop being secretive and get themselves out of the mess they’re in, so Nate decides to take action.
One of the first episodes of Euphoria featured McKay’s (Algee Smith) party, where Maddy hooked up with a random guy in the swimming pool. Nate beat the living daylights out of him for it and even put him in a neck brace. Nate decides to bring him back into the situation by blackmailing him into saying he’s responsible for the bruising on Maddy’s neck and was the one who assaulted her at the carnival.
Nate knows he needs someone to corroborate the story, so he prints out the nudes Jules (Hunter Schafer) had unknowingly sent to him and threatens to put her on a sex offenders list if she doesn’t lie and say she witnessed the assault. Jules complies and is able to clear Nate’s name, with much skepticism from the detectives.
With Nate off the hook and free to see Maddy, the two enter the Halloween party at Daniel’s (Keean Johnson) house, dressed in full costume and ready to flaunt their toxic relationship in front of everyone.
The Halloween party is the main setting for the episode, with hookups and fights galore. Meanwhile at the party, Cassie (Sydney Sweeney) is trying to get over a weird night with McKay. The night before the party, the two went to one of his college parties and had a couple of weird happenings. First, McKay tells Cassie she needs to change because he “wasn’t going to hear the end of it” from his friends. Cassie changes her clothes, and the night seems to be going pretty well from there.
However, when they went back to McKay’s dorm room to have sex, a bunch of guys start to grab McKay and start getting on top of him and hurting him, shouting “McGay” in his face. It’s unclear exactly what happens in the scene. It’s clearly assault, but whether or not McKay is raped in the scene or who the men are that are attacking him is unclear.
McKay and Cassie are both shaken up by the experience, and he locks himself in the bathroom to cry. When he comes out of the bathroom, his demeanor is completely changed, and the personal and loving feeling he shows toward Cassie when they have sex is replaced by a cold, unloving treatment where he just wants to finish and be done with her.
This weird energy between the couple causes Cassie to go to the Halloween party and dance and make out with Daniel. However, when he tries to have sex with her and she says no, he goes into a fit of rage and tells her how boring, unlovable and uninteresting she is and that any guy who says they like her for more than sex is lying.
What’s next for Cassie and McKay is unclear. It seems every relationship is turning toxic, between Maddy and Nate, Cassie and McKay and even Rue (Zendaya) and Jules, after Jules deliberately gets trashed in front of Rue, who is a recovering drug addict.
The real hero of this episode is Lexi (Maude Apatow). From making sure McKay doesn’t catch her sister, Cassie, cheating on him to staying with and helping Rue when she’s upset about Jules’ behavior, Lexi comes through for everyone in this episode, and she does it all while dressed as Bob Ross.
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Euphoria airs Sundays at 10 p.m. on HBO.
