The final season of “Euphoria” ended with two main characters dead, but there is perhaps no other character who was treated as dirty as Jules Vaughn (Hunter Schafer).
Since the premiere of Season 3 in early April, Jules has felt like an afterthought. Out of the original six characters who remain, she’s given the least to do, sauntering into scenes like a mirage before ultimately disappearing like a ghost. While characters like Kat Hernandez (Barbie Ferreira) and Chris McKay (Algee Smith) have been written out of the show entirely, Jules suffers perhaps an even worse fate. Instead of some wild exposition being delivered about her disappearance, she is relegated to the shadows of the narrative, having no impact on its present or future, while subsequently being destroyed by the show’s writer and its fandom alike.
It’s a far cry from how audiences met Jules, a transgender woman who quickly becomes the talk of the town after transferring to East Highland High at the beginning of the series. From there, both drug addict Rue and bad boy Nate Jacobs (Jacob Elordi) become fascinated by her, and she becomes an integral character for how Seasons 1 and 2 unfold. With Jules’ help, “Euphoria” broke the mold of what television portrayals of young people could look like, and its showcasing of Jules and her relationship with Rue Bennett (Zendaya) was a groundbreaking step in queer representation in television.
In its first season, the series felt like creator and writer Sam Levinson sparked a fire that slowly ignited under the seats of Hollywood executives, finally ushering in a new era of transgender representation that once seemed unprecedented. Jules wasn’t just written to be the object of Rue and Nate’s affections, but she was instead a fleshed-out character who was flawed in her own right. She toed the line between being selfish yet kind, and was never afraid to stand up for herself. Yet as the series has unfolded, Jules has slowly become an uncanny imitation of the girl we met years ago.
In Season 3, when Jules appears onscreen, her lines feel stilted. Vapid phrases fall out of her mouth, and insults toward Rue lack any bite, almost as if they’re so unlike her character that they have a hard time coming out of Schafer’s mouth. When Jules and Rue are eating takeout together in her apartment, they argue about their relationship being in lingo, before Jules proposes that Rue is still infatuated with her. “Push me on the bed, kiss me all over,” she seductively persuades Rue. “You want more? Take it.”
Jules and Rue have had a complicated relationship throughout the entire series, in which they go from acquaintances to lovers to exes. Yet, their relationship has never been one that felt tumultuous enough that either of them would cause intentional physical or mental distress to each other.
But because this is a show that has transformed from a coming-of-age drama into a neo-western thriller, “Euphoria” takes Jules and Rue’s relationship to new lows, where, during a spat, Jules smacks Rue across the face, knocking her off of a stool in Jules’ apartment. It’s here that Levinson makes it clear that the Jules of the past no longer exists. What is left is a character who feels so unlike her original conception that she appears like a doppelgänger of herself.
Unlike her counterparts, Jules spends this season trapped in a gilded cage, confined to a sterilized apartment where she acts as a live-in sugar baby, peering out of its glass windows like a domesticated bird. By trapping her in these four walls for the better part of the season, Levinson dooms Jules to a life mirroring that of many trans women in film and television of the media’s past. It is statistically proven that trans women engage in sex work at higher rates than cis women, but Jules exists in a show that was once adamant on breaking down the barriers of what trans womanhood could look like. Plus, this is a show that has progressed from a high school drama into a high-stakes thriller about drug trafficking and money laundering. You’re telling me that Jules of all characters couldn’t get a nuanced storyline?
In this final season of “Euphoria,” Levinson often asks his audience to suspend their disbelief. Yet when the series’ only trans character is concerned, her storyline is grounded in a harsh reality that she doesn’t deserve. Instead of having a direct impact on the plot, we watch as Jules’ sugar daddy encases her in plastic wrap, imprisoning her behind a see-through haze, and forcing her to become nothing more than an object. Her existence has been diminished to what her physical appearance can offer to the men around her, yet there’s no substance here that warrants any kind of commentary on the realities of the modern world.
Jules’ presence is one that has slowly become warped not by her own motives or desires, but one dictated by those around her. Since “F**k Anyone Who’s Not a Sea Blob,” a stunning special episode which Schafer helped write between Season 1 and Season 2, Jules has been stripped of her interiority, leaving a shell of one of modern television’s most complex women.
Jules was once a character that didn’t simply just exist: She was one whose presence altered the foundation of “Euphoria.” Instead of making a mark on the final season’s narrative and its respective cultural impact, her reputation as a series-defining character has been squandered into a trope-ified representation of trans existence.
It is a hapless transformation that defies who she once was, and what she once meant to the landscape of modern television.
“Euphoria” is streaming on HBO Max.
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