What Happened To Rue’s Phone In Euphoria Season 3?

Fan theories are running rampant online about Bishop removing Rue’s DEA line from her phone, but there’s something fishy about this whole chain of custody.

We never see Bishop return the phone to Rue after he takes it from her in the car. It just magically reappears, but something feels off about every scene that follows.

First she bullies Faye into betraying Wayne and Laurie in order for Alamo to keep her alive (while still buried up to her neck in dirt).

She just happens to record the exact conversation the DEA needs. The one that could get her out of a 20 year prison sentence.

Then Leslie, who hasn’t answered Rue’s calls all season, triggering her return to drug use, just happens to ring her while she’s praying in church.

But then the contradiction arrives. Rue tells Laurie Alamo took her phone. And then we immediately cut to see Jules getting sent to voicemail while G tells an unnamed woman on the phone he wanted her to be his “BM” or baby momma, to which she strongly responds in the negative.

It’s that moment that triggers the most suspicion. Why would G be having an almost identical conversation to Rue’s last fight with Jules? Did Rue leave the phone in the car on purpose, on accident, or was it never returned to her in the first place? Has every interaction with the phone been out of chronological order, or simply a figment of her imagination?

Lexi brings Rue’s reliability as a narrator into question in the same episode. On the surface it looks lethal game of telephone from Rue to Lexi to Maddy to Alamo about Rue’s involvement with the DEA, but what if all of these little moments of incongruity are actually supposed to flag to us that something else is happening?

Every moment since Rue’s phone was taken away has felt like a wish fulfillment fantasy for a young drug addict whose life has fallen deeper and deeper into chaos. The Hail Mary from Faye. The win for the DEA. The reconciliation with an estranged mother. It all just seems way too good to be true.

With Euphoria’s track record for incorporating meta-moments, it would come as no surprise if we’ve been living in Rue’s fever dream, or even Lexi’s film or TV script for the entire season.

The finale airs this Sunday, May 31.