SPOILER ALERT: This story contains spoilers for “In God We Trust,” the Season 3 finale of “Euphoria,” now streaming on HBO Max.
Alamo Brown lives up to his name in the Season 3 finale of “Euphoria.” After fighting off enemies from all sides — from the DEA to a Nazi drug gang to traitorous employees — he eventually falls, shot dead in a strip club last stand. Alamo (Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje) isn’t the only big death in the supersized episode, which appears to wrap up the stories of Rue (Zendaya), Cassie (Sydney Sweeney), Maddy (Alexa Demie) and co.
In the penultimate episode of Sam Levinson’s high school drama turned Western crime caper, Alamo sends Rue back to Laurie’s (Martha Kelly) house to reclaim the goods her crew stole from his safe. Rue discovers the money is gone, but she is able to smuggle out a stack of passports and identification cards that belonged to Alamo — incriminating evidence of his sex trafficking enterprise.
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Rue barely makes it out alive, but Alamo decides he no longer has use for her. He’s kept the DEA at bay (for now), and he knows Rue is a rat, pulled in by the feds to collect evidence against Alamo and Laurie. (If he hadn’t been sure before, Maddy — while she and Alamo are in a hot tub — confirms his suspicions, with an off-handed reference to Rue talking about the DEA.)
So, Alamo decides to kill Rue in an uncharacteristically anticlimactic fashion — by giving her painkillers laced with fentanyl and trusting that the addict will be tempted enough to swallow them. (It’s a strangely subdued execution by the guy who shot an apple off the top of her head and charged at her with a mallet on horseback.)
When Ali (Colman Domingo) discovers that Rue has overdosed, he puts on his military uniform and decides to avenge his sponsee and daughter figure. Carrying a sawed off shotgun, Ali visits the Silver Slipper and demands to meet with Alamo. Meanwhile, the bossman is having a heart-to-heart with Maddy, expressing regret over his entrepreneurial misdeeds and saying he wants to settle down with a wife and raise kids behind a picket fence.
That dream is put on ice, as Alamo enters the main area of the strip club and finds Ali greeting him with a weapon. The two commit to a duel, each agreeing to fire their guns when a bottle of champagne rolls off the bar and shatters on the floor. But Alamo breaks his own ground rules, raising his pistol and attempting to fire before the glass breaks. Lucky for Ali, the gun does not go off, and it’s revealed Alamo’s right-hand man Bishop (Darrell Britt-Gibson) removed the bullets from his weapon, sentencing him to death. Ali finishes the job with three shotgun bullets to the chest.
Below, Akinnuoye-Agbaje breaks down the climactic episode, explaining why Alamo decides to let Rue kill herself and why Bishop betrays him. To read more about Akinnuoye-Agbaje and how he went Method to play the season’s villain, click here.
What are Alamo’s true feelings toward Rue? Is there any real love there, or does he just view her as a vulnerable person he can exploit?
Apart from the strippers, Alamo doesn’t have a female working on the inside. It’s unusual for him to hire a female, and the reason he did that is because he sees something of himself in Rue. She’s young, she’s ambitious, she’s fearless, and that gave her grace initially. Obviously, we see she’s expired on that. Her usefulness is almost at an end, and we know that Alamo will only entertain you as far as it can benefit him. He did like her, and it was somewhat of a father-daughter, mentor-disciple relationship initially, but she squandered that with her behavior. As we see from his relationship with his mother, one thing Alamo would not do is let a bitch outsmart him — or betray him again. Rue has triggered something deep in him, and there are repercussions to that.
In the first episode this season, Rue says she believes God brought her and Alamo together. This season is heavily themed around freedom and redemption and whether fate is real — and whether people can escape it. What does Alamo believe?
It’s a good question, because he’s not a religious person — he’s a spiritual person. He believes in the here and now. He doesn’t talk about all that ethereal stuff about the afterlife and God. However, he believes in coincidence — Rue has come into his life to show him certain things. He starts to come around to believing that actually, maybe God did send us together, because she’s getting him out of certain binds, she’s expanding his business into the digital frontier [by way of Maddy Perez]. But essentially he’s more or less an atheist in terms of believing in the here and now.
Alamo has not been subtle about his distrust toward Rue. At what point does he know she has been working with the DEA?
I don’t think he ever trusts her, which is why we have the apple incident [in Episode 1]. It’s the biggest test to see if she’s worthy to be in Alamo’s world. But he doesn’t give carte blanche trust at all; he’s watching her at every turn. She’s making moves and money for him, and he’s promoting her, but that’s just because she’s useful. I think when it really turns and when his instinct kicks in is when the robbery happens. That’s when the audience sees Alamo has second thoughts about Rue’s loyalty — when she doesn’t identify the robbers by voice after having lived with them. That’s the telling moment that she’s probably playing both sides, but there’s always a suspicion.
Why does he wait to kill her?
He’s very theatrical. He’s a bit like a cat playing with a mouse, batting it around before he rips its head off. He enjoys the kill. Even when he’s battling with Laurie — he’s sending the pig, she’s sending it back. Because the guy is lonely, he enjoys the chess game of death. He could have killed Rue a lot sooner, but he plays it out.
There’s another reason, too, which is that he has an agenda. Laurie has him by the balls, and he could be behind bars — or worse, dead — because she’s got the goods on him. So, whilst he doesn’t trust Rue, he needs to figure out how he can get out of this mess, and maybe she’s the key. He’s just going to use her. She’s expendable, and in his mind he’s going to kill her anyway, but he’s going to rinse every drop out of her before he does that to get himself out of this position.
To what extent does Laurie have leverage over Alamo?
Laurie’s crew didn’t just steal money [out of Alamo’s safe], they stole incriminating evidence of his lucrative business in sex trafficking and selling women off to Mexico — underage women. That evidence [passports and identification cards] could send him to federal prison for life. More than the money, that’s what he really wants to get back. He knows Rue knows where it is and has a way to get it back, which is why he sends her back there.
Alamo gives Rue painkillers laced with fentanyl. Why does he choose to kill her in that way?
I’ll go back to the fact that Alamo, in his sadistic way, enjoys the kill. He could dispense with her by cutting her throat and chopping her up and feeding her to the pigs, but that wouldn’t satiate him. This woman has triggered his mommy issues to the core, and Alamo understands the nature and psyche of an addict. He knows she is weak enough to fall for the temptation — when he puts the pills in front of her, she won’t be able to resist. It’s not like he’s killing her; he’s helping her do it herself. In the religious aspect, it’s the Devil testing her faith.
I actually think Alamo was hopeful for her, and I think there was a disappointment. It’s like having a child that you have hope for, but they just keep effing up catastrophically. I think there’s a bit of pathos even in Alamo to have to do that. But it’s got to be done. It’s either him or her.
Some people might be angry about Rue’s death, or the manner in which it’s carried out. Are you anxious to see how audiences will respond to the finale?
It’s quite a voracious fan base, but I do know the finale will have a huge impact — and hopefully a good impact. One of the things that really compelled me about this season was Sam has not sensationalized the important issues of drug use. The audience has grown up with Zendaya’s incredible portrayal of Rue, and she’s become a beloved, almost national hero, but I think it was responsible art to depict it in this way, because this is the reality of being a drug user. With fentanyl in particular, you end up dead, and as we know, one of the cast members of the show [Angus Cloud] also passed in that manner.
I’m sure there will be some huge reactions from the audience, just because of the love and the incredible performance Zendaya’s given, but I hope they can understand why it had to be her. People need to be aware that if you’re going to touch that drug, this is the reality. Not only for the primary user, but the seller as well. It always ends up in death.
Do you follow the online discourse surrounding the show? Has anything surprised you about it?
Occasionally I’ve looked at my comments, but I try to stay away from it because it’s the audience’s show, and it preceded me. But what I have seen is how people have embraced the character of Alamo. Even though he does present an ominous threat to our beloved Rue, they still love to hate him. And now that Sam has written and shown the backstory to Alamo, they see him as a human and can empathize with his trauma.
Of course, people have mentioned how different [this season] is, because it takes place five years later, they’re adults and out of school. I think people grew accustomed to the format they had seen in the first two seasons, but as with life, everything and everyone moves on. Sam did an excellent job bringing the characters into the real world — and a really stylish world as well.
In Alamo’s duel with Ali, he violates his own ground rules and attempts to shoot before the glass breaks. What does that say about his character?
That he’s a no-good son of a bitch! He broke the code. Obviously, this has come out of nowhere. Nobody comes in and confronts Alamo Brown in his own empire. There’s a level of desperation, especially because it’s in public. Everybody’s watching, so he has to win by any means necessary — if it means cheating, he’s going to do it.
And he suffers another betrayal from someone close to him.
His right-hand man, Bishop, pulls an Iago on him and stabs him in the back by emptying his bullets. When Alamo clicks, the gun is empty. To be honest, he was dead before Ali’s bullet hit him, because that level of betrayal killed him right there. Like he says, “I’ll see you in hell.”
Why does Bishop betray him?
This is just my conjecture, but I think when you’re in a position of power like Alamo, there are always people within your fray that would want the top seat. Bishop would be one of those guys. Kidd has an opportunity to shoot Ali as well, because he has his gun, but Bishop tells him no. So it’s not just Bishop; Kidd doesn’t stand up for Alamo as a boss. I think they realize that it’s time; it’s a changing of the guards. Everything seems to be crumbling, and they’ve realized this is the time to take the reins with Bishop.
Alamo could be somewhat demonstrative toward Bishop, too. He kind of puts him down, ridicules him a little bit. He says he’s got no manners, he doesn’t speak, he talks in this monotone. He plays him a bit like an idiot, even though he knows he’s useful. And I don’t think Alamo particularly likes the fact that, of all his henchmen, Bishop actually enjoys killing. There’s something extremely psychotic about him.
Ultimately, it’s a power move. Bishop knows this is the time to do it. Maddy’s there, and I think he has intentions for her as well. This is probably the first time we’ve seen Bishop be favorable toward a woman. He’s plotting his own path.
The name Alamo references a famous last stand — a story of resistance and strength but eventual defeat. Was that on your mind while playing the character?
Sam had been inspired by Western movies — it’s Alamo’s last stand and his back is against the wall. He’s against everyone, not just the enemy, aka Ali, but his own soldiers. There he is reduced to that little boy who has no trust, who has nobody to depend on. It’s interesting that it comes at a time when he realized his errors. He confesses to Maddy that all he wants is to have babies with his wife and have a picket fence. But his atonement comes too late.
Sam and I worked on that last scene to give it a substance. I thought it was important for Alamo to have a moment of self-reflection after having gone through a life of debauchery and crime. I do think it arcs back to the overall theme, the Western iconography of the Alamo and the last stand, and that ultimate defeat. It’s the way he’s got to go down. That’s his namesake.
This interview has been edited and condensed.