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The fourth episode of Euphoria's second season dials up the intensity to chaotic degrees. Cassie (Sydney Sweeney) is feverish with longing for Nate, alternating between belting out Sinéad O'Connor and puking on herself in the Howard family hot tub. Cal (Eric Dane) returns home from the bar which holds precious memories of his high school friend and lover, then proceeds to tell his family who he really is, shortly after urinating on the hallway floor. While everyone around them is losing their minds, Rue and Jules's relationship is on thin ice thanks to the lingering presence of Elliot (Dominic Fike), a figure who has made a strange triangle of sexual interest and drug dependency between the three of them.
This week's episode, 'You Who Cannot See, Think of Those Who Can', opens with what the show's cinematographer has since called the lover's montage. In the scene, where Jules is going down on Rue, and Rue is so high that, “she might as well be going down on my ankle”, we bear witness to a fantasy montage of them playing the iconic lovers of cinema, music and art. Jules lies in the water made up to look like Botticelli’s 1480s painting The Birth of Venus, then as Frida Kahlo with Rue drawn onto her forehead. There's Rue and Jules as Titanic's Jack and Rose or Brokeback Mountain's Jack and Ennis; Yoko Ono and John Lennon, as photographed by Annie Leibovitz for the cover; or animated to resemble Snow White and Prince Charming.
In the montage Rue repeatedly played the characters who ended up six feet under: Jack from Titanic, Sam from Ghost, Jack from Brokeback Mountain, and so it doesn't take a great leap of the imagination to wonder whether these references are telling us something.
This portentous message bookends the episode, with the ending of episode four featuring Rue in a church where the musician Labrinth, who does the score for the show, appears physically while new track 'Pick Me Up' plays. In the scene Rue appears to be at her own funeral, so is this all leading towards her death being realised next week? Don't bet on it.
The lovers montage recalls the joyful relationship sequence which we saw in Jules's Christmas special last year, in which we were tricked with a fantasy of what never was. Euphoria likes to lay trails of breadcrumbs then have them take us nowhere, like Nate waiting at Maddy's door despite the fantasy montage where we were told Cassie was his perfect woman.
While the trailer for episode five certainly wants to tease the fact Rue is gone, the most obvious reason that that Rue won't choke before season two is over is that Zendaya, who has already won an Emmy for this role, is by far the most electric thing in the show, week-in, week-out.
Perhaps then, all of the ominous symbols of death are pointing toward the fact that Rue is already dead inside. As a participant in her own funeral she's crossed over to the other side, it's just whether the people surrounding her can bring her back to life.
