Jules’ ‘Euphoria’ Special Episode is Unlike Anything Shown on Primetime TV Before
“Part Two: Jules” sheds light on issues and conversations few have ever tackled on the small screen.
“Part Two: Jules,” the second installment of Euphoria’s two-part special event, lays bare important threads connecting the two parts together. Rue (Zendaya) and Jules (Hunter Schafer) are in two completely different places in their lives and their relationship with each other.
Special episode “Part One: Rue” showed us that Rue, though deeply in love with Jules, knows there is a co-dependency between them. After the episode comes to an end, we’re left wondering whether Rue will pursue love or overcoming her addiction. However, Jules’ episode works more to fill the gaps that the previous season left open. Many Euphoria fans viewed Jules as the villain who was toying with Rue’s emotions, but this episode gave us insight into what Jules was truly feeling.
During the first season of Euphoria, we see the story of Rue and Jules through Rue’s perspective. Rue’s romanticization of Jules paints her as this fantastical, larger-than-life character while the serious issues she’s battling are hidden because she hides them from Rue. Anything that Rue doesn’t know, the audience doesn’t know. Rue’s own emotions influence the audience’s perceptions, which is why Jules comes off as cold and flighty. We see the same with other characters such as Maddy (Alexa Demie) and Cassie (Sydney Sweeney) when Rue narrates their respective childhoods.
However, Jules’ episode is free from Rue’s framing. It is completely raw and rooted in Jules’ perspective, without any narration. Many fans may find this episode to be Jules’ redemption from the way she was previously portrayed. Chronologically, the episode happens after Jules leaves Rue at the train station and takes place in the office of Dr. Mandy Nichols (Lauren Weedman), Jules’ therapist. The episode uses the therapy session as the grounding device, while we see Jules’ memories through flashbacks. We find out things that Rue doesn’t know, the two most important being: Jules is definitely in love with Rue, and Jules’ mother is battling drug addiction. These revelations completely peel back the lens that Jules’ character has been viewed through for the past eight episodes.
We find out that Jules’ love for Rue caught her by surprise. As a trans woman, her relationship to femininity is complex. During Jules’ episode, we find out that she feels that she has had to play into men’s desires through the way she acts and dresses. She feels as if her femininity has been confirmed through men’s perception of the “ideal woman.” However, through her relationship with Rue, Jules realizes that she doesn’t care about what men want anymore. She tells her therapist, “No girl had ever looked at me the way Rue did. I feel like Rue was the first girl that didn’t just look at me. Like, she actually saw me… the me that’s underneath a million layers of not me.”
I’ve heard trans lesbians talk about this subject extensively (the idea that femininity is attached to heterosexuality and the desirability one can elicit from men). Although I am not a trans woman, I am a lesbian, and this conversation is very familiar to me. For queer women — particularly women of color and/or non-cis women — our femininity is constantly undermined. What it means to be feminine is dictated by your relation to men and, for many of us, men do not play a role in how we live and express ourselves.
In Euphoria’s special episode, Jules brings this discussion to the national stage, one that has usually only been held between queer women and non-men. Schafer’s performance was vulnerable and unwavering. Jules’ conversation with her therapist reveals how loving outside of the confines of heteronormativity can cause one to redefine society’s confines for themselves, including the way one expresses gender.
Jules also admits that she’s been wanting to stop her hormone replacement therapy (HRT), a process some trans people chose to participate in to change certain parts of their bodies. Jules specifically mentions wanting to stop her blockers (which prevent her voice from dropping), opening up another discussion trans people have been having within the community.
Many trans people have expressed that they do not feel the need to medically “transition.” People outside the trans community have been quick to recognize people who medically transition as more “valid” because they fit into their preconceived notions of gender. Transitioning is a complex, expensive, and personal process that some may choose to undergo while some may not. Jules’ consideration of stopping HRT is another example of how she is redefining her gender expression outside of the male gaze. The way she looks — or sounds, in this instance — is not what makes her trans and a woman. Having this inter-community conversation expressed on HBO’s platform, and on such a widely popular show, is powerful because it challenges concepts based in acceptability. Jules will always be a woman, as long as that is what she wants to be, regardless of her decision to stop HRT.
With all this, Jules reveals that it’s her love for Rue that made this realization possible for her. Jules honestly recounts how she always felt judged by other women — particularly cis women — and the way they would size her up on first encounters. With Rue, that judgment never happened; she felt a sort of freedom she’d never had before. Women are expected and forced to compete with one another for male attention, but the love that exists between non-men transcends this. Rue and Jules were never in competition with one another; their friendship and later, their romance, wasn’t shaped by competition. Jules specifically notes that Rue looks at her in the way she imagines a mother would, with no judgment: only love.
The second major point of Jules’ conversation with her therapist is the faults of Rue and Jules’ relationship. Jules’ therapist points out that Rue is very similar to Jules’ mother, someone who is also dealing with a drug addiction. The audience learns that, throughout the course of season one, Jules was debating with her father on whether or not she should forgive her mother’s mistakes. Jules was hiding this issue from Rue (hence why the audience hadn’t been aware of it) because she didn’t want Rue to think she saw her in the same way she sees her mother, someone who Jules is reluctant to give another chance.
Jules recalls feeling angry at and overwhelmed by the fact Rue’s sobriety seemed to depend on her. Rue had made this same realization in her own self-titled episode. Rue’s relapse following Jules’ abandonment confirms that Rue’s sobriety is dependent on Jules, bringing up questions of how to deal with codependency and addiction within relationships. We are left wondering, what this means for the future of their relationship in the upcoming season two.
The episode was co-written by Sam Levinson (the show’s creator) and Hunter Schafer. Having Schafer as a co-writer added nuance and authenticity to a conversation that could only be had by trans lesbians. The scenes that she wrote were very clear; there were times it felt like Schafer and Jules were one. Throughout the episode, there are many moments in which I had to remind myself that this is the 21-year-old’s first time acting and writing.
This episode also saw a return of the signature Euphoria cinematography that many felt was missing from the previous episode. I believe that the stillness of Rue’s episode was meant to contrast the dynamism of Jules’ episode, and served to show the different places the two are at. Jules seems to be confronting her emotions in a way that creates movement and change, while Rue seems to be quite static about her emotions, covering them up and convincing herself that she’s fine. There was a beautifully shot scene in which Jules is on a beach and talking about the ways in which the ocean is strong and feminine simultaneously. We see the sun set in the background while Jules walks and plays in the ocean.
Of the two episodes in this special event, “Jules” is my favorite by far. We finally get to see Jules in a way that is unlike anything we have seen before. Gone is Rue’s glamorization and romanticization of her, gone is any commentary that distorts the actual person that is Jules. This is the first time we’re seeing Jules Vaughn, the person, rather than Jules, Rue’s love. If this episode sets the precedent for Jules’ portrayal from now on, the coming seasons are sure to be promising.
