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[This story contains MAJOR spoilers from the season three finale of Euphoria, “In God We Trust.”]
Sam Levinson had a different ending for Rue, Zendaya‘s starring character in Euphoria, before the death of star Angus Cloud. Cloud, who played drug dealer Fezco in the first two seasons of HBO‘s buzzy series, died in 2023 at age 25 from a fentanyl-related overdose while Levinson was working on the third — and what would become final — season that released Sunday night.
In the season three finale, titled “In God We Trust,” Zendaya’s opiate addict Rue Bennett dies from fentanyl-laced Percocet given to her by drug kingpin Alamo Brown (Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje), in a move of sadistic revenge for believing she was working with the DEA. Brown eventually gets what he deserves, when Rue’s sponsor Ali (Colman Domingo) kills him in an epic shootout (another scene that changed from its inception, the actor revealed to The Hollywood Reporter).
When speaking on the New York Times‘ Popcast after the finale, Levinson explained that he wrote a different trajectory for Rue during the writers strike of 2023, but that when Cloud died that July, his death sparked the ending viewers ultimately saw — a finale that is the end-end of Euphoria, now also confirmed by HBO.
