We’re only three episodes into the new season of Euphoria, so it is with much surprise that I report the show has already reached what seemed to be the season’s culminating event: Cassie’s (Sydney Sweeney) wedding to Nate (Jacob Elordi). And that’s just the start (well, end) of the big moments on HBO‘s Euphoria Season 3 Episode 3 “The Ballad of Paladin.”
Before we get to the recap, though, a precap. Or rather, what brought us here. Cassie and Nate have been clashing over flowers for the wedding, leading to the former joining OnlyFans and the latter getting way in over his head setting up investors to pay back the loan sharks funding his retirement community. Not really approving of any of this? Nate’s dad Cal Jacobs (the late Eric Dane), who is out of prison and getting wasted constantly.
Meanwhile, Maddy (Alexa Demie) and Cassie have seemingly reconnected and settled their beef over Cassie sleeping with Nate. For Cassie, this is a godsend, as she thinks Maddy can manage her OnlyFans and social presence. For Maddy? Well, unclear, though it sure seems like going into this week’s hour that she’s setting Cassie up for some serious revenge.
Not present is last week’s hour was Cassie’s sister, Lexi (Maude Apatow), who is working for a “nighttime soap” called LA Nights, and gaining favor with the show’s producer, Patty Lance, played by Sharon Stone. That show also stars a dude named Dylan Reid (Homer Gere), who is managed by Maddy’s management firm and is close with Maddy.
Got it so far? It’s about to get way more complicated, because we’ve got to talk about Rue (Zendaya) and Jules (Hunter Schafer). Rue has started working for a strip club magnate named Alamo Brown (Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje), who puts her in place at a club called the Silver Slipper. She does this to escape Laurie (Martha Kelly), a drug dealer who she owes millions of dollars, which does not make Laurie happy. Rue is happy — for a time — because she’s banging stripper Angel (Priscilla Delgado), though Angel is spiraling after the disappearance of her friend.
Eventually, Rue reveals that her friend died of a fentanyl overdose, and Angel is taken to an extremely sketchy rehab. With Angel out of the way, Rue travels to visit Jules… The two had drifted apart while Jules was at art school, and Jules is reportedly with a sugar daddy. But that doesn’t stop the two from taking a bath together as the episode ends. Probably one of those fun bubble baths that are totally innocent, but I guess we’ll see!
And that’s what you missed on Euphoria! Okay, precap done, let’s get to the recap. And spoilers for Euphoria Season 3, Episode 3, “The Ballad of Paladin” past this point.
Oh, Sugar, Sugar
Things kick off with Jules painting a nude, almost in the nude. Rue, once again, is narrating about wealth, something that is very strongly the theme of this season. She’s comparing the gold rush to cryptocurrency, and while Jule makes art, she’s also exploring the idea of working as a high-end sex worker as the urging of her friend Vivian (Cailyn Rice). What the crypto had to do with it? Who is to say! This show is chock full of ideas, isn’t it? It sure is.
We see that her first date was with a “48-year-old lawyer named Rick,” though this does seem like a natural extension of where we first found her in season one, soliciting men like Cal for sex. Rick pays Jules money, and wants to “lick her tights and jerk off.”
We meet other guys she “worked” for, including a Hollywood producer… Until she meets Ellis (Sam Trammel), a plastic surgeon. He’s fascinated by her body, her “natural” breasts, her flawless pores. But, in his opinion, “anything can be improved.” He has a family, but isn’t uncomfortable. “I slice people open for a living, there’s very little that makes me uncomfortable.” Jules pushes it, asking if “you fuck trannies,” and Ellis admits his wife knows he has “certain behaviors” and “proclivities.”
They talk about whether Jules’s parents know she sells herself… And he seemingly almost immediately convinces her to leave art school, which she tells her parents about during a phone conversation. Not only is Jules making “more money than she ever imagined,” but Ellis becomes her only client. In a not-so-subtle sequence, we see Ellis wrapping the nearly nude Jules in saran wrap… She began as an artist, and now depending on how you look at it, she’s the art herself. Or perhaps just a package.
“I just might keep you forever,” Ellis tells Jules, completely stuck in saran wrap, hands over her head. He kisses her, and examines her. Gotta say: don’t think this is a healthy relationship. My two cents!
Arms For The Poor
Back to the Silver Slipper, we see one of the strippers dancing with a neck brace, which is very sexy. And the clients seem to agree, throwing money at her, with one examining a snake in a glass enclosure; another deadly animal trapped and caged.
But the real deal is what’s happening behind the scenes: Rue is now an arms dealer, working with Alamo’s second-in-command, Bishop (Darrell Britt-Gibson). In case you couldn’t pick it up, now Rue is the one selling things, providing a service — in this case, weapons that kill people, though she explains that the guns are going to Mexico.
Rue, getting a little big for her britches, tells Alamo she wants to go “legit,” something he takes exception with. She thinks “legit” means “legal,” but Alamo breaks down what is legal… Lotto, for example, which was “once illegal, is now legit.” Rue is laughing, joking, and seems like she’s on top of the world. Alamo, licking a knife while he eats, and Bishop, stoically concerned, don’t seem to agree. Alamo thinks that the only thing that matters is power, and the way you get power is money.
“So what the fuck are you complaining about, little miss legit,” Alamo says, just as a pig comes in and pees all over the floor. Alamo pulls out a golden gun, blasts the pig in the head, spraying a stripper with blood.
Guess who the pig is from? Laurie, though to be fair, Alamo sent her a pig, first. And to take revenge, Rue suggests the title of this episode: kill Paladin, Laurie’s parrot.
Somebody’s Getting Married
Did you complain about fast travel on Game of Thrones? Well, next thing we know, Rue is with Jules, which definitely makes me question whether this is all happening in order, or if there’s some unreliable narration going on. Either way, Jules is invited to Cassie and Nate’s wedding, and Rue gives her some money for a dress. “I’m your sugar daddy now,” Rue says.
At the wedding, Nate is freaking out, Cassie is panicked because Nate is missing, and Jules and Cal lock eyes. “I think she’s an old friend of Nate’s,” Cal lies, neglecting to tell his wife that he fucked Jules when she was underage. Oopsie-doodle!
The wedding itself, though ostentatious to the umpteen degree (I guess Cassie did need that extra $50k for flowers), goes off without a hitch. Other than Maddy and Jules’s classic Euphoria-style outfits, this might be the most normal thing the show has ever done. Even Suze Howard’s (Alanna Ubach) aisle-walk speech to Cassie, where she lays out how terrifyingly terrible her own marriage was, is like something out of Meet the Parents, not Sam Levinson’s twisted HBO show.
Perhaps that’s the point. While Rue’s storyline has been a Western tragedy, Nate and Cassie’s thus far has played like a rom-com. And hey, when they do kiss, and everyone cheers, for a brief moment everything is okay… Though Cassie and Nate do exit on opposite sides of the camera. So perhaps Suze is right, and this is their final happy moment together.
Wedding Blues
At this point, several things start happening at the same time. Bishop sends Rue on a run to Laurie’s, though Laurie is prepping for her arrival.
Meanwhile, back at the wedding, a massive ice sculpture of Nate and Cassie is melting, Cal gets wasted, and surprise, BB (Sophia Rose Wilson) shows up, very pregnant. Later, Cal gives a rambling, one-note speech. “You’re a winner,” Cal says. “Look at your wife. Who in this room can say they married better than him?”
Jules, solo, wanders to the bar, and sees Cal there. Cal does, indeed, remember Jules, and apologizes for making a tape of them. After all, he just wanted to jerk off to it, not distribute it. He also reveals that the tape of Jules never made it to the police, he was taken in for having sex with a guy who was just short of 18. Jules realizes Nate destroyed the tape, or held it back.
While that’s going on, in one of the stranger plotlines of the season, Rue calls Fez (Angus Cloud) in jail. “Bro, I fucking miss you, bro!” Rue yells when she gets him on the phone. Of course, Fez doesn’t say anything because Cloud passed away shockingly and suddenly in real life. And making matters worse, Rue repeats Fez’s side of the conversation where he explains that he’s going to escape from jail using parkour. Which seems unlikely, since again, Cloud is dead, so one wonders where they’re going with this.
Cal tells Jules that high school was the best years of their lives, which is at least in part why he has sex with young kids, I guess? Jules disagrees, and walks away.
Then it’s back to speeches, and while Nate and Cassie get toasted, Maddy stares at them. Is she sad? Happy? Settled? Doesn’t matter, because Nate’s loan shark, Nassim (Jack Topalian), shows up. “Don’t you think it’s foolish to throw such a lavish party, when you also owe people money?” Nassim says. Worse than that, Nate and Cassie’s friends overhear and panic because they gave Nate “a lot of fucking money.”
Meanwhile, Nassim doesn’t hold back, pointing out all the expensive dishes they have at the wedding. Nassim was Nate’s friend (?) but, “Now, I’m gonna become his worst fucking nightmare.”
Lexi, concerned, asks if Cassie is okay.
“Of course,” Cassie says. “It’s my wedding day.” She continues to tell the hapless Lexi that it’s a stupid question, so she quits asking.
Cassie and Nate put on a show — literally — taking their first dance, as Nate tells her to smile and not worry about it, because everything is fine. Nate explains they might need to “downsize,” and continuing the possession theme, during the dance, Nate fake-lassos her and draws her back. Cassie can barely hold it together, though. Nate, it turns out is the better performer, as she is on the brink of sobbing the entire time.
Also displeased? Maddy? Who doesn’t seem mad so much as sad, and leaves the wedding. Later, we see her going home to her house in a rundown neighborhood… Cassie, she perhaps thinks, got everything, and she has nothing. Little does Maddy know how wrong she is.
Get Low
The wedding’s James Brown impersonator leads everyone in an uncensored dance to “Get Low,” which is objectively hilarious, while Nate and Cassie run damage control on their “friends.” Nate tells Freddie that everything is fine, but the wife seems less convinced, digging into Cassie for her OnlyFans, and the fact that they invested their children’s college funds into Nate’s little community plan. It’s not much a storyline, but there you go.
Far more eye-opening, Nate goes to talk to Jules, who brings him up to speed on where Rue and Maddy are. Jules explains that Maddy got emotional, with Nate saying, “You love who you love,” pointedly looking directly at Jules. Unlike with Cal, she doesn’t immediately walk away. Are we not quite done with the “Nate is in love with Jules” storyline yet? Or is this just a fond look backwards?
Bishop Takes Queen
Arriving at Laurie’s, Rue sees Bishop, and they head to meet with the former high school teacher turned drug dealer. Wayne (Toby Valentine) is one step ahead, pulling a gun on Bishop, who immediately disarms, no questions asked.
Bishop explains to Laurie that Alamo wants to explore other sellers, with Laurie quipping, “I don’t care if he buys from J. Edgar Hoover.” Laurie isn’t hurting for customers, but Alamo prefers Laurie’s prices. The catch? They want to test everything.
Wayne makes a big show of making out with Faye (Chloe Cherry), who gets called “the local mattress.” And Laurie wants Rue back, but she’s happier working for Alamo. “That hurts my feelings,” Laurie says, telling that, “the grass is always greener near the septic tank.”
Briefly, at the wedding, we find out that Lexi is still a virgin. “It’s better than herpes,” she says, while across the room Cassie freaks out about Nate lying and shoots him in the head with a champagne cork.
“Corks just pop off,” a friend tells him, as we focus on Nate, a cork ready to pop if there ever was one. Still, they “happily” exit the wedding, and sit silently in their stretch hummer limo. Nate explains he’s going to get them out of this mess, because Cassie is by his side, and he loves her. “Every day you make me want to be a better man,” he says, throwing trite statements out at her. But hey, it works. She seems to come around to him, and he explains that when they get home, he’s going to carry her across the threshold and make love to her.
This is what Cassie wants to hear, but it’s all lies, really… Nate can’t fix anything, and he’ll never be a better man.
Back at Laurie’s, Bishop asks Laurie is she named her bird after Richard Boone, one of the men who wrote the song “The Ballad of Paladin” from which this episode takes its name. Laurie is surprised, “I didn’t know Blacks liked Westerns,” to which Bishop answers, “I’m a motherfucking cowboy.”
While it seems like Bishop is going to pull out a gun… He does not. He pulls out money, gets his gun back, and leaves. This continues to be the most civil war ever?
The Honeymoon Period
Nate’s plans don’t go as, well, planned. The loan sharks are waiting for them at home, and beat up Nate, throwing Cassie to the ground too, the blood on her nose and possibly broken tooth contrasting with her white wedding dress. “I’m bleeeeeding,” Cassie cries while Nate gets the shit kicked out of him behind her.
The whole thing is played for comedy, with Cassie crying about her makeup getting ruined, and a blood-soaked Nate getting a toe cut off while Cassie watches. “Unfortunately, the honeymoon is over,” Nassim says as he chops the toe off. Cassie, stunned, sits on the floor, gasping.
Things begin happening quickly again. Jules returns from the wedding to her apartment — Ellis’s really — and he’s there, waiting for her. Rue gets pulled over by the cops… Who turn out to be the DEA. And Paladin (the bird) dies, clearly from water that Bishop poisoned when he was looking at the cage. Double yuh-oh!
In case it wasn’t abundantly clear, this episode was all about animals in and out of cages. Who holds the keys to said cages? And when are the cages literal, when are they figurative, and perhaps — in the case of Maddy — self-imposed. As is, we’ll have to see what this shuffling around does. Will Rue become a triple-agent? Will Nate lose more toes? And perhaps more importantly, will Lexi continue to self-incriminate herself in being the saddest loser of all time? Stay tuned.
Euphoria Season 3 Premiere Dates And Episode Guide:
New episodes of Euphoria premiere Sundays on HBO and HBO Max at 9 p.m. ET. Here’s what we expect from the full list of episodes in Euphoria Season 3 with premiere dates.
- Sunday, April 12, 2026: Euphoria, Season 3, Episode 1 – “Ándale”
- Sunday, April 19, 2026: Euphoria, Season 3, Episode 2 – “America My Dream”
- Sunday, April 26, 2026: Euphoria, Season 3, Episode 3 – “The Ballad of Paladin”
- Sunday, May 3, 2026: Euphoria, Season 3, Episode 4 – “Kitty Likes to Dance”
- Sunday, May 10, 2026: Euphoria, Season 3, Episode 5 – “This Little Piggy”
- Sunday, May 17, 2026: Euphoria, Season 3, Episode 6 – “Stand Still and See”
- Sunday, May 24, 2026: Euphoria, Season 3, Episode 7 – “Rain or Shine”
- Sunday, May 31, 2026: Euphoria, Season 3, Episode 8 – “In God We Trust” *Season Finale*
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