Any book nerd knows how to spot a Penguin Classic. Sam Levinson left one on Lexi Howard’s desk in last night’s Euphoria episode, “Rain or Shine”. The title wasn’t in focus, but that cover was just visible enough to track it down. Nella Larsen’s Passing. Underneath it, a copy of Jane Smiley’s Some Luck. But it’s one book that’s not there, Atonement, that might hold the key to a surprise finale.
Rue is ranting on and on about that burning bush while Lexi is trying to write, and something critical happens in the exchange. She questions Rue’s reliability as a narrator. Chalks up the religious revelation, the fantastic tales of Nazis, cowboys, and DEA agents as nothing more than figments of Rue’s imagination after a return to drug use.
If we read the scene literally, Lexi is just writing the “LA Nights” storyline her network kicked Cassie out of. Her mistrust of Rue leads her to confide in Maddy, who then spills the beans to Alamo propelling us into a finale where Rue’s life is on the line yet again. The previews already show us she makes it out of Wayne’s basement, only to have someone drag her feet first through the desert.
But if we look at the thematic overlap between the books on Lexi’s desk and the trajectory of the last seven episodes, the possibility that she’s been authoring the entire season, as some sort of attempt to rewrite history, the same way Briony Tallis rewrites her sister’s life at the end of Atonement, is the missing link that explains every cinematic choice and twist this season has taken.
Some Luck is the first book in a trilogy following Iowa’s Langdon family. Generational milestones like births, deaths, and marriages take readers through historical eras including the Great Depression, WWII, the dissipation of rural life and the unraveling of the American dream. It’s about ordinary people growing up and contending with luck, fate, and their own choices. The novel ends abruptly with a sudden death that sets up a sequel, but leaves the main characters in the middle of the emotional turmoil.
The thematic similarities to Euphoria Season 3 tie back to the idealization of rural life, the American dream, religious undercurrents, and how different adulthood can look for people who grew up together. Rue tells Ali specifically she’s going back to the farm in Texas once she’s done with the DEA. The time jumps and the saga-like character arcs tie the two together nicely, and Levinson’s treatment of a generation saddled with debt during the fentanyl epidemic is its own attempt to tackle a historical moment as it’s unfolding.
We’ve been anticipating deaths this entire season, and Levinson has referenced it through Lexi and Gia’s conversations about killing off characters so people don’t get bored. An abrupt death right before the credits roll isn’t off the table here.
Passing details the relationship between two light-skinned Black women in 1920s New York during the Harlem Renaissance. Irene lives openly in a Black neighborhood in Harlem, while Clare has been passing as white for years, married to a rich, racist man who has no idea about her true heritage.
Their toxic friendship is fueled by obsession and jealousy with a strong queer subtext, and the story ultimately ends in ambiguous betrayal and tragedy. Irene believes Clare is seducing her husband, and Clare dies falling out of a window after being found out by her own husband in turn. Whether she jumps, faints, or is pushed by Irene or her husband is left up to interpretation.
The connections here are just as potent. Rue’s biracial identity and the treatment of race is a strong undercurrent of Season 3. Cassie, Jules, Rue, Nate, and Maddy are all living double lives of some kind, “passing” in their own ways as the things they most desperately want to become: famous, talented, successful, rich, stable.
The queer undertones map perfectly onto readings of Maddy and Cassie’s toxicity, as well as the destruction of the relationship after Cassie steals Nate from Maddy. If either woman falls out of a window in the finale, we won’t be surprised.
Levinson loves a reference, and has made countless references this season. Tarantino, Westerns, Attack of the 50 Foot Woman. Everything laid out in plain sight. Planting these books on Lexi’s desk is a move straight out of The OA, making us question reality. Is it all really happening, or have we been inside another one of Lexi’s plays this entire season?
The last time she wrote about the people she loved, she put Marta and Hallie in the same bed on stage in front of Maddy and Cassie. Is killing Nate her way of writing her sister and her best friend the happy ending they never had? Is this whole season her own version of Atonement, to make up for whatever harm she caused or didn’t prevent in everyone’s lives? Rue has escaped death more times than we can count. Could it all be Lexi’s way of keeping a friend alive who died of an overdose seasons ago?
Returning to Lexi’s desk with the same books laid out and the same friend on her couch, the ghost of a friend she’s been imagining these conversations with all along, would be the most satisfying ending Euphoria and Levinson could give us.
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