Is Nate Dead in Euphoria?

The third season of HBO’s ‘Euphoria‘ takes the teen characters into adulthood, and it turns out that almost all of them are struggling to keep pace with the new chapter of their lives. Rue is not the only one who goes through a turbulent arc this season. While her time with Laurie, Alamo, and the DEA has kept her on the tenterhooks, there is another person who has gotten involved with the wrong people. Nate, who used to be the violent and unpredictable hunk with the “I can fix him” allure for the girls, is a completely different person as an adult. His dealings with a loan shark named Naz have led him to the lowest of low points in his life. And the penultimate episode seals his fate for good. SPOILERS AHEAD.

Nate Ends Up Six Feet Under the Ground

This season started with Nate having taken over his father’s business, but not being nearly as successful in running it. On the surface, it might seem he has his life on track. He has a huge house, he is married to his high school sweetheart, and he has a huge construction project in the works. But it turns out that the project has been stalled and is later axed because of a rare flower found on the site. This makes things worse because Nate had taken a million-dollar loan from Naz to fund his project, and now that the project is not moving forward, Nate needs to pay the money back. The problem is that Nate doesn’t have any of that money, and what makes it worse is that this does not slow him down, and he keeps making worse decisions.

Eventually, Naz gets fed up with Nate’s antics, especially after he comes to his and Cassie’s wedding and notices the fifty thousand dollars’ worth of flowers. To show him how serious he is about getting his money back, Naz has Nate’s toe cut off on his wedding night. This leads Cassie to take her OnlyFans work seriously, and she starts making enough to send some of it to Nate. However, the trickle of money is not enough, and Naz is getting too impatient. So, he cuts off Nate’s finger, and this time, he sends it to Cassie, since he knows that she is the one paying for her husband. Later, he also holds Nate captive because, after losing a toe and a finger, he will most likely try to run away. Naz also gives a 72-hour deadline to Cassie, failing which would mean certain death for Nate.

It turns out that he has Nate buried on the same plot where the construction project was supposed to be well underway by now. To keep him alive, a tube is attached to the coffin, serving as Nate’s only connection to the ground above. This will allow him to breathe, but he still has dehydration to battle, and hence the three-day window for his wife. To her credit, Cassie does try her best to get Nate out of this predicament. Having lost her OnlyFans account and then getting fired from the ‘LA Nights’ job means that she has no source of income left. Thanks to Maddy, a little stint with Dylan the actor gets her her followers back, but that is not enough to make a million so soon. So, she delegates the task to her manager, Maddy.

Time Was Never on Nate’s Side

However much Maddy may have hated Nate and Cassie for what they did to her, she still cares about them, or at least, she cares enough not to have them die. So, when Cassie calls her to arrange a million dollars, or else, Maddy goes to the one person she knows can help with this. Thanks to Rue, she’d come in contact with Alamo, who hired her to manage his girls. He not only has the money but is also a criminal himself, so she thinks he must be the one to deal with this situation in the best way possible. This backfires for her soon enough, but she thinks she is in his good graces, and he will do it for her just because he likes her.

Sure enough, Alamo takes his gun and a bag full of money and drives Maddy to the rendezvous point. But then, it turns out that the bag did not have the money after all, and Alamo also shoots Naz dead, so the problem is completely gone now. Naz’s henchman decides to save himself and digs Nate back up. But when the coffin is opened, it turns out that Nate died well before the 72-hour window. While Naz posed dehydration as the main villain in Nate’s predicament, he failed to mention that Cassie’s husband had been buried in a desert, where all sorts of deadly creatures creep around.

Earlier that day, as Nate called for help, pounding on his coffin to be noticed by someone, he didn’t expect that it would be a rattlesnake that heard his cries. Attracted by the sounds coming from the ground, the rattlesnake slithers its way into Nate’s coffin, and by the time the coffin is dug up, both Nate and the snake are dead. The reptile’s bite marks are visible on Nate’s face, showing that it wasn’t just one strike that killed him, and that he died a painful death, way before dehydration could settle in and do its job.

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