Why Rue Is Working For Laurie

Season 3 drops the audience into Rue’s life five years after high school. While she’s seemingly sober, she’s tied even more intimately to drugs than she’d been before. Last season, Rue had taken a suitcase full of narcotics from the monotone queenpin Laurie (Martha Kelly). She was supposed to sell it, but she got high instead and then her mom flushed it all.

The resulting breakdown over the $10,000 worth of debt her mom inadvertently put her in, nearly saw Rue being trafficked to cover the loss. She managed to escape and the nightmare she almost found herself in was the catalyst for her sobriety. However, Laurie never stopped looking for Rue and once she found her working at a smoke shop, she came to collect on the debt.

Laurie told her that she’s owed $43 million dollars, but she’ll settle for $100,000. With no way to repay the debt, Rue wound up selling her body to Laurie after all. Though not as a lifeless, heroine-filled plaything to be bought and sold, but rather as a drug mule who packs her body full of product to carry over the U.S.-Mexico border.

It’s dangerous and no one in Rue’s life besides Faye (Chloe Cherry) knows she’s doing it. And that’s only because Faye is body packing, too. They’re both gambling with their lives. If they’re caught at the border, they’ll face jail time. If a bag breaks, they’re dead.

Rue’s not new to this Russian roulette-esque game of chance. She played it in season 2 when she took fentanyl. Euphoria season 3 even opens with Rue teetering in a bucket of a car on the edge of the border wall. She routinely makes it out of impossible situations by the skin of her teeth. However, it’s not through faith. Rue is just reckless and tosses her life up like a coin flip, hoping for the best.

But this season sees her wanting more than getting by from moment to moment. She wants to be happy, and she thinks she can achieve that feeling through God. Enter Step 3 of the 12 step program—Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.

The Reason Rue Wants To Believe In God

Rue gets this epiphany after spending the night in the Millers’ barn. She met the ultra-Christian family in Texas after selling them a story about how she’s writing an exposé in her college newspaper about the drugs flowing over the border. They don’t interact much with the secular world, and she perceived their humble and loving home as the peak of contentment.

When she shared her thoughts with Lexi (Maude Apatow), her friend described what Rue had experienced as cult behavior. Also, in hypocritical fashion, Lexi stated that she couldn’t be friends with a Christian because they’re too judgemental. But Ali, a man of faith himself, listened as Rue worked through her thoughts.

He didn’t let Rue close herself off to religion by citing that she likes girls. Over their table at the diner they frequent, they debated whether sexual orientation precludes someone from being Christian. Ali hand-waved Rue’s argument, stating that the passages refer to men, not women and that they’re in the context of their time.

Their irreverent discussion jump starts Rue’s leap into faith and she wastes no time listening to Genesis on audio, much to the discomfort of the passenger she’s chauffeuring as an Uber driver.

Introducing Alamo Brown

Euphoria’s audience can expect Rue’s exploration of Christianity to be seen through the same provocative lens with which the show looks at everything. For example, when she meets Alamo (Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje), viewers are introduced to her idea of “a little slice of Heaven.”

Like it was the Garden of Eden, she was warned not to touch anything when she dropped drugs off at the strip club owner’s home, but she was tempted by the bikini-clad and topless women swimming and dancing in various rooms.

They were her forbidden fruit. Her and Alamo’s shared affinity for women opened the door for Rue to talk about her dream job. She wants to work in a strip club where beauty, skin, and sensuality reign. Her job description? Troubleshooter/troublemaker. The two hit it off, right until Tish, who Rue had helped earlier in the bathroom, fell victim to a fentanyl overdose.

Alamo was outraged. He thought Rue was in on lacing his drugs, but she fumbled her way through explaining that she had nothing to do with what happened. She’d been thinking that it was God who brought her and Alamo together. That he was going to be the way that she got out from under Laurie’s thumb.

Wanting to see if God believes in Rue like she does Him, Alamo took her outside and placed a green apple on her head with the intent to shoot it. She was terrified, but laughed hysterically when he shot it without hurting her. She had once again came out of a life-threatening situation unscathed.

This time Rue just might see it as God looking after her rather than the die rolling in her favor. However, she’s at the start of her journey with faith. This season’s emphasis on the sprawling desert lands of the West means we’re likely in for quite a few trials and tribulations that line-up with the Biblical teachings she’s listening to while on the road. And the black-and-white faith she has will certainly be put to the test.

New episodes of Euphoria season 3 air Sundays at 9 p.m. ET on HBO and stream exclusively on HBO Max. Follow me on Forbes for weekly coverage of the season and news about the business of TV.