'Euphoria' Really Has It Out For Cassie

There was a moment during Sunday’s episode of Euphoria that I keep thinking about. Cassie (Sydney Sweeney) and Nate (Jacob Elordi) have returned to their McMansion after their disastrous wedding. Naz (Jack Topalian) awaits them with his henchmen, looking to punish Nate for the thousands he owes in debt. Nate gets the absolute hell beaten out of him and when Cassie tries to stop them, she’s thrown to the marble floor. Nate’s toe is snipped off, a gruesome act to be sure, but the image that sticks with me is of Cassie. She’s crumpled on the floor, blood streaking down, her breasts falling out of her dress, tears spilling out. “This was supposed to be the best day of my life,” she sobs. The camera, without a shred of sympathy in its framing, holds up Cassie as this beautiful woman, battered and bereft, for the viewers’ enjoyment. It’s a distillation of a nasty undercurrent that’s grown stronger this season: that Cassie must be broken and demeaned.

There’s always been a leering quality to how Euphoria regards Cassie. Her meltdowns have long been treated as set-pieces for the show, like her histrionics are a tradition every season must indulge in. While not consistently interested in her emotions or humanity, Euphoria at least occasionally lent Cassie some interiority. The sequence of all the various labors she undertakes at 4am every morning just to catch Nate’s eye comes to mind. That sequence is presented like a vice tightening around Cassie until she bursts. It was brutal, but it invited viewers to feel empathy for her as someone trapped by society’s double standards and rigid gender roles. That empathy has evaporated this season, and without it, all I get is pronounced misogyny. Now, the sequences of her present the same issues as a joke.

Shots of Cassie dressed as a dog or a baby with a pacifier as she plies her trade on OnlyFans could have engaged with interesting questions about sex work or maybe interrogated what forces in Cassie’s life led her to this, but instead characters on the show scoff at her. Characters like Nate, or their housekeeper, Juana (Minerva Garcia), invite the viewer to look down at Cassie for her choices. Through this lens, Cassie posting on OnlyFans is inherently degrading. What’s more, there’s this visceral suggestion that Cassie not only deserves her degradation, but that we as viewers should draw satisfaction from seeing someone so conventionally beautiful be thoroughly humiliated.

The treatment of Cassie as a character has implications for other characters on the show. The conversation Cassie has with Maddy (Alexa Demie) about how best to navigate her fledgling OnlyFans career posits a whopper of a false dichotomy between the two women. Maddy points out that Cassie seems to be throwing disparate ideas on “the platform” that don’t cohere, and suggests she just be herself. With a terrifyingly vacant gaze, Cassie asks, “Who am I?” Euphoria glances at the notion that Cassie has no identity outside of performing for male attention, but with the character so stripped of interiority, it reads like the show wants to mock her for being an incomplete character.

Maddy’s reaction is chilling. Something sinister glitters in her eyes, like she’s a Svengali who’s found a new victim. Through the show’s misogynistic lens, these women are either empty vessels meant to perform sexuality for men or are the manipulators who make money off that performance.

Perhaps showrunner Sam Levinson wrote things this way with the intention to tap into the backlash Sydney Sweeney experienced and is consciously offering her up in effigy. That would still feel pretty icky, but it would at least be an identifiable point of view aside from base misogyny. Levinson’s treatment of female characters has always been dubious at best, but this new level of disdain makes Euphoria feel crueler than ever. Cassie’s arc could have led to something interesting, but instead she’s just a buxom punching bag getting walloped for our amusement.