Euphoria - S3 E7 “Rain or Shine” [TV Review]

How do you write a finale when you’ve just killed your most dangerous character with one episode left?

That’s the question “Rain or Shine” leaves you sitting with. Nate Jacobs, (three seasons of manipulation, violence, and deeply damaged energy), goes out in the messiest, most “Euphorian” (I made that up lol) way possible. Jacob Elordi spent years making Nate the character you couldn’t look away from even when you wanted to. Now he’s out, and the show has to figure out what it is without him. One week out from the finale. No pressure of course.

The episode earns its place as the best of Season 3 by doing something the show keeps forgetting to do.. putting the right people in a room and getting out of the way. Colman Domingo has been criminally underused this season, and “Rain or Shine” finally corrects that. He is one of our favorite characters. Ali’s backstory is rough: crack, a motel room, a family he wrecked before he found his footing. No softening, no redemption filler. Just the ledger of what addiction cost him. So when Rue sits across from him later.. trying to explain that she’s somehow tangled up with Nazis, the DEA, and a burning Joshua tree.. we now understand how scene has real weight behind it. Two people who’ve both been through it. The show has always been at its best when it trusts those two together, and this episode helps to thread the needle.

The crime plot is pulling more weight than it has all season. Alamo kills Naz, so the chessboard gets cleaner, and Maddy drags Alamo into Cassie’s mess because of Nate’s failures.. which is exactly the kind of chain reaction this show does well…. when it’s focused. The two crime storylines still feel like they were written in separate rooms from Toronto to Los Angeles (IYKYK lol), but they’re converging fast enough that it mostly holds.

The weak spots are familiar at this point. There’s an overdone Sydney Sweeney scene with no purpose except to exist on the internet, and Rue’s post-Joshua-tree confidence is hard to buy. She casually tells Lexi she’s working for Nazis. Lexi tells Maddy. Maddy tells Alamo. (Duh.). Rue still thinks she’s the smartest person in the room. It reads like the plot needed her caught rather than Rue actually being this reckless.

But the finale has real stakes now. Rue is compromised from multiple directions. Ali’s “Book of the Dead” is in play. And with Nate out of the picture, Euphoria has to answer a question it’s been avoiding all season.. what is this show actually about when it’s not hiding behind its most reliable weapon?

We’re about to find out.. Wahala dey.