The Twist at the End of the First 'Euphoria' Episode, Explained
Warning: This story contains spoilers for the first episode of HBO's Euphoria.
? HBO's new teen drama Euphoria debuted last Sunday.
? The first episode ended with a twist, revealing that Eric Dane's "DominantDaddy" character is related to Nate.
? Earlier in the episode, Dane's character committed statutory rape when he had sex in a motel room with Jules.
HBO's Euphoria is off to a promising start. After its first episode debuted last Sunday, people have been chatting all week about the show's provocative subject matter, its strong visuals, and its impressive acting. Something else the first episode brought to the table? A game-changing twist.
Let's talk about the twist at the end of Euphoria's first episode.
A key character introduced in the first episode is Nate, the school's big man on campus. From what we've seen, he's a total jerk, and he doesn't respect women all that much. In one scene, he catcalls Jules from his car, causing her to crash her bike; in another, he gives his buddy McKay some seriously toxic advice about having sex with Cassie.
In the episode's big party scene, Nate sees his ex having sex in the pool and spirals into a rage. After smashing a bunch of glass in the kitchen and attracting everybody's attention, he singles out Jules, asking who she is and how she ended up at this party. Eventually, Jules turns the table on the whole thing, slashing her own arm with a knife in an effort to take control of the situation.
Now, Jules had arrived at the party after hooking up with a much-older man she met on a dating app (played by Grey's Anatomy's Eric Dane in a wildly different role). When she meets "DominantDaddy" in his motel room, Jules lies and says she's 22, even though she's only 17. In what was a very difficult scene to watch, Dane's character sticks his hand in Jules' mouth and has rough sex with her, which is statutory rape.
At the end of the episode, after everyone leaves McKay's party and returns home for the night, something jarring is revealed as Nate walks up the stairs of his house. Hanging on the wall is a familiar family photo: It's the same one we saw on the lock screen of DominantDaddy's iPhone in the motel room. So that means...DominantDaddy and Nate are related. DominantDaddy could be Nate's father-or maybe his stepfather? (On IMDb, Danes' character is listed as Cal Jacobs, and "Jacobs" is also Nate's last name.)
The twist is a classic paradigm shift. It means that everything we saw before, and also everything we see in the future, all of a sudden has a whole new context. We can't even imagine what'll happen when Jules and Cal inevitably run into each other and figure out who each other really is.
Rue's voiceover narration put it best: "Remember when I said things got weird? So....yeah."
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