Season two of the Zendaya-led show Euphoria premiered on January 2, 2022, and it shouldn’t come as a surprise to see the storyline getting even wilder than in season one. Some viewers have gone so far as to draw comparisons to Riverdale, which is known for its outrageous plot points, and after each week’s episode, the internet loves to guess what will happen next. Euphoria fans don’t mess around with their careful, evidence-backed theories and creative expectations for what’s to come.
Most recently, a new character, Nelson, was named-dropped. But who is Nelson? Read on to learn more about the fan theories looking into Nelson’s identity, as well as other theories fans have shared this season.
Nelson is just Mouse.
During Fez and Ashtray’s backstory, we see a man nicknamed Mouse – played by rapper Meeko Gattuso, who was recently featured in Queen of Glory at the Tribeca Film Festival – doing a drug deal with Fez when it goes wrong. Mouse points a gun at Fez and, since Ashtray is exceptionally protective of Fez (not to mention unhinged), he kills Mouse with a hammer. In episode four, Fez’s drug-dealing friend Custer tells him, “Nelson’s baby mama showed up asking questions,” according to the close captioning. Fans think that either A) Nelson is Mouse’s real name, or B) HBO messed up the subtitles since it sounds like he’s saying “Mouse.”
And his body will be found at the construction site soon.
At the end of the same episode, they show Cal’s construction site and cut to Fez looking contemplative and distraught. This could be insinuating that Fez buried Mouse’s body at the construction site (why else would they have shown the construction site in this episode?). In the promo for episode five, cops are searching the construction site with flashlights as sirens wail. Because it’s Cal’s property, they’ll likely search his house, too, possibly finding his collection of illegally filmed sexual encounters. It also happens to be where Nate and Cassie hooked up, so Nate’s truck could’ve been spotted there, and the two could be questioned, leading Maddy Perez to discover that her ex-boyfriend and current best friend are having a secret fling.
Or maybe Nelson hasn’t been introduced yet.
Alternatively, HBO could have just written a horrible audience introduction for a brand new character.
Whether Nelson is an elaborately planned character yet to be properly introduced or a simple misunderstanding, we’ll just have to wait and see. In the meantime, here are four other popular fan theories about this season of Euphoria.
Is Nate’s brother Tom Holland?
Ah, the Jacobs family photo. In it, we can see Nate Jacobs, one of, if not the most, hated characters on the show, with his brother, Aaron, and parents, Cal and Marsha. However, in the bottom left of the photo in front of Cal is another child whose identity and current location are unknown. This single JCPenney-photo-studio-esque family portrait has left fans scratching their heads since it was shown in season one, desperate for answers.
Some fans maintain that the missing Jacobs child is preteen drug dealer Ashtray, whose biological parents were never shown, but this is highly unlikely since Ashtray was taken in by Marie O’Neill and her grandson, Fezco, as a baby and the child in the Jacobs’ photo is older. Others are guessing that Tom Holland will play the third son, who has been confirmed to have visited the set many times during filming, has stated his desire to be on the show, and was spotted in the background of a behind-the-scenes snap. In season one, eagle-eyed fans spotted a “Dean Jacobs” in Nate’s Instagram DMs, leading them to believe that the third child is separated from the family but still in contact with Nate.
Holland doesn’t exactly give off Jacobs family vibes, but anything’s possible!
Rue is narrating from beyond the grave.
The fourth episode of season two shows the main character Rue Bennett walking into a church and hugging a church singer (played by Labrinth, who composed the show’s soundtrack), who then morphs into her deceased father. Euphoria creator Sam Levinson has previously stated, “I’ve always imagined that when Rue gets really high, she’s able to enter this place between life and death where she can reunite with her father.” At the end of the episode, the narration switches from Rue to Jules Vaughn, her girlfriend, for the first time. The montage of romance movie couples at the beginning of the episode showed Rue as the characters that end up dying, and, in the trailer for the fifth episode, Rue’s sister and mother crying. Some believe that this indicates that Rue died of an overdose at the end of the episode.
There’s another theory that Rue has been dead the whole time and is narrating the events that led up to her death, a la Hannah Baker of 13 Reasons Why, which could explain why she knows so much about what’s happening in other characters’ lives when she’s not with them.
Or the whole season is actually just Lexi’s play.
In episode three, it’s revealed that Lexi Howard is writing a play using her sister’s, Cassie, life as inspiration. We also see Lexi break the fourth wall and act as if we’re viewers of a behind-the-scenes feature on the play’s DVD – she sits in a director’s chair, yells “Action!” and advises costuming. One theory claims that season 2 has just been us watching Lexi’s play this whole time, justifying some of the more eccentric directions the plot has gone this season. Lexi has been the only character other than Rue to talk to the audience – could it be that she’s the one narrating her story?
Faye is a narc.
Fezco takes in Faye, Custer’s girlfriend, as a housemate after she kills a motel manager. As he tends to keep his circle small, this is surprising for Fez, and he may have let his guard down a little too much. Faye’s story is a little strange, though – we see a K-9 unit show up after the supposed motel murder (those are typically used for drug raids). She did heroin in the first episode, so she could’ve been caught and made a plea deal to bust Fez’s drug empire from the inside. Of course, these are all just hypothetical, but with how unpredictable the season has been so far (coupled with the fact that Rue is an unreliable narrator), anything could happen.