Did Euphoria really just kill off Rue?

May 11, 2026 - 19:00
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Did Euphoria really just kill off Rue?
Zendaya in

Euphoria really wants audiences to think Rue Bennett (Zendaya) is dead.

Season 3, episode 5 ends with a cliffhanger that certainly suggests she's a goner. Once Alamo Brown (Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje) suspects that Rue is a snitch, he sends her on a ride to dig her own grave. She seems quite oblivious to her impending death, even as Alamo's henchmen Bishop (Darrell Britt-Gibson), G (Marshawn Lynch), and Kidd (Asante Blackk) begin burying her up to her neck.

The alarm bells don't fully set in for Rue until the episode's final seconds, when Alamo barrels towards her on horseback, ready to club her head off with a mean polo swing. (Has he taken lessons on how to kill off HBO leads from The Last of Us' golf club-wielding Abby?)

The episode cuts to black before we see what could be Rue's grisly fate, but don't worry: There's no way Euphoria just killed off its Emmy-winning lead.

Why do some think Rue will die on Euphoria?

There are several signs that suggest Rue is really dead.

For one, no footage of her is in the episode 6 trailer. Plus, it forebodingly begins with the sound of a bell tolling as if for a funeral. Notably, Rue's counterpart character in the original Israeli Euphoria miniseries does die, and that show reveals she's been narrating from beyond the grave.

While that could be the case with Rue in Euphoria, as fans have theorized, the Israeli Rue character dies from an overdose, not from a mix-up with a malicious, sex-trafficking cowboy. So, that parallel doesn't quite work here.

Also, that series — also called Euphoria — lasted one season. And the two have diverged greatly, so take any comparisons with several grains of salt.

Here's why Rue isn't dead in Euphoria.

There is incontrovertible proof that Rue survives her Alamo encounter, and it comes from a Season 3 trailer, released on March 30. There, we see a dust-covered Rue making her way back to Laurie's (Martha Kelly) farm, where she tells her, "Alamo tried to kill me, and he's gonna do the same to you."

The murder attempt Rue is referring to must be the one at the end of episode 5. Plus, her nose in the trailer scene is bloody, suggesting something struck it. Something like a polo mallet, perhaps?

The Season 3 trailer also reveals several other Rue scenes that have yet to appear, including a frank conversation with Ali (Colman Domingo) and a sequence in which Rue stares at a burning tree, likely a reference to Moses and the burning bush, in keeping with the season's Biblical allusions.

Simply put, this previously released trailer footage proves that Rue isn't dead yet.

Just how she gets out of this scrape remains to be seen. Maybe it was all an elaborate scare tactic from Alamo, just like him threatening to stab Kidd over a pair of shorter pants earlier in episode 5. Or maybe she just has a superhumanly thick skull. Either way, Rue – and Zendaya — are sticking around for longer.

New episodes of Euphoria Season 3 premiere Sundays at 9 p.m. ET on HBO and HBO Max.