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This article contains spoilers for the Euphoria season two finale
For all of the gunfire, punches, screams and tears, each of which came thick and fast in the final episode of Euphoria season two, perhaps the most telling moment was an almost throwaway line which Maddy (Alexa Demie) delivered from the bathroom of Euphoria High.
The girls' pow wow comes after Lexi's (Maude Apatow) play and its endless budget showed the history of their friendship, revealing how they have been split apart. After Cassie (Sydney Sweeney) goes after her sister for exposing her, Maddy also takes to the stage to join in the brawl. As the girls lick their wounds in the bathroom, Cassie reveals that things were already over with Nate without Lexi's play putting the boot in, to which Maddy replies: "This is just the beginning."
The tug of war between Nate (Jacob Elordi) and Maddy was something she was finally able to distance herself from this season, and as such it has been a quieter and more reflective time for her. Seeing Cassie still in the throes of Nate's torment, Maddy is able to identify the game that she's now opted out of. When she tells Cassie it's only the start, she says it knowing Nate will likely reel her back in when he wants an emotional chew toy again.
Of all the Euphoria teenagers raging with anxiety and self-loathing, Maddy seems to have turned a corner of late and been on a (dare we say) healthy journey during season two. Instead of moping over Nate she's spent her evenings playing house in a beautiful wealthy woman's sprawling property, fantasising over her walk-in wardrobe and babysitting her cute son. It's a not so subtle way of implying that Maddy wants more from life, and knows Nate will never give her what she wants.
In a scene where she floats around the pool in the dark, drinking rosé with her glamorous boss, Maddy is at first enraged to learn that, like Cassie, Samantha (Minka Kelly) once betrayed her friend and slept with their boyfriend. What she seems to grasp quicker than she once would have is that the things that feel astronomically awful now will, some years from now, be a nothing anecdote. Life goes on, and the people who hold onto who they were in high school are doomed to be stuck like that forever.
Even to Cassie's face, Maddy's reaction to her behaviour has been less fiery than the Maddy of old, who overturned a chilli pot and called her boyfriend's mother a cunt in a moment of rage. There's a particular montage during season two, in which Cassie imagines facing the fury of Maddy based on various memories of her smashing other schoolmates' heads into lockers or against windows, but that moment never really comes to pass.
Sat facing each other in the bathroom with the battle wounds of a gashed foot and artfully restrained bloody nose, it's laid bare how a boy has pitted them against each other. In opting out of the fight for Nate, Maddy takes the real prize and emerges victorious this season.
