To be fair to Cassie Howard, if I had a sister who wrote a play about me and performed it in front of the entire school, I would probably want to interrupt the play to scream at her as well. The premise of the final two episodes of Euphoria season two has been exactly that. Beautiful Cassie’s bystander, bookworm sister (Maude Apatow) has created a piece of theatre based on the lives of their peers.
Most of the clique is surprisingly cool with having their dirty laundry aired in this way – except for Cassie (Sydney Sweeney) and her love interest, Nate (Jacob Elordi), who storms out after his stand-in dances to “Holding Out For A Hero” in front of phallically-arranged gym equipment. He dumps Cassie in the hallway, leaving her to walk back to the theatre in her skintight baby-blue skirt, coordinating ruffled scoop-neck crop top, and heels. The dejectedness fades to anger, and Cassie comes back in, clapping for Lexi; she proceeds to climb onstage, berating her sister in front of the rapt audience. As the crowd boos Cassie, she gets quiet again for a second. “Oh, okay. Well, if that makes me a villain, then so fucking be it. I can play the fucking villain.” In her perfect little outfit, she’s totally lost the plot.
Cassie’s eruption is a season in the making. After hooking up with Nate, who is her best friend Maddy’s (Alexa Demie) abusive ex, she becomes obsessed with getting him to like her – so much so that she’ll wake up at 4am to beautify herself, a process which includes hours of ice rolling her face and curling her hair. When she finally gets Nate’s attention, if not affection, she morphs into Maddy lite. Her wavy hair becomes pin straight, her eye make-up dark and vampy, her wardrobe an endless collection of navel-grazing and thigh-skimming two-piece sets – and the clothes are by far the eeriest sign of her demise.
Matching sets and flashy suits are an easy, impactful shorthand for the queen bee. Think of Cher Horowitz in Clueless, Hilary Banks from The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, the titular Heathers, and Courtney in Jawbreaker. They ruled their kingdoms in coordinated outfits, a quick sartorial reminder that they had their life together – or at least they wanted you to think that they did. In season one of Euphoria, Maddy wears everything from a rainbow Louis Vuitton crop top and leggings to that purple bra and cutout flares to a sweet lilac skirt-and-sweater set for school. Costume designer Heidi Bivens told me in 2019, “We definitely decided from the beginning that we wanted her to wear sets, that would be a thing for her.” Even as her life spiralled, her outfits always matched.
Cut to season two. Maddy is kind of, sort of, thinking of getting back together with Nate, unaware that Cassie is losing her mind (and probably the top layer of her skin) over winning his affections. “I think what you see her trying to emulate is what she wishes she was, and so more than a lot of the other characters, I feel like Cassie’s clothes are a costume,” Bivens told Vogue at the start of the season. “She’s still trying to figure out how to present herself to the world, and I think so much of what she does and how she dresses is about wanting to be loved.”
Cassie tries a bunch of different looks, including a floral minidress and giant hair that make her friends think she’s trying out for Oklahoma. Because Cassie’s approach to style is so wrapped up with traditional gender roles (she almost exclusively wears baby blue and pink), it takes her a while to get to what Nate wants. She finally gets a second glance from Nate when she walks into school in Y2K-inspired turquoise flared pants and a matching long-sleeve ruched crop top. She has sculpted edges and is carrying a tiny handbag. Maddy walks up to Cassie wearing the exact same thing in lilac. What Nate wants is Maddy.
Or a Maddy look-alike. This season Maddy mostly ditched her sets in favour of more sophisticated Noughties styling – a little more adventurous and high fashion. Her first outfit of the season is a cutout black dress and gloves; her last is a green unitard with coordinating eyeliner and nails. (She’s grown up but hasn’t totally abandoned her attention to detail.) “She has seen a lot in her short amount of time, so she’s jaded and is imagining herself in the next chapter of her life and is even fantasising about what it’s going to be like to be out of school and have more freedom,” Bivens says.
Cassie dressing like Maddy is a joke in the show as well. When Cassie and Nate walk hand in hand down the hallway – Cassie dressed in a pink crop top and skirt, paired with dramatic eye make-up Maddy sneers, “Well she certainly looks the part.” But the symbolism of the sets goes further than a visual gag. While it is a signifier of a queen bee, it’s also the simplest way to look put together. The work is done for you; it says little about the character as a person other than their desire for control.
In Cassie and Maddy’s final scene, they’re sitting in the bathroom. Cassie has a bloody nose; her hair looks like it’s been pulled, hard, multiple times. But her blue-and-pink eye make-up is mostly intact, and a silver heart-shaped necklace dangles between her collarbones. Maddy’s icing a cut on her foot with a Coke can, and Cassie assures Maddy that “this is only the beginning,” before leaving the room. Cassie was never in control. It was only a costume.
