Where Rue, Cassie, Nate End Up in Season 3

After leaving Southern California’s fictional East Highland, Rue was working for a local smoke shop until her former drug kingpin Laurie popped by to remind her of her debts from high school. Rue never paid Laurie the $10,000 she owed her, and that sum has now grown to $43 million-plus, after 46 months at a 20 percent interest rate. “I’ll settle for $100,000, but I bet you don’t have that either,” says Laurie. That massive debt turns Rue into a top drug mule for Laurie, and the premiere shows Rue body packing from Mexico, along with Faye (Chloe Cherry), as she swallows balloons of fentanyl to drive across the border (and then graphically release).

Rue meets with her NA sponsor, Ali Muhammad (Colman Domingo), in the premiere and talks through her recovery and the 12-step program, getting stuck on the faith required from her for Step 3. Ali pushes her to open her mind to believing in a power greater than herself, and finding her faith. Rue also works as an Uber driver, and begins listening to the Bible during her rides. “I’m choosing to believe,” she tells him.

She then receives a massive sign from above when she’s saved from a bullet. After unknowingly bringing fentanyl-laced drugs to the home of new rival kingpin Alamo (Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje), a guest overdoses and dies. Alamo tests her, to see if she set her up with Laurie, by shooting an apple off the top of her head. When Rue realizes the bullet missed her, she laughs with euphoric glee at surviving another day. “Straight tweaker,” sums up Ali’s right-hand man.

Angus Cloud passed away from an accidental overdose in July 2023 after season two, which ended on a cliffhanger for his character, Fezco, when the fan-favorite drug dealer’s house was raided. The SWAT raid tragically caught his brother Ashtray (played by Javon Walton) in the crosshairs, but Levinson had planned to keep Fezco in season three in a large role. Cloud’s tragic death sparked a rewrite, and Levinson kept the character alive in the series, while also nodding to his death in the premiere.

The first episode ended with a girl overdosing from fentanyl-laced drugs that Rue brought to new drug kingpin Alamo’s house party. “I was really angry about fentanyl, the fact that in 2023, the year Angus died, 73,000 Americans died of fentanyl overdoses,” Levinson told THR. “I couldn’t understand what it was about our country that we were allowing so many people to be poisoned.”

After Fezco’s house got violently raided in the season two finale, Rue reveals in the premiere that he went to jail. In a touching scene between Rue and Lexi (Maude Apatow), the latter who sparked a romance with Fezco in season two, Rue reveals that Fezco is now in prison for 30 years. She urges her friend to call him. “He misses you,” says Rue. “Did he say that?” ask Lexi, who has been reluctant to reach out. “Multiple times,” Rue responds.

After Fezco’s house raid, Laurie left East Highland and went into business with her cousin and his son, which is where season three catches up with Rue. “I’m not saying they’re inbred, but I have my suspicions,” says Rue of her boss.

Lexi is now working “seven days a week” in Hollywood on a nighttime soap opera, introducing Sharon Stone to the cast as her boss, an industry legend named Patty Lance who decorates her desk with pictures from events with the likes of Presidents Barack Obama and Donald Trump, and Anderson Cooper. Lexi runs into friend her high school friend Maddie (Alexa Demie) on sets in Los Angeles, with the latter now working adjacently in talent management. Lexi is single and seems to have moved on from her high school crush on Fez — in the season two finale, Fez missed her play because he was being taken away in handcuffs after the SWAT raid. She’s now swooning after one of Maddie’s clients, Dylan Reid (played by Homer Gere), and Rue highlights how different Lexi’s liberal life is from her sister Cassie’s (Sydney Sweeney), who Rue says is living in “a right-wing suburban bubble.”

Not only is this tumultuous high school couple still together, they are headed down the aisle. Now living in a high-end home in the suburbs where Nate (Jacob Elordi) drives a Tesla Cybertruck and has taken over his father’s (Eric Dane) real estate development business, Cassie (Sydney Sweeney) is determined to plan the wedding of her dreams and has big aspirations as to how to help contribute to their in-the-works financials. Cassie’s reintroduction into Euphoria sees her barely dressed as a dog, having her housekeeper film her crawling around on all fours for TikTok content. She then sits Nate down to tell him that she wants to up her content by going on OnlyFans and earning fast cash. “You want to sell your body for floral arrangements?” he asks. “I will if I have to,” she says. Cassie ends up manipulating her fiancé into agreeing under one condition: “You promise me you’re not going to show those and your pretty face at the same time,” he tells her, as she opens her shirt.

Maddie (Alexa Demie) works in talent management, representing influencers and “a few actors,” including the heartthrob of the series “L.A. Nights,” Lexi’s new crush. Rue says that Maddie’s job going to red carpet events seemed more glamorous than it was, as she pulls in hefty checks for her boss after long nights out with clients. “Good money… if you’re Maddie’s boss,” says Rue.

We don’t see Rue’s ex Jules (Hunter Schafer) in the premiere but we’re told by Lexi, whose source is Maddie, that Jules is now a sugar baby. “A hooker,” says Maddie. When Lexi protests that there’s a difference because sugar babies don’t have to have sex, Maddie replies, “That’s like hiring a chef who doesn’t cook.” Viewers last saw Rue and Jules when Rue was walking away from their relationship during Lexi’s play in the season two finale, and Levinson has revealed that in season three, viewers will see Jules in art school “very nervous about having a career as a painter and trying to avoid responsibility at all costs.”

Cal Jacobs (Eric Dane) hasn’t appeared yet, but he’s mentioned in the premiere with son Nate taking over his business. Dane died Feb. 19 of complications from ALS. Before his death, he filmed scenes for season three in his final role, though it hasn’t been announced how much he will appear.

Levinson said Dane called him before they began filming to tell him about his diagnosis, which Dane announced publicly in April 2025. “I just said, ‘Look Eric, I love you and I promise however you show up we’re going to make it work, we’re going to find a way.’ We just tried to create the most comfortable environment and he’s magnificent in this season,” he recently told THR. He added to Extra. “He showed up and I could tell he had a slight slur in his voice and he told me that. I said, ‘Don’t worry. We’ll just put, like, five beer bottles in front of you and you’ve been drinking all night.’ He was like, ‘Perfect, perfect.’ And his character, it was such a gift.”

Dane’s Cal appeared in the season three trailer, teasing a reunion between Nate’s dad and Jules, whom he had an affair with when she was in high school.

The premiere opened with a title card dedication to Dane. The premiere is also a tribute to Cloud and former executive producer Kevin Turen, the latter who died in 2023.

“I wanted to tell a story about the step of surrendering our will and our lives to the care of God as we understand him,” Levinson told THR of season three. “These characters who are now adults are free to choose what kind of life they want to live, but there are consequences that come with those actions. I look at that long period of time [between seasons], with all of its tragedies and everything, as a blessing.”