Did Alamo Kill Rue In 'Euphoria' Season 3 Episode 8?

Even before the finale of Euphoria season 3 dropped, everyone on the internet was discussing the fate of Rue Bennett, because most of us expected Rue to hit the grave before the show ended, and unfortunately, that’s exactly what happened. I believe Rue deserved a happy ending more than anyone else in the show. She had been an addict her whole teenage life, but at the end of season 2, she had promised herself that she would overcome her addiction and make her mother, sister, and her friends proud. And for a brief moment, she had been able to get her life back on track. She was working hard, doing odd jobs, driving for Uber, and just trying to make a reasonable living, but then the mistakes she had committed in the past caught up to her and pulled her back into the dark pit, and she spent months clawing her way out. Laurie showed up at Rue’s day job and reminded her that she still owed her money, and to pay it back with interest, she wanted her to work for her and become her drug mule. But even still, Rue controlled her urges and did her best not to relapse, though people around her already knew her weakness, and they didn’t mind using it against her to exact their revenge.

Spoiler Alert

I found it quite interesting that the first time Rue met Alamo Brown, she was carrying Laurie’s drugs. They were cooked up by Wayne, who, because of Faye’s negligence, had accidentally mixed extra fentanyl into the pills, killing one of Alamo’s girls. In Alamo’s world, it’s always an eye for an eye, and going by this logic, he should have killed Rue, but he was impressed by her, so he decided to take Laurie’s drug mule under his wing and give her a job at his club, the Silver Slipper. From Rue’s perspective, it was a blessing in disguise, but what she failed to understand was that Alamo only let her live so he could own her for life. Rue believed that she could escape this “hellhole,” make a clean start again, but the reality is, anyone who steps into the underworld never makes it out alive. It’s biblical. Rue got mixed up with the DEA, and after the robbery at the Silver Slipper, Alamo suspected that Rue was the snitch, but didn’t have any concrete evidence against her. Even Magick tried to warn Alamo against Rue, but being a man of principle, Alamo needed proof before he could question anyone’s loyalty. And the final piece of this puzzle, coincidentally, walked up to him and made him certain of Rue’s true intentions. In the penultimate episode, Maddy accidentally let slip to Alamo that Rue had a fight with one of their close friends because she was talking about crazy stuff like Nazis and the DEA, and that was the moment when Alamo realized that Rue might be working with the government to get him arrested so she could escape his bird cage.

But here’s where things got a bit complicated. If Alamo had been convinced that Rue was a rat, then he could have killed Rue the moment she brought those stolen driver’s licenses back from Wayne’s safe. But for some reason, he didn’t, which makes me believe that either Alamo still had faith in Rue’s loyalty, or he wanted to give her a chance to survive the odds. It’s a cowboy thing for him. Every time Alamo decides to kill someone, he first gambles with their life, letting destiny determine their ultimate fate. Maybe it helped him sleep better at night, believing that it wasn’t he who killed the person, as it had always been God’s will. But even though Alamo thought he was a righteous man, a man of God, in the end, it turned out he was nothing but a fluke, a cheater to be precise. When Ali arrived at Alamo’s club, Alamo asked him to settle scores the old-fashioned way, by “Quick-Draw Duel.” However, Alamo cheated by raising his gun and pulling the trigger on Ali even before the bottle hit the ground, contrary to the rules that were previously agreed upon by both men. 

And in Rue’s case, Alamo did the same thing. He played a dangerous game with Rue’s life by giving her a bottle of painkillers laced with fentanyl (the same drug that killed one of his girls), and leaving her fate in her own hands. Rue had two choices here: she could either take the poison, or she could just throw it away. The thing I am constantly wondering is, why didn’t Rue take the painkillers from a doctor, or from the hospital she went to for her stitches? I mean, she was going to betray this man, so logically, she shouldn’t have trusted anything he gave to her, right? But this is where the devil tricked her. When she arrived at the club after the heist, Alamo popped one pill (not laced with fentanyl) in front of her to convince Rue that they were perfectly safe. He even served her a pill with Coke to numb her pain, but we all know how addictive these opioids are. I guess, if Rue hadn’t taken that Percocet inside the club, then she might have never touched that bottle, but because Alamo served her the drugs and made her relapse (in a way), Rue couldn’t stop herself from popping another pill from the bottle, unaware of the fact that it would kill her. And I think this is what Ali meant when he told the members of his support group that you can empathize with an addict, but not with a dealer, because they always know what they are selling. It is these drug dealers who forget the difference between right and wrong and poison kids for their greed, and in the end, Alamo turned out to be one of those greedy men. He was never a man of God, just an evil being dressed as a cowboy, living under the false impression that he was doing the right thing.