Euphoria’s De-Emphasis on Likeability
In just two eight-episode seasons, Euphoria has garnered millions of viewers and inspired a hungry new generation of Tik Tok psychologists. If you log into any social media platform right now, you‘ll easily find entire accounts and threads dedicated to the imperfect, irresistible art of determining why the show’s characters made their respective set of decisions. Users all over the globe are shoving themselves into rabbit holes in an effort to understand the many betrayals, highs, hidden passions, and deceits of Euphoria.
What is it about this show, aside from its alluring cast and breathtaking cinematography, that holds a grip on global audiences? What are these characters doing that makes us want — need — to get inside their heads?
The bottom line is that Euphoria has no heroes, and that may be its most alluring quality. Each individual on the show is inherently — and in some cases, deeply — flawed. There are the serious crimes, such as Cal’s statutory rape and Maddy and Nate’s framing of an innocent man, and then there are the high school crimes: Cassie’s backstabbing, Elliot’s two-timing, Jules’s cheating. Even still, there’s a marked difference between showcasing a character’s flaws and making that character altogether unlikeable (or neutral at best). In Euphoria, that line is blurred almost all of the time.
One Twitter user commented of Hunter Schafer’s role, “all of the characters are flawed- that’s the point, but compared to everyone else jules has been very decent aside from being a bad gf.”
Very decent is probably the highest compliment that can be paid to a character on the show. Jules cheated on her girlfriend, sure, but she isn’t outright malicious like some of her peers. We’ve all been bad girlfriends or boyfriends at one point, right? And that’s the thing — it’s entirely up to the viewer which characters will be scorned and which will be pardoned. Currently, half the internet views Jules as a teenager who made a mistake, while the other half believes she’s a narcissist willing to suck the life out of anyone who crosses her path.
Certain characters do, however, seem to be widely accepted despite their offenses. Fezco, arguably lauded as the most favorable character on the show’s second season, is a hard drug dealer. He justifies his choice of occupation by reasoning, “My Uncle Carl got diabetes from eating too much McDonald’s. You don’t see nobody going after they ass.” That explanation deserves a bit more nuance, but the baseline logic is coherent.
Fez may be indirectly harming hundreds of families like Rue’s, but hey, at least he’s sweet and shy and looks like Mac Miller. What’s the real harm there?
Fez’s surprising status reinforces that Euphoria doesn’t need to create obvious or untouchable leads. One of the show’s major successes is its ability to portray the harsh realities and side effects of addiction through one of its most central characters, Rue. In media, there tends to be a gap between discussing addiction as a concept and portraying how it presents in everyday life, and the casting of Zendaya (who has basically achieved Rihanna status) tests both her reach as an actress and our perception of addicts more generally.
Anyone who has loved someone through addiction knows how quickly life narrows down to survival and survival alone — both for the addict and their loved ones. In the seventh episode of this season, Rue’s mom, Leslie, tells her, “I can’t convince you that your life is important. You’re gonna have to make that decision on your own…. I’m takin’ you off my plate. I’m gonna focus on Gia.” How far must she be pushed for a mother to tell her own daughter that, for all intents and purposes, she has nothing left to give?
The scene is reminiscent of the 2018 film Beautiful Boy starring Steve Carell and Timothée Chalamet. Addiction pushes both father and son to the brink, revealing their worst, most vile instincts but also their boundless capacity for growth, redemption, and meaningless joy. Though occasionally overdoing it on the dramatization, Euphoria similarly invites its viewers to look at characters entirely. Background and context do not excuse action, but they’re also not irrelevant.
We have to ask ourselves, why high school? Is this show just Sam Levinson’s blatant attempt to recreate the late-2000s Skins frenzy? Youth sells, of course, but the teenage brain is at its most uninhibited, making these characters more likely to give in to their most primal desires — no matter how they feel about one another.
Luckily, Euphoria does not ask us to separate intention from deed.
