The newest episode sees Rue embarking on an epic, inverted hero’s journey.
HBO
Rue (Zendaya) is trapped in a vicious cycle. It’s the identical one she’s been entangled in for the reason that starting of the primary season of Euphoria: she makes use of medication, she hits all-time low, she considers getting clear, she momentarily will get clear, she relapses. After which the cycle begins proper again up once more. So far as dependancy goes, it is a story as previous as time. It’s painful to look at, and on the earth of this sequence, it’s dishearteningly acquainted and agonizingly inevitable.
The newest episode of Euphoria (“Stand Nonetheless Just like the Hummingbird”) sees Rue at a brand new low when she wakes up one morning to find that her girlfriend, Jules (Hunter Schafer), and finest good friend, Elliot (Dominic Fike), advised her mother (Nika King) that she’s been utilizing medication and that the three flushed Rue’s suitcase of capsules down the bathroom. Rue’s response to this revelation is one in all unbridled rage: she bodily assaults her mother; she vandalizes her home; she tells Jules that she by no means needs to see her once more.
In a way, all the essence of Euphoria is a fantastical spectacle of Rue’s addiction, made sense of by the use of her personal narration of it. Oftentimes after she does a line of opiates, for instance, the world round her glows with magnificent, luminous colours, as euphoric beats swell within the background. With out this fantastical alternate actuality that Rue spins for herself, she possible wouldn’t be capable of justify her drug use to others — or to herself.
However in Season 2, Episode 5 of Euphoria, fairly colours and seductive synths gained’t reduce it anymore with regards to depicting Rue’s dependancy. As quickly as she discovers that her suitcase is lacking, she is aware of this has change into an entire totally different ball sport. Bodily debilitated by withdrawal and feeling terribly indignant and betrayed, she has hit all-time low tougher than ever earlier than. So what’s there left to do now?
“Stand Nonetheless Just like the Hummingbird” follows Rue over the course of 24 hours. After an explosive struggle along with her mother, her sister, Gia (Storm Reid), Jules, and Elliot, she agrees to go to detox. However on the automobile trip over, she alters her thoughts and leaps onto the freeway with two targets in thoughts: discover medication, and conceal from her mother. The subsequent 40 minutes see Rue on a wild odyssey by means of the streets of Los Angeles. She makes an attempt to rob her good friend Fez (Angus Cloud), wreaks havoc in her good friend group by telling Maddy (Alexa Demie) that Cassie (Sydney Sweeney) has been sleeping with the previous’s ex, breaks right into a rich couple’s home, leaps over fences in an epic foot-chase with the cops, and narrowly escapes being sex-trafficked by dead-pan drug-lord Laurie (Martha Kelly).
Certainly, we’ve seen Rue’s dependancy push her to extremes earlier than — from stealing her sick dad’s ache capsules earlier than he died to nearly breaking down Fez’s door. However that is the primary time present creator Sam Levinson has given Rue an After Hours-esque hero’s journey of types that sees our protagonist actively dodging impediment after impediment after impediment.
Is Rue’s hellish evening greater than only a random sequence of unlucky occasions? Given the best way she has narrativized her dependancy prior to now, I’d be inclined to posit that none of her actions are completely random. Certainly, “Stand Nonetheless Just like the Hummingbird” finds parallels to probably the most traditional of heroic tales, specifically Homer’s Odyssey. Like Odysseus’ males’s realities being skewed by the Lotus flowers within the epic poem, so is Rue unable to see past the affect of opiates. Equally, Odysseus and his military enterprise into the underworld for instructions residence, and in a like method, Rue takes to the underbelly of LA for her subsequent repair.
Most importantly, Laurie locks Rue in her condominium, identical to the paranormal Calypso imprisons Odysseus on her island for seven years. In fact, Odysseus’ story wouldn’t be full with out him returning residence to his spouse Penelope, and on the finish of this episode of Euphoria, a door opens in Rue’s home — presumably she, like Odysseus, has returned residence. However clearly, this isn’t your common Odyssey homage. Rue isn’t vying for prosperity and the Aristocracy in her evening out, and as a substitute of taking care of her military, she hurts every member of it. However why does she do that? And why did Levinson suppose to provide Rue an odyssey within the first place?
It has already been established that Rue is dropping the narrative thread of her life. That is proven within the stark tonal disparities between “Stand Nonetheless Just like the Hummingbird” and each episode of Euphoria that got here earlier than it. This present day-in-the-life will not be embellished with neons, neither is it sprinkled with the present’s signature enjoyable, comedic, or romantic cutaways. As a substitute, we’re compelled to look at an hour of Rue sweating and shaking and vomiting with out respite, surrounded by bland monochromes uncharacteristic for the present, and lit with oppressive, bleak shadows.
And so there’s actually nothing left for Rue to do, now, than attempt to relate her wrestle to a story that is smart to her. And what makes extra sense than the traditional hero’s journey? So she units out to beat an array of hurdles, partaking in theatrical parkour nearly like she’s in a online game, and doing every part else in extremes. She might have waited till she was in a safer place to leap out of her mother’s automobile, for instance, however she decides to take action on the busiest stretch of freeway. And that isn’t even the final time within the episode that Rue leaps throughout visitors. Likewise, Maddy discovering out about Cassie and Nate’s covert affair was sure to be probably the most dramatic second of Season 2, so it solely is smart that Rue chooses this particular evening to drop that particular bomb.
All of this has the impact of Rue giving her dependancy extra of a function than it being merely one thing that her thoughts and physique can’t cease her from doing. In an odd manner, that is maybe probably the most empathetic depiction of Rue the present has seen but — it exhibits that she is operating out of choices, that she’s wildly determined, and that she’ll go to probably the most excessive of measures to cease her ache from resurfacing. The second she stopped having the ability to justify it merely sitting in her room, she went exterior and created an epic journey of which she was the hero.
Associated Matters: Euphoria
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