WARNING: The following contains spoilers for Euphoria Season 2, Episode 7, “The Theater and Its Double,” now streaming on HBO Max.
Forget Rue or Lexi narrating their lives through the sparkling lens of Euphoria; Ethan is the life of the party in the show now. Kat may have considered him boring in their relationship, but he strikes back with fury and talent in “The Theater and Its Double.”
Lexi’s play finally makes its debut at East Highland High School, and while she may be the star of the show, Ethan is the underdog that holds the production together. Playing a multitude of characters, Ethan has a big part in Lexi’s meta play that’s secretly about her friendship group, including Rue, Cassie, Maddy and Kat. Other major characters include her mom and Nate, the latter of whom Ethan takes Lexi’s interpretation of to the next level.
Ethan’s stellar performance proves he’s been undervalued the entire season, and possibly the entire series. Introduced in Season 1 as Kat’s love interest, Ethan has flown under the radar for the majority of the series while Kat attempts to figure out her messy life and sexual interests. As Kat’s story becomes progressively smaller in Season 2 of Euphoria, Ethan is dragged down with her as a plot device to her story. At first, it seems like creator and writer of the series, Sam Levinson, clearly had no interest in continuing Ethan’s narrative when Kat manipulatively breaks up with him for being “dull and unsatisfactory” as a sex partner, but it was all in preparation for what was to come.
Ethan’s range comes to light when he first plays Lexi’s mom, imitating her unfiltered, charismatic personality spotlessly. Suze Howard clearly appreciates his interpretation of her character, proudly telling audience members that she is the person he’s portraying and laughing at his exaggerated version of her. He then goes onto play the school photographer, a future classmate who seemingly has failed at life and Lexi’s dad in a heartwarming family scene. But his show-stopping scene that makes him the next Troy Bolton of musicals, is his portrayal as Nate Jacobs in a choreographed sequence to “Holding Out For a Hero.”
Bonnie Tyler’s 1984 single “Holding Out For a Hero” has famously been used in Footloose, Shrek 2 and, more recently, Loki, but those musical moments are pretty tame compared to Euphoria‘s homoerotic lip-sync number to the song. Ethan plays the repressed and hot-tempered Nate in a number for the ages while rubbing up and down his fellow football players in the locker room. Nate watches in anger and looks as though he’s on the verge of violence, swatting away Cassie’s support and leaving the play in a fit of rage.
Nate may not have found the scene artful, but his classmates seem to disagree. As the popular school bully, Nate clearly has no friends to back him, and instead his enemies give props to Lexi and Ethan for putting on a risky take of what really goes on in the locker room. Ethan gets a standing ovation for his performance, putting him on top of the Euphoria food chain as one of the more likable characters of the series with Lexi. Even if some of the muses represented in the play didn’t approve of their dirty laundry being aired to the entire school, they all grow to appreciate the play when Ethan immediately puts on his stellar performance, mocking Nate and the idea of forced masculinity in sports.
It goes without saying that Ethan has one of the most improved character arcs since his introduction in the series because of Lexi’s play. He threw out some incredible talent to everyone’s surprise, but it’s only because Euphoria fans have only ever seen him through the eyes of Kat, who recently became bored by his kindness that wanted to create a healthy relationship. Now that Kat is out of the picture, and Ethan has rebounded in the most unexpected way possible, he’s bound to get the senior superlative for “Most Likely To Be on Broadway.”
To see Ethan come out of his shell, watch Season 2, Episode 7 of Euphoria. The Season 2 finale airs Feb. 27 at 9 p.m. ET on HBO and is available to stream on HBO Max the same day.
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