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From a foreshadowed death to a creepy hidden camera, Euphoria is full of blink-and-you'll-miss-it visual clues.
Eddy Chen/HBO
Spoilers for Seasons 1 and 2 of Euphoria ahead.
From the beginning, Euphoria director Sam Levinson has made no secret of the fact that he is more interested in "emotional realism" than actual realism. "We established early on that each scene ought to be an interpretation of reality or a representation of an emotional reality," he told Vulture back in 2019. The show's cinematographer, Marcell Rév, echoed this sentiment in 2020 when he explained he's not as concerned with "how the world surrounding [the characters] really looks."
The result of this style of visual storytelling? Countless homages and references to classic films, music videos, and popular TV series. Extensive visual subtext, Easter eggs, and hidden meanings. And, ultimately, a growing online debate over whether we might be assigning too much meaning to some of the show's stylistic choices.
Below, I break down 16 hidden meanings and Easter eggs from Seasons 1 and 2 of Euphoria that I believe are not just artfully done, but are deliberate and provide deeper insight into the characters and their worlds:
1. It's (almost) always sunny but raining in East Highland.
HBO
Ever notice that in many of Euphoria Season 2 scenes, the weather can't seem to make up its mind? Sun showers are absolutely a thing in real life, but they seem to occur more often in the fictional town of East Highland than anywhere else. Going back to Levinson's assertion that the show is based in "emotional realism," it's likely that these strange, sunny rainstorms we so often get a glimpse of through the window are representative of the characters' conflicted emotional states. They also seem like something out of a dream, perhaps to create a sense of foreboding. As if to say: "Things might seem okay on the surface, but look a bit closer."
2. In Season 1, Episode 2, we hear Nate's "dream girl" described. That imagined girl has most of the qualities of Jules.
HBO
In Season 1 Episode 2, we get an exhaustive checklist of all of the things Nate Jacobs has decided that he likes about women: tennis skirts, jean cut-offs, ballet flats, heels, sandals worn with a fresh pedicure, thigh gaps, tan lines, long necks, slender shoulders, good posture, fruit-scented body mist, full lips, small noses, lacy chokers, and, of course, hairless bodies. When he later catfishes Jules on a Grindr-like dating app, this all checks out, as he was all but describing her to a tee. In Season 2, Nate dates Cassie, but the two often blur together in his mind in a series of dream sequences, and many fans speculate that Cassie is his stand-in for his fantasy girl, Jules. It's no wonder he dresses Cassie like a mash-up of Maddy and Jules in the final episodes of the season.
3. Someone is scratching on the door from inside the locked room in Laurie's apartment.
HBO
If you listen closely, you'll hear it: Someone is, indeed, softly scratching from inside the bolted locked door in Laurie's apartment as we pan down the long hallway, hear the lights briefly flicker, and then get a close-up shot of the deadbolts. Rue revisits this terrifying place during a withdrawal spiral in Season 2, Episode 5, in which Laurie lies to her that all she has is morphine before encouraging her to strip naked, get in a bath, and then injects her intravenously.
And quite roughly! Seriously, she was digging around in her veins like there was gold in there, leaving Rue with horrible scarring. Many fans, myself included, speculate that Laurie not only planned to "mark" Rue this way so if she went to the cops to try and turn Laurie in for trying to traffic her, they'd be more likely to write her off as an unreliable addict. I also believe that Laurie had always planned to sex traffic her, as well. It would explain why she gave the flighty, fast-talking teen addict a $10,000 suitcase full of drugs to "sell" (and even offered her a far more costly one) in the first place: it was a means to both groom her and create a dependency. After all, Laurie knew that Rue was an addict (she calls this out in the kitchen meeting in Episode 5 and sees through all of Rue's lies easily) and would likely ingest all of the drugs herself. Laurie knew that either way things went, she'd get a return on her investment when Rue failed to sell the drugs and Laurie, as she so bluntly put it to her in Episode 3, would "have [her] kidnapped and sold to some real sick people," as she "always finds a way to make [her] money back. " So, that haunting scratching coming from the inside the door? Likely another victim of Laurie's who wasn't able to escape as Rue did. Shudder.
Laurie further hints at her plans to traffic Rue when she explains to her the way that drugs mess up with the chemicals in your brain, and how the "bright side" of this is how the things that feel bad don't feel so bad anymore. "It's one of the good parts of being a woman," she adds. "Even if you don't have money, you've still got something people want." Hopefully, we won't see Rue end up as the soon scratching helplessly next season, as she's on a good path as of now. Still, she owes Laurie money...lots of money, and Laurie is definitely not the type to forgive and forget.
4. Laurie reveals Rue's full first name, which is later confirmed by Lexi's play.
HBO
When my friend and I first watched Episode 5 of Season 2 together, we both caught Laurie using the name "Ruby Bennett" upon Rue's arrival. My friend thought that it was a mix-up on her part, but I assured her that someone as calculated and scary as Laurie would probably not only know Rue's full birth name, but her social security, too — especially if she was planning on sex trafficking her all along when she inevitably failed to cough up the cash for the $10,000 suitcase.
My suspicions were further confirmed when later, in Lexi's play, it's revealed that the Rue dopplegänger character is named "Jade." Ruby and Jade are both gemstones. Coincidence? I think not.
5. Cal's long-lost love, Derek, is a nod to Grey's Anatomy.
Eric Mccandless / Walt Disney Television via Getty Images
Spoiler for Grey's Anatomy
Before he was Cal Jacobs on Euphoria, actor Eric Dane played Dr. Mark Sloan (a.k.a. Dr. McSteamy) on the long-running drama Grey's Anatomy. Dr. McSteamy was formerly besties with Dr. Derek Shepherd — portrayed by Patrick Dempsey — though the two characters had a falling out after Mark slept with Derek's wife. In the Anatomy universe, both men ended up dead.
What does this mean for the fate of Cal and Derek, and will we get to see Patrick Dempsey reprise his role to play Cal Jacob's former BFF? Is Derek still alive, and will Cal Jacobs meet a tragic fate? His character's nihilistic arc definitely seems to be destined for tragedy. Either way, showrunner Sam Levinson definitely put this nod and wink to Grey's in on purpose.
6. An important song begins to play in Season 1 whenever Rue is tempted by drugs.
HBO
In the finale of Season 1, Zendaya wowed fans by finally bringing her singing and dancing skills to the set of Euphoria along with her incredible acting, performing a collaboration with Labrinth called "All For Us" in a music video-like montage. The song features dark, striking lyrics like:
"Guess you figured my two times two
Always equates to one
Dreamers are selfish
When it all comes down to it
I hope one of you come back to remind me of who I was
When I go disappearing
Into that good night (good night)"
In Season 1, whenever Rue is tempted to fall back into addiction, "All For Us" begins to play, but we don't hear the full thing until the finale when Rue fully spirals. It's eerie and subtle, but if you go back and pay attention, you'll definitely catch it.
Other songs from the Euphoria soundtrack have come to represent its respective characters, such as the "Nate Growing Up" song from Season 1 that often signals his arrival on screen.
7. There's a creepy camera hidden in Samantha's clock, and it's actively recording.
HBO
Maddy spends much of Season 2 enjoying the luxurious perks that come with babysitting for a wealthy couple. Samantha, the family matriarch, is played by the stunning Minka Kelly, and has several rather unsettling scenes with Maddy throughout the season, including one in which she calls Maddy to her giant walk-in closet and asks the teen to help her zip up her sparkly mauve dress. While on the surface the scene might sound benign, fans couldn't help but notice the flirtatious subtext. In Episode 6, Samantha invites Maddy to drink wine with her in the pool together and, while Maddy is 18, it's definitely inappropriate.
In Episode 6, when the camera lingers for quite some time on the digital analog clock in Samantha's house, the David Lynch fan in me paid way too much attention to the numbers and, at first, failed to notice the little red light in the lefthand corner. It's an indication that there is a camera hidden inside the clock, and that it's actively recording. This means that Samantha has likely been watching Maddy play dress-up in her closet for weeks, and has all of it on tape. Will she use it as evidence against her when she goes to the cops? That doesn't seem likely because Maddy technically never stole anything. However, if Samantha has been recording Maddy for her own sick pleasure, it also wouldn't be so shocking in a show in which every other adult seems to have creepy ulterior motives.
8. At the Season 1 Halloween party, the characters' costumes are insights into their personas.
HBO
During the Season 1 Halloween party, the characters dress in fitting costumes, all of which are direct references to film and pop culture: two things that Sam Levinson frequently weaves into the show. Jules is dressed as the tragic but lovestruck Juliet from the '90s Romeo + Juliet, a kind of "fallen angel" who gives herself to love. We see this happen over the course of Season 1 as she falls into despair over the burden of loving Rue. Maddy and Nate are dressed as Iris and Travis from Taxi Driver, which is a rather unsettling pair, as in the film, Travis develops a relationship with and ends up saving the underage sex worker from an exploitative brothel. While Maddy is certainly not a sex worker, she definitely wants Nate to white knight for her (in this case, he pretends to have rescued her from Tyler, the man he framed for choking Maddy). This creepy couple's costume helps give the illusion that Nate is her savior and caretaker...though it also indicates quite correctly that Nate is aggressive, impulsive, and, ultimately, a fatalist.
Cassie, meanwhile, is dressed as sex worker Alabama Worley who gets pregnant at the end of True Romance. This not only foreshadows her pregnancy later in the season, but comments on the way she is consistently objectified by the men in her world. Kat is dressed as a sexy nun on the surface, which is pretty funny since she's in the middle of her sexual awakening during Season 1, but as she explains to Ethan, it's actually a reference to the movie Ms .45. The film follows a woman who gets attacked twice in one day before ending up at a Halloween party dressed as a nun where she shoots everyone. Don't mess with Kat.
Daniel, the party host, is dressed as notorious serial killer Ted Bundy (ick), and as Kat snarks at him during the party: "Ted Bundy was taller." It's a great nod to his character being a smarmy wolf in sheep's clothing who later dresses down Cassie for refusing to hook up with him. Finally, Rue is dressed as Marlene Dietrich, one of the most celebrated and popular actresses of the '30s and '40s, known for her impeccable style and bisexuality. Basically, Rue is the GOAT.
9. Makeup artist Daniella Davy revealed some cool hidden meanings to Cosmopolitan.
HBO
Sam Levinson and his cinematographer, Marcell Rév, aren't the only ones who've confirmed that the show is loaded with hidden meaning. In a 2019 interview with Cosmopolitan, Euphoria makeup artist, Doniella Davy, explained that her infamous work is quite purposefully done.
“It’s not just corrective and pretty stuff," she told the magazine. "I see it as emotional stories on their faces being told through makeup. It’s a completely new language, a totally new style.”
Remember Rue's sparkly Season 1 glitter tears? Davy said that “they have this amazing, like, emotional quality that just feels like tears. It’s so sad, especially when it’s placed under her eyes.” As for Maddy's fierce eye looks, Davy likened them to "miniature outfits," and explained that after the pilot episode, Maddy is "mad at Nate after the whole party at McKay’s house, and [her Episode 2 cheerleading look] is like, so animalistic and fierce.”
10. The opening cinematic montage in Season 2, Episode 4 has at least six specific artistic references.
HBO
In the opening of Season 2, Episode 4, while Jules is going down on Rue, Rue narrates: "I don't think you understand how much I love Jules." This is then illustrated by a beautiful montage, featuring direct references to pop culture and modern art, like: Sandro Botticelli’s 1480's painting "The Birth of Venus," John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s 1981 Rolling Stone cover, Rene Magritte's "The Lovers II" painting, Frida Kahlo’s 1943 painting "Self Portrait As A Tehuana," the 1990 film Ghost, the 1997 film Titanic , a cheeky animated reference to the the 1937 film Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, and even an homage to 2005's Brokeback Mountain.
Each scene sees Jules appear as a character or figure from the respective movie, painting, or photo, often with Rue as her devoted lover. This striking sequence is meant to let us know that Rue does, in fact, love Jules deeply and in a profound poetic way, despite her not seeming to be emotionally engaged in their relationship.
ARTNews' Alex Greenberger suggests that within this sequence, Levinson "seemingly wants this montage to serve as a means to subvert standards of female beauty." "In situating Jules, a trans woman, in imagery traditionally held by cisgender women, Levinson is attempting to complicate images that have become codified in mainstream culture, opening them to new and more complicated re-readings that would seem to suit the characters of Euphoria, many of whom are queer and non-white," he writes.
11. Cassie's stunning flower sequence is a nod to the aesthetic of Mexican murals at the turn of the century.
HBO
At the end of Episode 4 of Season 2, we are treated to a number of trippy, hallucinatory montage sequences, including an astonishing one of Cassie (played by Sydney Sweeney, who reminds me more and more of a young Julianne Moore the more I see her). Radiant yet miserable, beautiful but desperately lovesick over Nate and spiraling in a pit of her own despair, Cassie silently sobs in front of a mirror. She is surrounded and framed by dozens of red, pink, and white flowers, many of them hanging from the ceiling, while the crashing sounds of Labrinth's score plays in the background. These flowers are likely to represent the intense, toxic "love" she receives from Nate, and how in spite of having his presence engulfing her, she remains heartbroken at her core.
During the "inside the episode," Levinson revealed that this sequence was inspired by “Mexican murals from the turn of the century," though there's also definitely a horrifying Midsommar feel to it as well (which makes sense, since Cassie completely loses it and goes full Carrie in the season finale). I was delighted to see that YouTuber Du Cinema also picked up on the Midsommar reference, among many others, which he lays out extensively in his awesome video essay.
12. The intricate, high-budget set design of Lexi's play was probably more in everyone's heads then it was a literal depiction of "reality."
HBO
Many fans noticed that for a high school play, the production value of Lexi's was pretty damn impressive. However, as much as Sam Levinson has a penchant for the ostentatious, he also loves the hyper-real, so I don't think we were necessarily meant to see each sequence as how it appeared, but rather, how Lexi dreamed it. The lines seemed to blur at times to between what we were actually seeing and what was more in the character's heads. There are countless surrealist sequences spliced in between, including dreamlike moments that bleed into one another and blur reality with fantasy, such as the Howard family dancing in their living room or Maddy and Lexi bonding in flashback. There are also several times when it would've been physically impossible for scenes to appear right after each other on-stage (such as a scene in Lexi's room discussing the terrors of tech with her friends immediately cutting right back to her and Rue's stand-in character, Jade, on the roof of Fez's store). As "Ruby" quotes her father: "Memories exist outside of time," and well, the name of the episode is "The Theater and it's Double," after all.
So yes, I do think much of what we saw was a bit of a hallucination, almost like a person on drugs seeing the world through an altered lens.
13. Lexi likely dressed up as Bob Ross for Halloween because of a joking comment made by Fez while they were stoned as kids.
HBO
How long has Lexi had a crush on Fez? If we follow the trajectory of the show, we're to assume the two only began flirting in Episode 1 of Season 2 during the New Year's Eve party. However, it's revealed in later episodes that Lexi and Fez actually go way back — like, back to when she and Rue were best friends. In Episode 7, we see a flashback to Lexi trying marijuana for the first time before promptly passing out. As a prank, Rue draws a beard on her face with a marker, and Fez jokes that she looks like Bob Ross. Years later, Lexi dresses up as the famed American painter for Halloween, perhaps as an homage to him.
14. There is a third mystery Jacobs son, and we keep being subtly reminded.
HBO
We first see the Jacobs family portrait in the pilot episode of Season 1 after Jules and Cal meet at the motel and Jules checks out the background image on his phone. There's a fantastic reveal that happens toward the end of that episode in which Nate returns home, and we see the same picture hanging on the wall above the staircase, revealing that Nate is Cal's son.
Much has been speculated about the mystery third Jacobs son, but so far, no one has ever mentioned him. Fan theories about him being Ashtray have been dismissed as the timelines don't line up, but could the loss of this brother have something to do with the current dysfunction of the Jacobs family? We see the family portrait time and time again throughout both seasons, and when he abandons his family, Cal takes it with him. We know Nate was traumatized by the tapes he found of his dad at age 11, but did something else happen between the ages of eight and nine? His mom Marsha alludes to this as a time when he "changed" but she can't explain why. It seems like the mystery will live on well into Season 3 and perhaps beyond.
15. Laurie's caged birds are metaphorical...and quite revealing.
HBO
In addition to being great security alarms and sound cover-ups (along with the always-on televisions, of course), the creepy caged birds in Laurie's nightmare apartment are likely representative of the young girls like Rue that she entraps and later sex traffics. Could one of those girls be the person scratching from behind the door in the locked room?
Like Rue, the birds are beautiful but vulnerable, and seem rather miserable in their confined environments. Rue stares at them several times in a number of shots that mirror not only their entrapment, but her own. Some shots directly frame her as trapped, as well.
16. Ashtray's death is visually foreshadowed in Season 2, Episode 1.
HBO
Perhaps the most upsetting Easter egg of all was noticed pretty quickly after the Season 2 finale aired. If you watch the opening to Episode 1 carefully — in which we learn more about Fez and Ashtray's backstory — there's a scene in which Fez's memory is lost for a while after accidentally being struck by a crowbar. We assume he maybe goes into a coma and suffers memory loss for several months, and as Rue narrates: he had "just an occasional image, and an overwhelming fear about who was gonna take care of Ashtray," you can faintly see a blink-and-you'll-miss-it shot of Ashtray's face from his final moments alive in the background.
Javon Walton, the actor who plays Ashtray, later revealed to Vulture that Fez was originally supposed to die instead of his character, but the script was altered a day before filming.
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