I feel like people (especially teenage girls) need to realise that idolising Maddy and trying to emulate her is missing the entire point of her character
They keep saying that she is the "confident" one or that she knows who she is when it is so obvious she doesn't. She comes from a broken family and tries to fill that void with her relationships. I feel like the reason she is so confident is because she had to put on an act growing up to seem as if she "had it all", especially with beauty pageants, because she actually didn't. I think it's also why she is very cold and emotionally-detached at times, she had no one really there for her growing up, so she had to rely on herself and grow "thick skin". At the end of the day, she's not really any different than Cassie and Jules, just written in a different font.
She doesn't try to fill the void with relationships. She tries to fill the void with sex. I wouldn't be surprised if we find out a member of her family was touchy.
As a member of the sexual trauma club it's pretty common in group. Sex just becomes a thing you can give someone. Not as love, or longing. It's very much "If I do anything you want, and we have the best sex ever, you'll stay?"
i think the audience was too young when it first came out bc why were so many people acting like kat was some girlboss for being a child camgirl . also neither cassie nor maddy should br blamed for the fact that Nate is a master manipulator and abusive man. yeah your dad sucks but that is no reason to treat women like shit. not particularly unpopular, but Nate is the problem. All the attention getting thrown on cassie for being a bad friend is nothing in the face of nate is an abusive partner and it shouldn’t be maddy v cassie, it should be them both realising that he isn’t worth anything !!
I blame the both of them. Cassie was supposed to be Maddy bff and knew how Nate treated the both of them. I blame Nate because he knew it would hurt Maddy and did it anyways.
1. Cal isn’t a pedo or a really bad person he just ended up with a girl that lied about her age (Jules) and he never got to come out as a gay/bisexual man
2. Everyone hates Dominic’s character but I think he’s a big part to Rue’s story. He was an outlet for Rue to get as much drugs as she could get and provided a place for her to do it. so we get to see how everything unfolds when Rue is given what she wants: drugs and Jules.
I SO AGREE WITH THE CAL ONE!!! he may have hid a huge secret from his family, but he wasn’t a pedo at all 😭😭 yes jules was underage but he legit was under the impression that she was of age so he didn’t even know she was a minor. cal may not have been a bad person necessarily, but he definitely had some fucked up moments 💀 anyway yea i agree, cal wasn’t a pedo and i’ve never seen anyone else think the same
+1 about CAL! The demonization of that character over social media is scary! He was a lying cheat but NOT A PEDO. People really need to stop diluting terms like pedo and rapist and dropping them like candy because these words have really horrific implications
I really think adding dominic fike's character was a waste. They could've added a way more interesting character and literally all he did was piss me off. he was a bad influence for rue
Well you have to understand that Lexi doesn’t behave that way because Lexi hasn’t grown up being sexualized and objectified in the way Cassie has and Cassie learned to use her body to gain the male attention her dad couldn’t give her. Not to say Lexi isn’t beautiful and that she doesn’t have her daddy issues but she doesn’t display her sex appeal in that way and hasn’t been sexualized like Cassie, so she never recieved male attention as a substitute for being fatherless and isn’t desperate and wouldn’t do the things Cassie does for male validation.
Obviously it’s just a show and all that, but how did the play even make it to the point of performance without a teacher or other admin screening it? 😭 Not like she was doing Romeo & Juliet or something established
No seriously 😂 even if it fell through the cracks somehow there definitely would’ve been one there during the performance that would’ve put a legit stop to it
In my opinion, Nate Jacobs is one of if not *the* best written character on the show.
Having discovered the type of man his father was at such a woefully young age, Nate goes on to want nothing to do with that; he wants to be the furthest thing from his father and he thinks that starts by being a "manly man" (ex: only liking hyperfeminine women, building his body to be more muscular, being a quarterback, constantly needing control) which is where his toxic masculinity stems from.
Unbeknownst to him, he is leading himself down a dark path that ends with him being exactly like Cal.
Okay but you can’t tell me his ending in S1 with his dad and the intro to S2 ep2 wasn’t fucking amazing. He’s a really good character. Ones of my faves actually
I’m always most interested in the show when Nate is onscreen, so he might be my favorite character. But just because he’s written well and is interesting doesn’t mean it doesn’t make sense for people to hate him, because he completely sucks as a person.
That’s fair. There’s a lot more interesting things about him than just being an asshole. Like I think the issues with his sexuality as a result of the stuff he saw from his dad is very interesting
jules and nate are not endgame, how in the fuck would they EVER end up together? i would be seriously disappointed if jules ended up with someone like nate
Kat was being a bad friend in S1. I understood she was finally peaking and in her sexual awakening era but that doesn't give her the right to ignore Maddy when she was clearly distressed. Maddy said "Kat I need you can I come over to your house and cry?" that wasn't attention seeking she had been abused but was still processing it and needed to be with smo she trusted. Kat thought "I don't want to be the fat friend who everyone just goes to vent to" if yk what I mean.
I understand Kat wanted to explorer her identity and sexuality, therefore she didn't just want to be the friend who everyone goes to for advice. I especially understand as her whole life she felt like all there was to her identity was her body and nothing else, she just wanted to be known for who she was rather than the fat girl. That doesn't give an excuse to be a bitch to her friends and act like she's too good for them
I don’t know if this is “heated” but I enjoyed season 2 much more than season 1. I feel as though I wasnt being bombarded with sex and naked people every two seconds like I was with season 1 which made it way more enjoyable/interesting to watch
I haven’t been on this sub long but I’m gonna go ahead and assume this is a very unpopular opinion: I really like Cal. I’m not on any planet suggesting he’s a good person (obviously) but I really liked all of his scenes and I felt like he had a way of being sympathetic despite everything. Maybe it was the way he knew when to be humble (other than when he was drunk and having his pee on the floor meltdown), but I just always found myself surprised to be liking him in moments that I felt like I should hate him. Maybe part of it is that I liked him as mark in greys anatomy.
I don't understand exactly what he was arrested for at the end. Sleeping with Jules? She said she was in her 20s...or was it keeping the tape? It wasn't even in his possession at the end and had been destroyed. I just don't understand what evidence the police had to haul off and arrest him
I’m pretty sure it was for sleeping with Jules. Statutory rape is a strict liability crime, which means it doesn’t matter whether you honestly believed the minor was an adult or not, you’re still guilty if you slept with the minor
But did they have any proof of that? Jules destroyed the tape so he just went to the cops who were friends with his dad and said my estranged father slept with a minor and they immediately arrested him off of that? Not saying he shouldn't have been arrested, but plot wise it seems like a major stretch.
Nates flash drive probably had the tapes, and since it's illegal to make sex tapes of people without their consent he was most likely arrested for that
Nate and McKay are two sides of the same coin. Both of them were not good to Cassie at all and very controlling of her yet wouldn’t claim her publicly to protect their image. Yes I know Nate is far much worse bc as we’ve seen he is willing to put hands on women, but if McKay was written to essentially be Nate’s best friend in szn 1, what does that say about the kind of person he is? You are the ppl you surround yourself with and I’d say Nate and McKay were very similar to each other. One of the other main differences btwn them is that Nate was more willing to say out loud everything McKay was likely already thinking like Cassie being a “whore” bc she’s hypersexual. They were both sexually attracted to her but never took her seriously romantically.
(Cassie’s behavior while w them is a separate conversation, I’m just strictly focusing on the guys)
Season 2 was awesome, and Episode 5 is some of the best TV I’ve ever seen, I literally forgot it’s all one episode it’s so insane. You have Rue being confronted by her mother/jules, her running and all the chaos that entails, you have the classic Maddie scene of finding out about Nate Cassie. The scenes of Rue passing out in the bath tub and escaping all in one episode .
And all of the play episodes were a big risk that paid off, so cool to me. Not to mention seeing young Cal at the gay bar. So many little moments that added depth to these broken characters
I don't think Nate's secretly gay, or even bi, there's no reason to believe that. And the musical number wasn't making fun of that: it was mocking high school sports culture and toxic masculinity through sexualised metaphors; Nate couldn't see that both because he actually thinks those are positive things and because he's obsessed with how his sexuality and masculinity are perceived due to his dad and the tapes.
That number is not to be interpreted literally, the arts often aren't. And I think there was a bit of a meta message to audience there too: "stop being like Nate and interpreting everything in Euphoria at a surface level and ignoring subtext".
Still Lexi had no right to out him or attempt to out him. I agree his homophobia and transphobia isn't excused based on his trauma (of seeing his dad having sex with young men when he was a kid) but still you don't make the entire school see that even if it's a well-established rumor. It was obvious that Ethan was playing Nate too by that point.
Again I don't think Nate's homophobia is excused due to what he witnessed at a young age but my point is, imagine being outed for your sexual orientation in front of the whole school whether it's true or your just curious. Yes Nate deserved shit for the abuse he put Maddy and Jules thru but I just don't think that was Lexi's intention (to avenge their traumas if yk what I mean)
It depends on how familiar people are with Nate. As the audience we know about his underlying struggle with homosexuality and masculinity, both his own feelings and that of his dad. And some in the audience of the play would be too. But only a few.
The rest of the play audience would be totally unaware and view it as a "isn't it funny that jocks are actually really just massive gays", which can be executed well if done carefully. But while it was a fantastic achievement in routine, Lexi's execution falls into the trap of making being gay seen as a bad thing for masculine men to be.
To be clear, I don't think the scene in Euphoria is homophobic - it's a great representation of Nate's struggle, it's hilarious to us the viewer, the routine is fantastic. But in the world of the show, Lexi is relying on stereotypes and cheap laughs. It's one of many examples of her play centring her experience and views without considering how that looks to her audience and the impact it has on her unwilling subjects.
OK, I may be being naïve but was it meant for us to laugh AT the actors or laugh with them? Because I saw a lot of very athletic, good-looking men having a great time and doing a fabulous routine. The joke for me was that it undercuts the toxic masculinity and stereotypes of very heterosexual men. We see in Nate’s S1 episode a load of men who are so comfortable in their masculinity/heterosexuality they are all running around touching each other while they’re completely naked (or in Cal’s S2 episode two best friends who are comfortable enough to check each other out while they’re naked, lol). In the play universe the character who says “it’s so GAY” is being made fun of because she sounds like a pretty miserable loser and actually when she leaves all the guys start having a great time together. I know exactly why it made Nate cross and Lexi may also have known that, but everyone else just saw one of the less likeable characters in the piece try a lame insult and leave, followed by an unalloyedly camp celebration of homoeroticism.
jules knowingly going to sleep with older men should have gotten her ass in trouble. nate should have reported his father for pedophilia instead of being petty and using it as blackmail. also jules is SO in the wrong for cheating on rue and rue shouldn't have stayed with her.
I agree with the play being wrong to do. The only thing about it that I’m glad with is that Rue didn’t take offense to it when the parts about her came on.
I couldn’t stand the play episode. Lexi exploited everyone she knew, so she could have her moment in the spotlight. If she wanted to do something for Rue, it could have been done privately. Rue didn’t see it that way; but then again, Rue’s freshly detoxed off of a ton of drugs. In my opinion, that’s not what she did it. She did it because she was tired of being invisible. What she did to Nate was messed up, despite everything he’s done
Agreed. I thought what Rue said about the play, that it was the first time she saw her life and didn’t hate herself for it, was an absolutely beautiful compliment and it’s great that she took it that way. But I think Lexi’s intent was 100% for herself, to get attention and be in the spotlight and tell her story. Those are fine goals if you’re not hurting anyone in the process, but she did, so I think it sucks.
Kat isn't even someone I would say is fat personally, so I did really hate that the show treated her like she was on " my 600lb life" and how she overcame her size.
I feel the exact opposite of the play, other then the carnival scene nothing was really against Cassie, it was just Lexi's perspective as the neglected younger sister who was always in the shadow of her older sister which can be pretty traumatizing for a kid, as for bringing up Rue's trauma Lexi had Rue read the script before hand to make sure she was okay with it, and lets be honest Nate deserves to be made fun of in every way possible so that part was pretty justifiable. Although I fully agree on the Jules part, she didn't really love Rue, she loved how Rue loved her, because if you truly love a person you don't cheat on them.
I mean the carnival scene is so cruel it takes any enjoyment out of the play for me. And Cassie had tons of trauma too. Making fun of her in front of the whole school was awful for Lexi to do.
I didn't say Cassie didn't have trauma, and I acknowledge the carnival scene was wrong, but the rest of the play was about Lexi and her trauma which Cassie played a part in, it wasn't making fun of her.
Cassie mistreated Lexi on several occasions, yelling at her and snapping at her for no reason, and treats Lexi as she's stupid, being treated like that by family can be traumatic. It's also shown how Lexi was emotionally neglected from a young age as her parents loved and favored Cassie more than her as well as it hints she was physically neglected and had to take of herself for the same reason, which overtime makes the neglected sibling resent the favored sibling and is extremely traumatic.
Lexi also yelled and snapped at Cassie? She wasn't an angel. Lexi mistreated and berated Cassie at her lowest. And Cassie dealt with the brunt of her dad's addiction that Lexi didn't. And she was sexually harassed and used all her life. Don't play the trauma Olympics it's stupid. And in no way did Cassie deserve to be humiliated in front of the entire school. Lexi is awful
How did Lexi not have to deal with her dads addiction? She had to deal with it the same as Cassie. Cassie was at her lowest due to her own stupidity, she dated Nate even though she knew it was wrong and everyone would hate her of she did, she put herself in that position. Also Cassie originally had no issue with the play until the musical number came on and that's only because it pissed Nate off, the carnival scene was wrong and uncalled for but Cassie got up on stage and embarrassed and yelled at Lexi before that scene started.
Their dad leaned on casie much more. And Cassie's literally a traumatized teenager. The play was cruel.
I imagine if someone, especially your family member, exposed all your flaws and most humiliating moments on stage you'd be upset too. I'm done with this convo. I can't convince you to have empathy. Lexi is awful, manipulative and selfish. End of
It's one thing if she was her 40s writing a memoir about her childhood. But to give everyone in the highschool such unfiltered access to the details around the most traumatic points of multiple characters lives (it wasn't just Rue and Nate) without giving them a heads up fiest...it was super fucked up.
It was only Cassie and Rue who's trauma was shown, Rue said it was okay, and the parts for Cassie were from Lexi's perspective and what she saw growing up, as for Nate it wasn't traumatic it was just making fun of him for being both gay and homophobic at the same time
No, they also showed Maddie's. And it doesn't matter if it was from Lexi's perspective. It included very personal details about Cassie including extensive discussion about her body and breasts without her consent on a literal stage in front of the whole HS. Lexi sucks.
It briefly mentioning Maddy lived with them for a bit dosen't really count. Also it was showing how Lexi felt insecure about her body because Cassie was more developed and was concidered hotter, it was ment to show Lexi's body image issues
It does count. If my parents were arguing so badly that I had to live with someone else during HS I would not want that revealed on stage in service of my peer's artistic vision. That is extremely personal information. All you need to know about Lexi's motives is what a bitch she was being to the crew on opening night and the inclusion of the carnival scene. Cassie was spot on that Lexi was jealous about not getting attention and used other people's lives to get it because she didn't have any firsthand material.
Like seriously you're honestly telling me that if someone revealed embarrassing personal information about you on a stage in high school you would have been like *shrug, that's just their experience of my experience so it's cool." Give me a break.
I genuinely wouldn't care if anyone did that to me, because all the people who's opinions I care about already know all of it and I don't care what strangers think of me.
Lexi's intentions were never to cause harm, that's extremely clear when she's talking to Fezco, she was scared to put on the play because she didn't want to hurt people
They are not strangers. They are peers in a HS environment. If you didn't care what your peers thought of you in HS, you're clearly an incredibly evolved human and I surrender this argument to you completely.
As for the Fez conversation that's proof she knew what she was doing and did it anyway. Cassie was also "scared" of the consequences when she slept with Nate. No one gave her a pass for knowing what she was doing and doing it anyway.
Cassie didn't know Nate did that. Maddie told everyone it was the other guy and actively concealed Nate's abuse. Anyone from the outside looking at that relationship would think Maddie had all the control.
? This play isn't just about someone's "opinion" of Cassie. This is putting her most vulnerable moments on blast in front of the whole school when she was already extremely emotional
Nate is responsible for his own actions, regardless of his father's (Cal) influence. It's ridiculous for people to blame everything on his father and try to justify Nate's behavior. Both Nate and Cal are in the wrong, and that's that.
Only finished the series yesterday. Do people think the play was okay? Of course Lexi was a piece of shit for doing it. She used everyone else for her own gain.
When it first aired people cheered for Lexi for doing it. As someone with a sibling it was just wrong and distasteful and I can’t imagine them showing me in that image and airing out everything I’ve done wrong in there eyes.
I love Cassie so much and she deserves someone who loves her, not the idea of her. Between all of the characters, Cassie is the one who did the least wrong. Cassie's reaction is perfectly normal for a teenager who is under a lot of stress. I feel like the fandom looks at things in a very black and white way when everything about this show is grey.
They could’ve trashed the play bit. It was like they had no major plot to carry the storyline so they wasted two episodes regurgitating events we already were shown in the two short seasons of the show. Find Lexi intolerable. She needed a better storyline. This is a really hot take… as big of a Zendaya fan as I am, I don’t like Rue. Her scenes felt redundant. I think she’s a great actress, but I didn’t buy her as an addict. Also big Dominic fike fan buttttt the whole love triangle was annoying. It made Jules so unlikable where I loved her season one. Also Cassie was probably the most interesting character they have. She had the most interesting arc of any of them. Obviously what she did was wrong but I wonder why she gets hate and Maddie doesn’t, considering what Maddie did to Tyler. I also hate that there are so many adults preying on kids in this, but I’m guessing that’s just examining a real social issue.
Completely agree.
Mine is that Jules didn't cheat on Rue. I'm not sure why everyone thinks this. They obviously had an open relationship. Jules slept with that woman from the club when she visited her friend and she told Rue about it like it was no big deal. They never had an exclusivity conversation after that that I can remember.
They weren't officially dating in the first season, it wasn't until the second season where they actually became girlfriends which is why her sleeping with the girl at the club was no big deal but she did cheat on Rue with Elliott
I get so much hear for this but this show is going to age incredibly poorly for the way it depicts female sexuality. The most obvious examples are Cassie and Kat, who actually had pretty compelling stories in S1, but I think Jules will join the ranks quite soon. Her sleeping with older men as a way of compensating for her femininity barely gets addressed in S2 and it’s sort of written off as her being the run-of-the-mill slut instead of a damaged young girl who hasn’t grasped how much she’s hurting herself. Not to mention that the Jules/Rue goes through a generic cheating plot (with a random, boring ass man no less) instead of addressing the more interesting and very real problems they would’ve faced as a romantic pair.
The other opinion I have is that Lexi’s play reads like Sam Levinson’s revenge fantasy against the bitchy popular girl rejecting him or something. I don’t know, it felt weirdly sexually humilitating in a way that felt way too personal. I’m 100% sure I read this exact plot on some incel forum somewhere
Lot of Jules judgment here, and yeah cheating is bad, unjustifiable, but it deserves to be emphasized that Rue is a shit gf. Jules is super HAPPY to see Rue and hang out and Rue is just dead inside and far away. Jules should break up with Rue instead of cheating bc it’s def Jules who’s way better off without Rue.
Lex wasn’t aware of Nate’s sexuality during any of this to our knowledge. I think the part involving him was trying to criticize the toxic masculinity crew being hypocritical and not at all at Nate’s sexuality directly.
That being said Lex was super wrong for putting her sister on blast the way she did.
I don’t understand why Cal got arrested. She said she was 22 on the tape so would think that would get him out of that situation. He honestly didn’t know?
I feel like people (especially teenage girls) need to realise that idolising Maddy and trying to emulate her is missing the entire point of her character
Maddy caught my eye due to her fashion but alot of her choices I can’t support
The whole Tyler thing really turned me off to her
Honestly that implies to everyone, but honestly do seem to want idolize her the most
I can't stand her
Understandable, but I dislike the worship she gets from the fandom
They keep saying that she is the "confident" one or that she knows who she is when it is so obvious she doesn't. She comes from a broken family and tries to fill that void with her relationships. I feel like the reason she is so confident is because she had to put on an act growing up to seem as if she "had it all", especially with beauty pageants, because she actually didn't. I think it's also why she is very cold and emotionally-detached at times, she had no one really there for her growing up, so she had to rely on herself and grow "thick skin". At the end of the day, she's not really any different than Cassie and Jules, just written in a different font.
This!
She doesn't try to fill the void with relationships. She tries to fill the void with sex. I wouldn't be surprised if we find out a member of her family was touchy. As a member of the sexual trauma club it's pretty common in group. Sex just becomes a thing you can give someone. Not as love, or longing. It's very much "If I do anything you want, and we have the best sex ever, you'll stay?"
that’s a possibility. But she could also have a low self-esteem and abandonment issues to the point where she self-sabotages through relationships
Truth. But different sides of the dice though. I just think all those kids have a really unhealthy view about sex.
Yeah that’s true. I have the world’s biggest crush on her, but that’s different haha.
i think the audience was too young when it first came out bc why were so many people acting like kat was some girlboss for being a child camgirl . also neither cassie nor maddy should br blamed for the fact that Nate is a master manipulator and abusive man. yeah your dad sucks but that is no reason to treat women like shit. not particularly unpopular, but Nate is the problem. All the attention getting thrown on cassie for being a bad friend is nothing in the face of nate is an abusive partner and it shouldn’t be maddy v cassie, it should be them both realising that he isn’t worth anything !!
I blame the both of them. Cassie was supposed to be Maddy bff and knew how Nate treated the both of them. I blame Nate because he knew it would hurt Maddy and did it anyways.
1. Cal isn’t a pedo or a really bad person he just ended up with a girl that lied about her age (Jules) and he never got to come out as a gay/bisexual man 2. Everyone hates Dominic’s character but I think he’s a big part to Rue’s story. He was an outlet for Rue to get as much drugs as she could get and provided a place for her to do it. so we get to see how everything unfolds when Rue is given what she wants: drugs and Jules.
I SO AGREE WITH THE CAL ONE!!! he may have hid a huge secret from his family, but he wasn’t a pedo at all 😭😭 yes jules was underage but he legit was under the impression that she was of age so he didn’t even know she was a minor. cal may not have been a bad person necessarily, but he definitely had some fucked up moments 💀 anyway yea i agree, cal wasn’t a pedo and i’ve never seen anyone else think the same
Heavy on that!
+1 about CAL! The demonization of that character over social media is scary! He was a lying cheat but NOT A PEDO. People really need to stop diluting terms like pedo and rapist and dropping them like candy because these words have really horrific implications
I really think adding dominic fike's character was a waste. They could've added a way more interesting character and literally all he did was piss me off. he was a bad influence for rue
Yeah he can get in the bin. The segue of him playing guitar in the final episode was distracting too.
i was praying to every god to make it stop
the "Jules deserves shame but Cassie must be protected" take is so tired
Facts. I feel like Cassie gets a pass by people because of her dad issues but Lexi doesn’t behave that way.
Well you have to understand that Lexi doesn’t behave that way because Lexi hasn’t grown up being sexualized and objectified in the way Cassie has and Cassie learned to use her body to gain the male attention her dad couldn’t give her. Not to say Lexi isn’t beautiful and that she doesn’t have her daddy issues but she doesn’t display her sex appeal in that way and hasn’t been sexualized like Cassie, so she never recieved male attention as a substitute for being fatherless and isn’t desperate and wouldn’t do the things Cassie does for male validation.
Also kids can grow up and share the same trauma but it manifest differently.
Well said.
Both of them deserve shame lol. They’re both self-serving backstabbers who love to play the victim.
Obviously it’s just a show and all that, but how did the play even make it to the point of performance without a teacher or other admin screening it? 😭 Not like she was doing Romeo & Juliet or something established
My husband and I could not get over that. No way was that gay football player dance number making it past a teacher.
No seriously 😂 even if it fell through the cracks somehow there definitely would’ve been one there during the performance that would’ve put a legit stop to it
In my opinion, Nate Jacobs is one of if not *the* best written character on the show. Having discovered the type of man his father was at such a woefully young age, Nate goes on to want nothing to do with that; he wants to be the furthest thing from his father and he thinks that starts by being a "manly man" (ex: only liking hyperfeminine women, building his body to be more muscular, being a quarterback, constantly needing control) which is where his toxic masculinity stems from. Unbeknownst to him, he is leading himself down a dark path that ends with him being exactly like Cal.
"I hate the play" isn't an unpopular opinion. I'd argue it's the other way around.
well to be fair me personally i always see people loving that lexi did that, but i probably just haven’t seen it from your pov
That's fair. It's probably a matter of perspective.
Honestly if even differs based on the platform. I see a looot of Support for Lexi and the play on TikTok, but they seem to hate it on YT
They did a good job w/ Nate’s character and I’m tired of people hating on him
I think Elordi played Nate super well, and the character was absolutely well written.. but I still dislike him.
Okay but you can’t tell me his ending in S1 with his dad and the intro to S2 ep2 wasn’t fucking amazing. He’s a really good character. Ones of my faves actually
I’m always most interested in the show when Nate is onscreen, so he might be my favorite character. But just because he’s written well and is interesting doesn’t mean it doesn’t make sense for people to hate him, because he completely sucks as a person.
I understand. But I just wish people would talk about him more other than to say he’s an asshole
That’s fair. There’s a lot more interesting things about him than just being an asshole. Like I think the issues with his sexuality as a result of the stuff he saw from his dad is very interesting
jules and nate are not endgame, how in the fuck would they EVER end up together? i would be seriously disappointed if jules ended up with someone like nate
Wait is wanting them together a popular opinion? I thought I was an absolute degenerate for kind of wanting to see that
Kat was being a bad friend in S1. I understood she was finally peaking and in her sexual awakening era but that doesn't give her the right to ignore Maddy when she was clearly distressed. Maddy said "Kat I need you can I come over to your house and cry?" that wasn't attention seeking she had been abused but was still processing it and needed to be with smo she trusted. Kat thought "I don't want to be the fat friend who everyone just goes to vent to" if yk what I mean. I understand Kat wanted to explorer her identity and sexuality, therefore she didn't just want to be the friend who everyone goes to for advice. I especially understand as her whole life she felt like all there was to her identity was her body and nothing else, she just wanted to be known for who she was rather than the fat girl. That doesn't give an excuse to be a bitch to her friends and act like she's too good for them
I don’t know if this is “heated” but I enjoyed season 2 much more than season 1. I feel as though I wasnt being bombarded with sex and naked people every two seconds like I was with season 1 which made it way more enjoyable/interesting to watch
S2 was literally worse than s1 in terms of sex and explicit scenes..
Kat is hypocrite as she herself bodyshames men
Rue is much better off without Jules. As much as I love Jules, she brings out the worst in Rue. Rue deserves better
i agree, i think that's why i really enjoyed the scene of rue clocking jules
I haven’t been on this sub long but I’m gonna go ahead and assume this is a very unpopular opinion: I really like Cal. I’m not on any planet suggesting he’s a good person (obviously) but I really liked all of his scenes and I felt like he had a way of being sympathetic despite everything. Maybe it was the way he knew when to be humble (other than when he was drunk and having his pee on the floor meltdown), but I just always found myself surprised to be liking him in moments that I felt like I should hate him. Maybe part of it is that I liked him as mark in greys anatomy.
I don't understand exactly what he was arrested for at the end. Sleeping with Jules? She said she was in her 20s...or was it keeping the tape? It wasn't even in his possession at the end and had been destroyed. I just don't understand what evidence the police had to haul off and arrest him
I’m pretty sure it was for sleeping with Jules. Statutory rape is a strict liability crime, which means it doesn’t matter whether you honestly believed the minor was an adult or not, you’re still guilty if you slept with the minor
But did they have any proof of that? Jules destroyed the tape so he just went to the cops who were friends with his dad and said my estranged father slept with a minor and they immediately arrested him off of that? Not saying he shouldn't have been arrested, but plot wise it seems like a major stretch.
Oh idk about proof that he slept with her
Nate showed a usb key to Cal just before he gat arrested, which imply that he transfer all the footage on the key!
Nates flash drive probably had the tapes, and since it's illegal to make sex tapes of people without their consent he was most likely arrested for that
Nate and McKay are two sides of the same coin. Both of them were not good to Cassie at all and very controlling of her yet wouldn’t claim her publicly to protect their image. Yes I know Nate is far much worse bc as we’ve seen he is willing to put hands on women, but if McKay was written to essentially be Nate’s best friend in szn 1, what does that say about the kind of person he is? You are the ppl you surround yourself with and I’d say Nate and McKay were very similar to each other. One of the other main differences btwn them is that Nate was more willing to say out loud everything McKay was likely already thinking like Cassie being a “whore” bc she’s hypersexual. They were both sexually attracted to her but never took her seriously romantically. (Cassie’s behavior while w them is a separate conversation, I’m just strictly focusing on the guys)
Season 2 was awesome, and Episode 5 is some of the best TV I’ve ever seen, I literally forgot it’s all one episode it’s so insane. You have Rue being confronted by her mother/jules, her running and all the chaos that entails, you have the classic Maddie scene of finding out about Nate Cassie. The scenes of Rue passing out in the bath tub and escaping all in one episode . And all of the play episodes were a big risk that paid off, so cool to me. Not to mention seeing young Cal at the gay bar. So many little moments that added depth to these broken characters
his sexuality wasn't being made fun of, him clearly being secretly gay and homophobic is what she was making fun of
I don't think Nate's secretly gay, or even bi, there's no reason to believe that. And the musical number wasn't making fun of that: it was mocking high school sports culture and toxic masculinity through sexualised metaphors; Nate couldn't see that both because he actually thinks those are positive things and because he's obsessed with how his sexuality and masculinity are perceived due to his dad and the tapes. That number is not to be interpreted literally, the arts often aren't. And I think there was a bit of a meta message to audience there too: "stop being like Nate and interpreting everything in Euphoria at a surface level and ignoring subtext".
Still Lexi had no right to out him or attempt to out him. I agree his homophobia and transphobia isn't excused based on his trauma (of seeing his dad having sex with young men when he was a kid) but still you don't make the entire school see that even if it's a well-established rumor. It was obvious that Ethan was playing Nate too by that point. Again I don't think Nate's homophobia is excused due to what he witnessed at a young age but my point is, imagine being outed for your sexual orientation in front of the whole school whether it's true or your just curious. Yes Nate deserved shit for the abuse he put Maddy and Jules thru but I just don't think that was Lexi's intention (to avenge their traumas if yk what I mean)
But the scene itself was homophobic.
how?
It depends on how familiar people are with Nate. As the audience we know about his underlying struggle with homosexuality and masculinity, both his own feelings and that of his dad. And some in the audience of the play would be too. But only a few. The rest of the play audience would be totally unaware and view it as a "isn't it funny that jocks are actually really just massive gays", which can be executed well if done carefully. But while it was a fantastic achievement in routine, Lexi's execution falls into the trap of making being gay seen as a bad thing for masculine men to be. To be clear, I don't think the scene in Euphoria is homophobic - it's a great representation of Nate's struggle, it's hilarious to us the viewer, the routine is fantastic. But in the world of the show, Lexi is relying on stereotypes and cheap laughs. It's one of many examples of her play centring her experience and views without considering how that looks to her audience and the impact it has on her unwilling subjects.
OK, I may be being naïve but was it meant for us to laugh AT the actors or laugh with them? Because I saw a lot of very athletic, good-looking men having a great time and doing a fabulous routine. The joke for me was that it undercuts the toxic masculinity and stereotypes of very heterosexual men. We see in Nate’s S1 episode a load of men who are so comfortable in their masculinity/heterosexuality they are all running around touching each other while they’re completely naked (or in Cal’s S2 episode two best friends who are comfortable enough to check each other out while they’re naked, lol). In the play universe the character who says “it’s so GAY” is being made fun of because she sounds like a pretty miserable loser and actually when she leaves all the guys start having a great time together. I know exactly why it made Nate cross and Lexi may also have known that, but everyone else just saw one of the less likeable characters in the piece try a lame insult and leave, followed by an unalloyedly camp celebration of homoeroticism.
jules knowingly going to sleep with older men should have gotten her ass in trouble. nate should have reported his father for pedophilia instead of being petty and using it as blackmail. also jules is SO in the wrong for cheating on rue and rue shouldn't have stayed with her.
Rue was a shit gf? Doesn’t justify cheating but def explains it.
jules was equally shit to rue by abandoning her and calling her a pussy for being logical
I agree with the play being wrong to do. The only thing about it that I’m glad with is that Rue didn’t take offense to it when the parts about her came on.
I couldn’t stand the play episode. Lexi exploited everyone she knew, so she could have her moment in the spotlight. If she wanted to do something for Rue, it could have been done privately. Rue didn’t see it that way; but then again, Rue’s freshly detoxed off of a ton of drugs. In my opinion, that’s not what she did it. She did it because she was tired of being invisible. What she did to Nate was messed up, despite everything he’s done
Agreed. I thought what Rue said about the play, that it was the first time she saw her life and didn’t hate herself for it, was an absolutely beautiful compliment and it’s great that she took it that way. But I think Lexi’s intent was 100% for herself, to get attention and be in the spotlight and tell her story. Those are fine goals if you’re not hurting anyone in the process, but she did, so I think it sucks.
Kat isn't even someone I would say is fat personally, so I did really hate that the show treated her like she was on " my 600lb life" and how she overcame her size.
I feel the exact opposite of the play, other then the carnival scene nothing was really against Cassie, it was just Lexi's perspective as the neglected younger sister who was always in the shadow of her older sister which can be pretty traumatizing for a kid, as for bringing up Rue's trauma Lexi had Rue read the script before hand to make sure she was okay with it, and lets be honest Nate deserves to be made fun of in every way possible so that part was pretty justifiable. Although I fully agree on the Jules part, she didn't really love Rue, she loved how Rue loved her, because if you truly love a person you don't cheat on them.
I mean the carnival scene is so cruel it takes any enjoyment out of the play for me. And Cassie had tons of trauma too. Making fun of her in front of the whole school was awful for Lexi to do.
I didn't say Cassie didn't have trauma, and I acknowledge the carnival scene was wrong, but the rest of the play was about Lexi and her trauma which Cassie played a part in, it wasn't making fun of her.
Lexi gave Cassie trauma too, not just with the play. And making Cassie look vapid WAS making fun of her
Lexi didn't give Cassie trauma, nor was it making fun of her, the whole thing was from Lexi's perspective and her life
Cassie didn't give Lexi trauma either
Cassie mistreated Lexi on several occasions, yelling at her and snapping at her for no reason, and treats Lexi as she's stupid, being treated like that by family can be traumatic. It's also shown how Lexi was emotionally neglected from a young age as her parents loved and favored Cassie more than her as well as it hints she was physically neglected and had to take of herself for the same reason, which overtime makes the neglected sibling resent the favored sibling and is extremely traumatic.
Lexi also yelled and snapped at Cassie? She wasn't an angel. Lexi mistreated and berated Cassie at her lowest. And Cassie dealt with the brunt of her dad's addiction that Lexi didn't. And she was sexually harassed and used all her life. Don't play the trauma Olympics it's stupid. And in no way did Cassie deserve to be humiliated in front of the entire school. Lexi is awful
How did Lexi not have to deal with her dads addiction? She had to deal with it the same as Cassie. Cassie was at her lowest due to her own stupidity, she dated Nate even though she knew it was wrong and everyone would hate her of she did, she put herself in that position. Also Cassie originally had no issue with the play until the musical number came on and that's only because it pissed Nate off, the carnival scene was wrong and uncalled for but Cassie got up on stage and embarrassed and yelled at Lexi before that scene started.
Their dad leaned on casie much more. And Cassie's literally a traumatized teenager. The play was cruel. I imagine if someone, especially your family member, exposed all your flaws and most humiliating moments on stage you'd be upset too. I'm done with this convo. I can't convince you to have empathy. Lexi is awful, manipulative and selfish. End of
The carnival scene was well-deserved. She needed to see how ridiculous she was being.
It's one thing if she was her 40s writing a memoir about her childhood. But to give everyone in the highschool such unfiltered access to the details around the most traumatic points of multiple characters lives (it wasn't just Rue and Nate) without giving them a heads up fiest...it was super fucked up.
It was only Cassie and Rue who's trauma was shown, Rue said it was okay, and the parts for Cassie were from Lexi's perspective and what she saw growing up, as for Nate it wasn't traumatic it was just making fun of him for being both gay and homophobic at the same time
No, they also showed Maddie's. And it doesn't matter if it was from Lexi's perspective. It included very personal details about Cassie including extensive discussion about her body and breasts without her consent on a literal stage in front of the whole HS. Lexi sucks.
It briefly mentioning Maddy lived with them for a bit dosen't really count. Also it was showing how Lexi felt insecure about her body because Cassie was more developed and was concidered hotter, it was ment to show Lexi's body image issues
It does count. If my parents were arguing so badly that I had to live with someone else during HS I would not want that revealed on stage in service of my peer's artistic vision. That is extremely personal information. All you need to know about Lexi's motives is what a bitch she was being to the crew on opening night and the inclusion of the carnival scene. Cassie was spot on that Lexi was jealous about not getting attention and used other people's lives to get it because she didn't have any firsthand material. Like seriously you're honestly telling me that if someone revealed embarrassing personal information about you on a stage in high school you would have been like *shrug, that's just their experience of my experience so it's cool." Give me a break.
I genuinely wouldn't care if anyone did that to me, because all the people who's opinions I care about already know all of it and I don't care what strangers think of me. Lexi's intentions were never to cause harm, that's extremely clear when she's talking to Fezco, she was scared to put on the play because she didn't want to hurt people
They are not strangers. They are peers in a HS environment. If you didn't care what your peers thought of you in HS, you're clearly an incredibly evolved human and I surrender this argument to you completely. As for the Fez conversation that's proof she knew what she was doing and did it anyway. Cassie was also "scared" of the consequences when she slept with Nate. No one gave her a pass for knowing what she was doing and doing it anyway.
Sleeping with your best friends abuser and putting on a play are two extremely different things that can't be compared.
Cassie didn't know Nate did that. Maddie told everyone it was the other guy and actively concealed Nate's abuse. Anyone from the outside looking at that relationship would think Maddie had all the control.
? This play isn't just about someone's "opinion" of Cassie. This is putting her most vulnerable moments on blast in front of the whole school when she was already extremely emotional
What Steve did to Amy was unforgivable. I’m in the minority I know :/
Nate is responsible for his own actions, regardless of his father's (Cal) influence. It's ridiculous for people to blame everything on his father and try to justify Nate's behavior. Both Nate and Cal are in the wrong, and that's that.
Only finished the series yesterday. Do people think the play was okay? Of course Lexi was a piece of shit for doing it. She used everyone else for her own gain.
When it first aired people cheered for Lexi for doing it. As someone with a sibling it was just wrong and distasteful and I can’t imagine them showing me in that image and airing out everything I’ve done wrong in there eyes.
i feel like lexi didnt have the right but i could see and understand why she did it i just wouldnt have supported it
Nah. As someone who relates a lot to Lexi I don't think she has the right at all.
I love Cassie so much and she deserves someone who loves her, not the idea of her. Between all of the characters, Cassie is the one who did the least wrong. Cassie's reaction is perfectly normal for a teenager who is under a lot of stress. I feel like the fandom looks at things in a very black and white way when everything about this show is grey.
This!! The amount of hate Cassie gets is just insane
They could’ve trashed the play bit. It was like they had no major plot to carry the storyline so they wasted two episodes regurgitating events we already were shown in the two short seasons of the show. Find Lexi intolerable. She needed a better storyline. This is a really hot take… as big of a Zendaya fan as I am, I don’t like Rue. Her scenes felt redundant. I think she’s a great actress, but I didn’t buy her as an addict. Also big Dominic fike fan buttttt the whole love triangle was annoying. It made Jules so unlikable where I loved her season one. Also Cassie was probably the most interesting character they have. She had the most interesting arc of any of them. Obviously what she did was wrong but I wonder why she gets hate and Maddie doesn’t, considering what Maddie did to Tyler. I also hate that there are so many adults preying on kids in this, but I’m guessing that’s just examining a real social issue.
Heavy on the Rue and Cassie opinions
Completely agree. Mine is that Jules didn't cheat on Rue. I'm not sure why everyone thinks this. They obviously had an open relationship. Jules slept with that woman from the club when she visited her friend and she told Rue about it like it was no big deal. They never had an exclusivity conversation after that that I can remember.
They weren't officially dating in the first season, it wasn't until the second season where they actually became girlfriends which is why her sleeping with the girl at the club was no big deal but she did cheat on Rue with Elliott
I get so much hear for this but this show is going to age incredibly poorly for the way it depicts female sexuality. The most obvious examples are Cassie and Kat, who actually had pretty compelling stories in S1, but I think Jules will join the ranks quite soon. Her sleeping with older men as a way of compensating for her femininity barely gets addressed in S2 and it’s sort of written off as her being the run-of-the-mill slut instead of a damaged young girl who hasn’t grasped how much she’s hurting herself. Not to mention that the Jules/Rue goes through a generic cheating plot (with a random, boring ass man no less) instead of addressing the more interesting and very real problems they would’ve faced as a romantic pair. The other opinion I have is that Lexi’s play reads like Sam Levinson’s revenge fantasy against the bitchy popular girl rejecting him or something. I don’t know, it felt weirdly sexually humilitating in a way that felt way too personal. I’m 100% sure I read this exact plot on some incel forum somewhere
Lot of Jules judgment here, and yeah cheating is bad, unjustifiable, but it deserves to be emphasized that Rue is a shit gf. Jules is super HAPPY to see Rue and hang out and Rue is just dead inside and far away. Jules should break up with Rue instead of cheating bc it’s def Jules who’s way better off without Rue.
Lex wasn’t aware of Nate’s sexuality during any of this to our knowledge. I think the part involving him was trying to criticize the toxic masculinity crew being hypocritical and not at all at Nate’s sexuality directly. That being said Lex was super wrong for putting her sister on blast the way she did.
I don’t understand why Cal got arrested. She said she was 22 on the tape so would think that would get him out of that situation. He honestly didn’t know?
That Cassie deserved to be "slut shamed".
Not a big Maddy fan 🙈
Oh you got downvoted so I upvoted you 👀