Euphoria’s first season was not without controversy, but throughout it’s eight episode run, the one thing that struck me more than anything else was the absolute foregrounding of its characters’ feelings. Sam Levinson’s expressionist take on the coming of age genre serving as a window into Rue’s (Zendaya) relationship with addiction creates both an impossibly heightened emotional space, and the sense that things would eventually come crashing back down to earth. This is exactly what happened in the season’s finale as the tensions beneath Rue and Jules’ (Hunter Schafer) relationship that had been comfortably ignored up to this point finally reached their boiling point, throwing them in opposite directions, and leaving fans with only the hope that going forward they would rebuild their relationship not on blind commitment, but mutual understanding.
As much as it was a disappointment to find out that the second season would be delayed, the promise of these two special episodes was incredibly exciting. Rue and Jules are the beating heart of the show, and to spend so much more time inside their heads sounded like a blessing. Once Rue’s episode aired and we got a taste of just how fundamentally character focused these specials were, my expectations were set incredibly high for Jules’. Jules had been the most unfairly maligned character of the first season, especially on Twitter, and the thought of both her getting the chance to say her piece, and Hunter Schafer being allowed such a significant platform to talk from the perspective of a trans woman was hugely compelling. This episode delivered on both of these promises, and created something that while maybe not what was expected, was absolutely what was needed.
The special makes Jules’ transness absolutely impossible to ignore, something people had managed to pull off after the first season but was an instrumental part of the campaign to villainise her and misrepresent her motivations.The idea of transness as existentially inconvenient and dangerous to the well-being of cis people is a long-standing tradition and the foregrounding of Jules’ position and humanity is a direct rebuttal of that reading of this story. In one of her earliest lines in the episode, Jules tells her therapist she has considered stopping her hormones, an immediate announcement that the special is refreshingly uninterested in the perspectives or ignorance of a cis audience. There is an effect of powerfully tying Jules’ ongoing struggles to view herself as physically worthy of love — a struggle that had always been present in the show — to the reality that transness is never as simple as it might look on the outside.
Taking the form of a therapy session, the special provides Jules with the agency and platform to explain her role in a story that — up until this point — had only ever been presented from Rue’s perspective. Despite the simple construction, the earnestness with which this is all presented becomes devastating because it is absolutely clear that we are finally seeing her true feelings on the events of the show, hopefully forcing audiences to reconsider their previous assumptions. One great example of this is the new revelation of Jules’ mother relapsing before the Halloween episode leading to her reckless behaviours, something that had initially been presented only as an unexplained streak of self destructiveness at the cost of Rue’s happiness. Similarly, scenes from the first season are recreated in a totally different tone to place us squarely within Jules’ point of view and reinforce the adoration she has for Rue. It also offers a glimmer of hope that Rue and Jules will find their way back to each other as they’re given the space to unpack and express their genuine feelings for each other.
The candidness of this setting similarly allows Schafer, through Jules, present insights on the experience and insecurities of transness through a lens that is both non-judgemental and not exploitative as trans stories so often are. When she speaks of having viewed puberty as an “irreversible process of alienation from femininity,” an audience is both allowed new insight into Jules’ relationship with her body, her gender, and her relationship with Rue. Jules has been an important character to myself and so many other trans people because her place in this story represents not only real world representation, but the knowledge that people are finally provided an opportunity to understand the nuances of transness through her in ways they never have before.
The power of this special is that it is fundamentally and structurally therapeutic, Schafer and Levinson are willing to meet people’s concerns and questions head-on, both with answers and the challenge to reassess where they had come from in the first place. A show that is otherwise so fast paced and erratic is provided an opportunity to come back to earth, not for the sake of destruction or to show a character at their worst, but as an opportunity for rebuilding. The final scene where Rue and Jules are reunited is not a Hollywood ending of fanfare and embrace, but the simple suggestion that these characters care too much for one another for this to have been the end.
