In Euphoria‘s Season 3 premiere, we learn precisely what Rue (Zendaya) has been up to in the years since Season 2 and it’s not pretty. In fact, the HBO show pulls no punches showing us just how disgusting — and dangerous — it is to be a drug mule.
**Spoilers for Euphoria Season 3 Episode 1, now streaming on HBO Max**
Euphoria Season 3 Episode 1 reveals that after escaping Laurie (Martha Kelly) at the end of Season 2, the soft-spoken drug dealer tracked Rue down at her day job manning a smoke shack. Laurie not only brought up the money Rue owed her in Season 2, but exponentially ramped up the debt to $43 million using interest. In her kindness, Laurie lowers the amount to $100,000 and tells Rue that she can work the debt off… by being a drug mule.
Rue then takes us through the grotesque process. First, she must travel to Mexico. There, she goes in the back of a bar and is given lube to help her swallow a massive bowl full of plastic-wrapped balloons of fentanyl. We see that first you have to test the balloons by dropping them in water to make the seal tight. Then the balls of drugs are forced down the throat. Then, the goal is to drive back over the border, where the process is pooping into a colander so the balloons can be washed off.
Of course, because fentanyl is so deadly, if a single balloon bursts, the drug mule will immediately die.
At first, Rue tackles this awful job alone. Then, she enlists Euphoria Season 2 standout Faye (Chloe Cherry) to join her. When DECIDER spoke with Chloe Cherry last week, she confirmed that filming these scenes were as gross as they looked on screen.
“So yes, it is disgusting to swallow bags, balloons filled with fentanyl, even if the fentanyl is fake because we’re on a set,” Cherry said. “It is very gross.”
“I guess I just kind of imagined in my mind I was like, ‘What if I was really fucking doing this? Like, what if I was actually doing this and I had to do it? How would I feel about it?’ And I just think I would be disgusted.”
Cherry then revealed that Euphoria creator/writer/director Sam Levinson was adamant that these scenes needed to be as gross as possible.
“He was like, ‘I really, really, really need to see in the scene that it is absolutely disgusting to swallow these fentanyl balloons. Like, I need it to be just awful. I need people to just see that it is so disgusting and hard and horrible to do this,’” Cherry said. “And I’m hoping that people could see that.”
Levinson also wrote a comic scene where we watch Rue and Faye struggle a little bit on their way back over the U.S./Mexico border. It’s not that the cops are on to them as much as Faye is struggling with some gastrointestinal issues.
“Obviously, I can’t fart on command,” Cherry said. “What they did do was have like a mic in the car and like Sam just himself kept doing fart noises for when he wanted a fart to be in there. And it was pretty funny, honestly, to have somebody just farting in the car and then your friends just like, ‘Stop, stop farting!’”
Cherry said that was a “really fun day to shoot,” even if she was initially skeptical if the scene would work when all was said and done.
“At first I was just like, ‘Oh my god, people aren’t going to want to watch this. Like, this is too gross,’” Cherry said. “Then once I watched it back and I was like, ‘Farts are kind of funny, I guess.’”
Another fun grace note in the sequence is the reveal that Faye’s full name is Faye Valentine on her passport. Cherry revealed that this is more than just an Easter egg that winks at the heroine of groundbreaking anime series Cowboy Bebop.
“So actually, fun fact: my character Faye is inspired by the Cowboy Bebop character of Faye Valentine,” Cherry said. “My character is loosely inspired by her, so that is why my character’s full legal name is Faye Valentine in the show.”
Here’s hoping this means that Faye not only survives Euphoria Season 3, but winds up a space cowboy bounty hunting across the Milky Way.
