In honor of the third season of Euphoria coming to HBO Max soon enough, I’m going to rank the characters from Seasons 1 and 2 based on who is the most emotionally damaged and mentally fucked up.

For a while there, I thought Euphoria season three was nothing more than pipe dream and I thought it was never going to actually come to pass.

So I’m super excited that it’s actually happening and I have a lot of thoughts about These incredibly intense characters.

In 10th place, I’m ranking Lexi Howard for being the least emotionally damaged. This probably isn’t that shocking, because she’s one of the most normal and emotionally balanced characters on the show. Her emotional damage, stems from the fact that she feels neglected and invisible. Invisibility wounds are painful AF.

It sucks to feel unseen. It sucks to feel unheard. And growing up feeling like she will always be stuck in her sister‘s shadow must be incredibly painful for her every day. Plus, we know her dad dipped out on her family. Her mom is struggling with alcoholism.

And as much as she looks up to her older sister Cassie, she is still stuck living in Cassie‘s shadow. And she’s still stuck, getting humiliated by things, her older sister does that she has no control over. So her emotional damage also comes from feeling powerless in her circumstances.

But I think she’s the least emotionally damaged because she has a chance to escape all of this chaos if she chooses to go no contact from her family by the time she’s old enough to leave for college.

In ninth place, I’m ranking Faye for being one of the less emotionally damaged characters, which I know probably sounds like a major shock, but when you hear my reasoning, you’ll understand a little bit more. She is an addict. Straight up.

So her life is filled with chaos and Heartbreak that has been caused by her addiction. Yet, somehow, she’s surprisingly emotionally intact. She lives in the present moment. She’s blunt and straightforward with the people around here.

And overall, she comes across as far less internally tortured than everyone around her. Overall, it seems that her damage is more situational than psychological.

If her circumstances changed and she found herself in a healthier environment, where she was able to get sober and start socializing with healthy minded people, there’s a huge chance a lot of the emotional damage we’ve seen from her would be heavily minimized.

In eighth place, I’m ranking Kat Hernandez. And I’m honestly still really bummed that Barbie Ferreira has decided to quit the show instead of returning for Season 3. Kat’s arc was starting to get really interesting, so it would have been ideal to see her stick around.

But anyway, Kat’s emotional damage is largely internal and identity based. In the first few seasons, a lot of her emotional damage dumped around her personal insecurity, body image issues, and willingness to disassociate through sexual validation.

A lot of the pain she went through was undeniably, painful, yes, but comparatively it was less catastrophic than other characters in this show. Unlike other characters in the show, Kat still has agency over her life and circumstances.

She might have emotional damage from feeling insecure, but she was willing to reframe her insecurity to take her power back and we saw evidence of that when she started earning money as a webcam girl.

Obviously, it was super toxic that she was doing that as an underage teenager. But it’s just a sign that she was willing to take agency over her life by attempting to build up her self love and confidence.

In seventh place is Maddy Perez. Maddy is ranked at the higher middle portion of this list since we witnessed her experience abuse, manipulation, and humiliation. Yet somehow, someway, we also saw that Maddy was able to retain a strong sense of self through all of it.

Her level of confidence and self-worth never wavered despite all the disturbing things she went through. Her emotional damage started in the household, since she watches, her parents treat each other poorly without any communication while they’re all living under one roof.

And then her emotional damage gets worse in her abusive romantic relationship with Nate Jacobs and the toxicity of not being able to trust your own best friend Cassie. But again, Maddy is not the worst emotionally damaged character in my book since she still takes the rains in her life, which is a huge sign of strength and self-love.

In sixth place I’m listing Ashtray. His damage is extreme because he’s such a young kid doing ex extremely wild and inappropriate things. Literally, there are no solid adults in his life to guide him in the right direction.

Any kid who grows up like that is bound to end up emotionally, traumatized, and emotionally damaged. He was raised in negligence and had little to no chance at healthy, emotional development, which is devastating in and of itself.

The idea of growing up to live in normal life and work a normal job, or even go to college, it was probably never something on the table for a character like ashtray. Which means he likely struggles with the concept that he doesn’t have options, which is an incredibly sad and limiting belief to have at such a young age.

But he’s not the most emotionally damaged character in my opinion, which is why I put him in sixth place because His age being younger than all the other characters means he’s spent less years experiencing suffering the way older characters around him have.

And on that note, I placed Fezco in fifth place. Fezco and ashtray were a close call for me and almost interchangeable, but I decided that Fezco should go in fifth place due to his brutal upbringing, which normalized violence and emotional deprivation.

He lands right in the middle of the road on this list because although he has been through so much pain, heart rate, and trauma, he’s still somehow maintains a stable, internal compass. His emotional damage is legitimate, but it didn’t cause him to rot at his core. And that matters.

We know that he still has a conscience, even though he sells illegal substances, based on a scene, we saw where he felt really guilty about Rue Bennett begging him for more product. His guilty conscience made him feel bad for selling her that stuff in the first place.

And additionally, we know he has a conscience because he was excited to show up for Lexi and be there for her to support her at her school play. The second season ended on a cliffhanger and we know that he never actually made it to her school play, but it was heavy on his heart that he wanted to be there for her.

His conscience proves that he doesn’t feel good about doing illegal things. But the fact that he does what he does because he’s in survival mode is why he’s in fifth place. And by the way, rest in peace to Angus cloud.

In fourth place I am placing Jules Vaun. Her trauma is super complex. Her emotional damage stems from the stress she feels trying to be accepted in new environments as a transgender individual.

She also struggled with childhood abandonment and other mental health issues that make her feel super isolated. The reason some people might disagree with me that Jules belongs in fourth place is that her emotional damage is so subtle and disassociative.

Her emotional damage is rarely ever super explosive, so that’s why a lot of people underestimate her for being as emotionally damaged as she is.

But we know that she has some personal internal struggles based on the fact that she’s willing to meet random men in hotel rooms, not knowing if they’re going to hurt her or possibly even unalive her. She puts herself in risky situations, which is a sign of someone not truly respecting or loving themselves very much.

In third place I’m placing Cassie Howard. She keeps her emotional damage super quiet until the most explosive moment ever at Lexi’s school play. But you definitely see her unraveling throughout the series as her mental health deteriorates and she gets worse and worse.

Her emotional damage comes from being neglected by her father, watching her mother struggle with alcoholism, general abandonment wounds from her parents as a whole, the fact that she’s been sexualized since she was younger, and the fact that she goes through repeated relationship trauma.

Her relationship with McKay was also pretty toxic, even though it wasn’t as toxic as her relationship with Nate. And that’s because McKay was constantly pushing her away, making her think she was the problem when he had other issues he was dealing with.

Cassie‘s total collapse of self-worth is tied to her desperate need for male validation. So when she isn’t being validated by men, she feels like she isn’t worth anything at all.

That emotional wound stems from her daddy issues. It’s pretty clear that the breakdown we see from her in season two isn’t something that happens suddenly or out of the blue. It’s the result of years of untreated emotional erosion that caused her to become so explosive.

In second place, I am listing Nate Jacobs. His emotional damage is horrendously dangerous. his childhood exposure to violent, sexually explicit material is one of the big causes of his emotional damage.

Couple that with emotional abuse from his father, repression of some of his own sexual desires, fragmentation of his own identity, and his inner rage turned outward at everyone else in the world, and you have the perfect storm.

Nate externalize his trauma by traumatizing others, and we saw evidence of that when he was threatening Jules. There’s a huge fan going around that Nate has a major problem with Jules because she stirs something in him. That makes him feel angry.

Either he’s secretly attracted to her or he wishes he could be her. The fact that he asked to repress his true feelings and he feels unable to live out loud and live his truth speaks volumes. And it’s almost like he’s following in the same footsteps of his father who we know secretly hooks up with transgender girls like Jules in hotel rooms behind his wife’s back.

In first place, I obviously have to list Rue Bennett. She is the center point of true heartbreak in pain is in euphoria. She struggles with severe addiction, repeated, overdoses, grief over the loss of her father, constant and never-ending guilt, self loathing, and the constant push pull feeling of wanting to live and not caring if she dies.

The big issue that comes with addiction is that it’s an ongoing battle that never ends. You constantly have to show up every day making promises to yourself that you’re not going to relapse.

And since she spends so much time secretly relapsing and doing drugs behind her families back, her trauma continues going on untreated for long stretches.It’s a deep and chronic issue that impacts Rue and literally everyone around her.

It made me sad to see how negatively impacted. Ruth’s sister and mother were over her addiction. Because it’s probably incredibly hard watching a person you love continue spiraling down the wrong path.

I personally don’t have any family members who struggle with addiction to that degree, but The way it was portrayed in euphoria sheds light on just how dark and depressing the entire dynamic really is.

And for all of these reasons, I believe that root is the most emotionally damaged. Although there are people who love her and believe in her and have hopes that she’ll get clean and live a sober lifestyle, she continues falling down The rabbit hole of addiction, time and time again. Thank you for watching.

Every character in Euphoria has some form of emotional damage but thats what makes the show worth watching and worth discussing in my opinion.