SPOILER ALERT: This article incorporates spoilers from “The Ballad of Paladin,” Season 3, Episode 3 of “Euphoria,” now streaming on HBO Max.
One of the defining unfastened threads of “Euphoria” has been settled — in shifting and compelling vogue.
The motion of the primary season of “Euphoria” again in 2019 kicks off with against the law. Jules Vaughn, the brand new lady in her highschool, solicits intercourse from older males; Cal Jacobs, a seemingly upstanding member of the neighborhood, commits an act of statutory rape. The act is captured on a tape that haunted the present by its first two seasons — as proof of Cal’s unfaithfulness and of a queer identification he can barely admit to himself, and as a possible catalyst for his fall from grace.
All of this has been compellingly acted, by the present’s run, by Eric Dane and by Hunter Schafer. The latter actor appeared at occasions in Season 2 to recede from view, and her return, this season, has been welcome; the previous appeared like an unlikely addition to this season in any respect. Dane, who died in February, introduced his ALS analysis in 2025.
The season’s third episode, “The Ballad of Paladin,” isn’t Dane’s first look on the season; he’d proven up briefly the week earlier than. But it’s hanging and powerful work from an actor working underneath unimaginable circumstances — and, crucially, the position as written by no means condescends to Dane. Cal, right here, is attending the marriage of a son he loathes and who loathes him; he’s doing so underneath a cloud of disgrace, together with his depredations (though not his liaison with Jules) having been uncovered. “Most of you know me,” he says in his toast. “Some have probably heard about me. That’s the past.” Throughout the collection, and significantly in a knockout showcase episode in Season 2, Cal has lived in a kind of fantasy double life, believing that he can outrun his want if he merely wills it onerous sufficient. Dane imbues his declaration that he’s left silly issues behind with much more evident emotion than his tribute to his son, a painful check-in on a relationship performed by actors dedicated to honesty.
And encountering Jules on the marriage ceremony’s open bar, Cal is untrammeled and free. “How could I forget?” he declares to Jules. “It’s not every day you fuck one of your son’s high school classmates.” (Jules, with some measure of annoyance, reminds Cal that he recorded it, too, for which he gives a feeble apology, earlier than making a lewd declaration about what he’d used the tape for.) It emerges in dialog that Cal was finally arrested for a distinct statutory rape case and is a registered intercourse offender, to which Jules, in a second of mordant humor, declares “So, like, you’re one of those red dots?”
The complete dialog is on this vein. As a low-key oasis within the midst of a high-drama marriage ceremony (with a few of Sydney Sweeney’s most doubtlessly viral appearing of the season thus far), it’s written with clear eyes concerning the individual Cal is, however a refreshing lack of judgment. If something, each Jules and “Euphoria” creator Sam Levinson appear sympathetic to Cal’s lack of ability to grasp himself, and his must always make excuses. “I do wish people didn’t think I was a pedo,” Cal tells Jules, who reminds him that he has a style for the younger. “But legal!” he declares. To his remaining moments on the present, it appears, Cal will exist at a state of take away from no matter it’s that he desires, and in a haze of fading attraction. (He flirts with Jules, and it appears the intention is to not decide her up however merely to train a too-little-used muscle; flirting is what Cal did and does.)
A present taking yearslong gaps between seasons supplies all of the extra alternative to evaluate the passage of time, and, this season, “Euphoria” has made that passage its specific topic: All of the characters, 5 years in present time faraway from the place we final noticed them, are older, although not all of them have grown up. Gratifyingly, Jules has, and it’s an act of generosity of Levinson’s writing and of Dane’s appearing that this dialog exhibits us how. Informed by Cal that top faculty represents the perfect a part of one’s life — a interval of freedom and risk that Cal’s complete psychic life is constructed round chasing — Jules replies, with a smile that doesn’t attain her eyes, “I couldn’t disagree more.” She went by hell at Euphoria High in no small half as a result of Cal’s tape, and, whereas her grownup life as a “sugar baby” intercourse employee may not seem like what Jules followers would have needed for her, she’s a minimum of in command of her sexuality, assured in herself and current in a stunning state of forgiveness. What a distinction to Cal’s greedy for a misplaced youth he misremembers as comfortable; what a spot to have arrived at, as Schafer strides by the body with a confidence the outdated Jules may solely have imagined.
Dane’s work right here is shifting not merely for the frankness with which he confronts Cal’s flaws however for his personal no-drama method to work, which he evinced when I spoke to him some months after he made his analysis public. Then, Dane respectfully declined to debate his well being; noting that he was within the midst of capturing “Euphoria,” Dane mentioned, “I am ready and willing to do just about anything.” His voice, throughout the present’s third season, is tremulous, however his bearing is regular. And his rant about how youth is gorgeous and age is repulsive has behind it each an actual comedian thought and a crystalline sense of a personality who can’t be shaken into altering. Jules’ response to that rant, that age brings “perspective,” falls upon unhearing ears. But the attitude the actual Dane dropped at considered one of “Euphoria”’s most complex characters was among the many present’s secret weapons — and his look made clear simply how sorely he’ll be missed.
