WARNING: The following contains spoilers for the Euphoria Season 2 finale, “All My Life, My Heart Has Yearned for a Thing I Cannot Name,” now streaming on HBO Max.
While Lexi was thanking Fez for pushing her to put on her provocative and self-proclaiming play, Fez was a little busy with his own life-or-death predicament. Sure, it was fun and games to watch nearly naked men dance around to Bonnie Tyler’s “Holding Out For a Hero,” but Euphoria gets a little too real when all this is happening while the young Ashtray is shot dead in his own home.
Ashtray’s personality and addition to the show has always been a little ridiculous, mostly because of his face tattoos and quick turn to violence at the sight of confrontation. This all changed in the Season 2 premiere, in which Fez’s troubling childhood story abnormally makes the grand kick off for the season. Even though Fez and Ash served great purposes to the first season, they weren’t exactly worthy of starting off the new season. By the end of Season 2, it all comes full circle as Fez and Ash’s story proves to be the only coherent plot that actually has any type of valuable arc to Euphoria‘s overall meaning.
When compared to the other schemes being developed in the teenage world of Euphoria, Fez and Ash actually have high stakes that have the potential to end lives. The only other person who stands in their realm is Rue, who has involved herself multiple times with Fez and other drug dealers that put her at risk. Fez and Ash were constantly living on the edge by being drug dealers and committing murder, and even if fans were worried for their fates, their actions put them to where they are now.
One of Fez’s companions within his inner circle, Custer, plays double agent with the police towards the end of the second season and hopes to expose Fez and Ash’s involvement in killing Mouse for his own benefit. Ash, who can sense his disloyalty from a mile away, unpremeditatedly kills Custer. The police come to arrest Fez and Ash, but Ash has different ideas. As a young kid who was born into a violent world of drug dealing, his first instinct is to get in a shootout with the police, not even questioning the consequences of such. Fez thinks more rationally in this situation, taking the heat for Ash’s mistakes, but Ash would rather die than give up his brother.
After a lengthy gunfight, Ash is cornered in the bathroom in a heartbreaking scene. Before, it was easy to forget that Ash was just a kid — even with Fez repeatedly yelling this to the police — but seeing the rifle laser pointed at his forehead reminds both the audience and Ash that he was too young for the life he lived. The death scene is never shown and the camera stays with Fez, who has to watch his little brother drop to the floor in a disappointing, but somehow satisfying scene. It’s not satisfying in the sense that Ash deserved his outcome as a product of his environment, but in that Euphoria finally brings consequences to the table and puts some guts in its own story.
Since its pilot episode, Euphoria has made extreme efforts to remind audiences that the characters being portrayed on screen had rough childhoods that shaped who they are today. Cassie grew up with an absent and manipulative father, Jules was wrongfully admitted to a mental hospital because of her desire to transition and Rue’s dad’s death led her to a drug addiction. But somehow along the way, these glimpses into their childhoods didn’t strike as hard as they should have, and maybe it’s because the actors didn’t look as young.
Putting Zendaya in a couple of braids didn’t exactly make her look 12 years old, but Ashtray being portrayed by a 15-year-old who probably does school work on his break makes it even more harrowing. The results of his death scene all while his grandmother sleeps in the other room and an injured Fez being handcuffed are the only segue that Season 2 has to transition into Season 3. Cassie and Maddy’s feud is petty and easily predictable on where it’ll land in the next season, but how will Fez change because of what he saw? What will be the reactions to a drug-dealing child shot dead by the police? Before, it was all glitter and screams, but Euphoria just hit its climactic mark with the death of Ashtray.
To see how Ash’s story ends, watch the Euphoria Season 2 finale on HBO Max.
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