'Euphoria' reignites an old question: Why do male writers keep killing off complex female characters?

Rue Bennett deserved a future, not a tragic ending.

02 June, 2026

'Euphoria' reignites an old question: Why do male writers keep killing off complex female characters?

After years of watching Rue battle addiction, grief, and self-destruction, the show ends with her dying from a fentanyl overdose. In a season that was already criticised for feeling disconnected from what made Euphoria special in the first place, the finale landed with a thud for many fans. Instead of feeling inevitable, Rue's death felt strangely familiar. It's the kind of ending we have seen complicated female characters receive over and over again.

Euphoria aired its final episode yesterday, and it's safe to say the season finale felt a bit anticlimactic. For two seasons, Rue Bennett's storyline in Euphoria centred on one thought: can she survive? The entire emotional core of the show revolved around her survival. Played with staggering vulnerability by Zendaya, Rue became one of television's most compelling anti-heroines—a teenager navigating addiction, grief, love, and self-destruction in ways that were often difficult to watch but impossible to look away from. She wasn't a role model. Her story was messy, frustrating, and painfully human, which is precisely what made audiences invest in her.

That is why the ending of Euphoria's third season has left so many viewers unhappy and a tad frustrated, if we are being honest. Spoilers ahead.

After years of watching Rue battle addiction, grief, and self-destruction, the series ended with her dying from a fentanyl overdose. For many viewers, the decision felt less like a devastating culmination and more like a disappointing cliché. In a season already criticised for feeling disconnected from the original storyline, the finale landed with a thud for many fans. And instead of feeling inevitable, Rue's death felt like a familiar narrative choice that we have seen complicated female characters receive over and over again.

The tragedy shortcut

Here's the thing: writing a complicated woman is hard. Writing what comes after her trauma is even harder. Television loves the rise of a flawed female protagonist. We are happy to watch her unravel, make terrible decisions, and claw her way through impossible circumstances. But when it comes time to imagine a future for her, many stories seem to hit a wall. What happens after the addiction? After the revenge? After the battle is won?

Rue's character was chaotic and constantly making bad decisions. Still, she could have had a future. And the show writers could have tried to explore the possibilities. What would Rue's life have looked like at 30? Could she have stayed sober? Relapsed and recovered again? Could she have a career, fall in love, lose people, and find purpose? Those possibilities are messy and unpredictable. They require writers to engage with the long, often unglamorous reality of survival.

Death, meanwhile, offers a much cleaner solution. It closes the story instantly. No loose ends, no difficult questions, no need to imagine what growth might actually look like.

And that is where Euphoria begins to feel like part of a much larger pattern.

Remember Daenerys Targaryen? For years, Game of Thrones positioned her as one of television's most fascinating women: a liberator, a conqueror, a survivor, and increasingly, a ruler grappling with power. Her contradictions made her compelling. Yet in the final stretch, she was transformed into a villain and eliminated from the story.

Viewers weren't upset because she died. Tragedy can be powerful when it feels earned. What frustrated them was the fact that the show seemed to run out of patience for her complexity. Once she became too powerful, too morally complicated, and too difficult to categorise as either hero or villain, it seemed the only option left was to kill her, because the writers just did not know what to do next with her complexities.

Even superheroes aren't safe

The same was done to Natasha Romanoff in Avengers: Endgame. She spent years, across more than a decade of films, proving herself as one of the franchise's most capable heroes, evolving from a mysterious spy into one of the emotional anchors of the Avengers, only to end up sacrificing herself so the plot could move forward. While several male heroes got emotional farewells, retirement arcs, and legacy-building moments, Natasha got a cliff and a funeral.

Then there's Eleven from Stranger Things, whose story spent multiple seasons positioning her as the girl destined to save everyone else. From the moment her powers were introduced, she carried the weight of the world's survival on her shoulders, repeatedly risking her life to protect her friends and stop increasingly dangerous threats. By the end, her journey seemed to point towards one familiar conclusion: self-sacrifice.

For many viewers, that felt frustrating rather than triumphant. After years of watching Eleven endure isolation, experimentation, violence, and loss, the idea that her story could only culminate in giving everything up for others felt limiting. Why, fans wondered, was survival not enough? Why could she not save the world and still be allowed a future of her own? The criticism was not about heroism itself, but about a recurring storytelling instinct that treats a woman's ultimate act of courage as the willingness to disappear.

Just let women live

We are not saying that every female character needs a happy ending. The point is that women characters do not deserve to be killed off simply because writers reach a dead end when confronted with their complexities, contradictions, and vulnerabilities.

Strong and complicated women do not need to be turned into moral lessons every time. They do not need to be punished for their mistakes, nor do they need to become symbols of what happens when someone strays too far from the path. Sometimes, they deserve the same thing male anti-heroes have been given for decades: the opportunity to keep existing, however imperfectly.

Rue Bennett did not need a fairytale ending. She did not need to ride off into the sunset, fully healed and free of every struggle that haunted her. But after three seasons of fighting to stay alive, she deserved something more interesting than becoming another television death. She deserved the possibility of a future, however messy, uncertain, or complicated it might have been. Because for a character whose entire story was about survival, death feels less like a bold creative choice and more like the easiest one.

Lead image: IMDb

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