WARNING: The following contains spoilers for Euphoria's Second Special Episode, "F*** Anyone Who's Not a Sea Blob," now available on HBO Max.
For Euphoria's second special episode, director Sam Levinson puts the viewer inside the transcendent and enigmatic world of Jules (Hunter Schafer). And by using the series' signature theatrical style, the audience is swept up in Jules' whirlwind transformation.
HBO's hit series somehow manages to paint the angst of becoming an adult in a broken world with neon-lit opulence, and still be gut-wrenchingly raw. Jules is no exception, as Levinson finally pulls back the curtain on her inner world in a stylized episode devoted to her story. The special episode follows the same kind of stage play format as the first special episode, where Jules has a lengthy conversation with her new therapist about the past few months.
However, unlike Rue (Zendaya), who is bound to the doldrums of reality, Jules has always been completely unmoored and beckoned by constant change. Levinson uses an array of suffused flashbacks, dazzling dream sequences and nightmares to illustrate Jules' desire to chase the next big feeling. The episode starts out with the camera point blank confronting Jules as she opens up about wanting to go off some of her hormones; Jules squirms under its trapping gaze, and the viewer can feel her anxiety.
It's a visual experience, as the camera pulls back and relaxes with Jules easing into the conversation. The camera breaks free from the room to show us a memory of Jules on the beach. The sea, being a metaphor for unceasing motion and change, perfectly symbolizes Jules' need to be in constant flux. The beach at sunset takes on the glowing violet and orange hues of a dream, depicting the sometimes quixotic realm of youth.
When Jules begins to talk about Tyler, who is really Nate (Jacob Elordi), the style shifts to something more urgent and menacing. In her flashbacks, the editing ramps up its speed and Jules' room darkens around the sterile glow of her smartphone. Sexting with Tyler becomes an intoxicating experience that is overflowing with passion and fear, now that Jules knows his true identity. The audience is taken along for the ride, as Levinson heightens the sequence to masterfully dizzying proportions. The intense emotions Jules feels for Tyler and Rue are presented like a twisted carnival funhouse, which works brilliantly since the chaos of youth often feels exhilarating and frightening.
Forgoing unvarnished flashbacks, Jules' mental landscape is shown with vivid colors and hyped editing that encapsulates the grandeur and terror of youth. Every action is a performance, especially since Jules feels that femininity is a ritual for the male world. She has always been portrayed with pixie-like fantasy, from Rue's sparkling vision of her in the first season and effulgent epiphanies in night clubs. Jules' metamorphosis from a manic pixie dream girl to an emotionally-raw character is center stage in the special episode.
Levinson now stylizes the darker side of Jules' journey, visually highlighting the worries she has over Rue's addiction through the frenetic nightmare sequence. Jules runs through the shadowy corridors of her mind haunted by a ghostly Rue and a devilish Nate. She is tormented by her conflicting feelings for both of them, and her inability to linger on more thing for too long. What starts out as an ethereal fantasy, becomes a lurid nightmare, as Jules is more lost than ever.
To fit with the theatrics of the show's tone, Jules' episode had to be an operatic departure from the banal. Her desires and fears are on polar opposite sides of the spectrum, and so the chimerical approach to her thoughts and feelings epitomizes that duality. With Season 2 on the horizon, the audience now has a complete picture of Jules' sweeping passions and her horrifying tormentors that have been stirring an unseen storm within her the past few months. Jules may not be addicted to drugs in the physical sense, but her need to escape is as intoxicating as any narcotic.
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