This review contains spoilers for Euphoria Season 3 Episode 4.
After an episode that felt like it was at least leading somewhere, Season 3, Episode 4 of Euphoria falls back and has some surprisingly uneventful moments in comparison. For as many moments that should feel tense or exciting, they are a little lacklustre overall, with little to nothing happening.
Rue’s (Zendaya) storyline, once again, is still doing the bulk of the work for the show.
Picking up immediately from the DEA situation, there is already tension on her as there was in the episode prior, and this continues throughout the episode. She is the most consistent thread the show is actually getting right at the moment, and you find yourself instantly attached and rooting for her to not make a mistake.
Whether that is through Alamo (Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje) asking her questions or the DEA listening in on her and even in her more trivial conversations, with the feeling that any moment she was going to slip up. There’s an impending feeling that she is more than likely going to be caught out, but you still find yourself invested in wanting her not to.
This tension keeps you interested without big things happening. All the tension that exists is based around an underlying worry that things are going to go wrong, and what Zendaya, of course, delivers well. Her scenes always feel much more active than anything else, and there is a constant unease about her, even when Rue is trying to act completely calm.
However, apart from Rue’s story, this episode is not effective.
With the other plot lines being almost neglected or not interesting right now, Cassie (Sydney Sweeney) continues her attempts to be the richest person in the room, and you once again find yourself so frustrated at trying to understand what she is even trying to achieve anymore.
Her sole purpose is seemingly money, and abandoning all morals due to it. Adding to this, Maddy’s (Alexa Demie) involvement as her manager is interesting but difficult to read where it is going. It is unclear what her end goal actually is or if there’s more going on in terms of her aiming to manipulate Cassie for her own monetary gain, and if there is, it doesn’t feel particularly interesting. It is more so a bit vague for now.
With Nate (Jacob Elordi), his problems are getting worse in some ways, but it doesn’t feel particularly impactful or as if anything is progressing. It just feels like the plot line circles around the same thing until there is an attempt at making something bigger, even the court scene, for example, just didn’t land as I would have hoped.
And as for Jules (Hunter Schafer) and Lexi (Maude Apatow), they felt the most disjointed, with their sub-storyline not contributing enough at the moment; it felt like it was simply padding for the episode. That’s part of the big issue of this episode: it felt like it was filling in time for a larger event.
Despite the building toward the end and the actual club being attacked, it still somehow doesn’t carry the same impact as the more minute yet more tense scenes of Rue’s storyline from earlier in the episode. This season isn’t connecting its individual plot lines properly.
Each episode seems to focus on different things, but it’s not particularly obvious as to why or how everything is going to piece together. As of now, it all feels quite scattered.
With Rue’s story, I did feel like something was going on, and that was largely down to Zendaya’s consistently great performance. Her part of the episode felt much stronger than the rest, but that only emphasizes how much everything else lacks.
Euphoria remains watchable, but it also doesn’t feel like much has changed by the end. Another stepping stone episode, but without any of the forward momentum the last episode had. It seems like the show is building towards something, but the slow pacing is starting to work against it
