“Euphoria” Basically Told Us That Ashtray Was Going To Die In The Very First Episode Of Season 2. Here Are All The Clues That You Missed.

The season finale of Euphoria hit our screens this week, and it has had a pretty mixed reaction, to say the least.

There was also confusion over Elliot’s (Dominic Fike) four-minute musical performance, and several questions were raised about the fate of major characters.

Fezco, played by Angus Cloud, is one of the characters to have been left in limbo, with viewers last seeing him being taken away by a SWAT team while suffering a gunshot wound to his abdomen.

While it hasn’t been confirmed, the assumption is that Fez will survive his injury, but whether he faces jail time over the raid on his house and the death of Custer remains to be seen.

Ashtray met a grisly end after stabbing Custer in the throat and firing off a machine gun at authorities while hiding in the bathroom.

Viewers were heartbroken by the youngster’s demise, but some of the more eagle-eyed among us weren’t very surprised as they pointed out that Ashtray’s fate had been obvious from the very first episode of Season 2.

Further hints were dropped both onscreen and offscreen over the past few weeks. Here we take a look at all of the clues that were missed.

As mentioned, Ashtray’s premature death was basically confirmed in this season’s first episode, which had Fez as the featured character.

In the episode, Rue’s narration runs down details of Fez’s upbringing, revealing that he was taken in by his grandma, Marie, as a child, and she is the one who introduced him to the drug trade.

Ashtray’s origins are also confirmed in the episode, with Rue explaining that somebody left their baby boy with Marie as collateral but they never returned to claim him.

He got his name after he was caught eating Marie’s old cigarettes from an ashtray as a toddler, and she and Fez took him under their wing and had him join their drugs business as soon as he was old enough.

People have now pointed out that Rue’s use of the past tense in this statement was a glaring clue that Ash would die, but most viewers didn’t even pick up on it.

“Been saying this from the start,” another claimed. While one more tagged a friend and boasted: “Told you, my detective skills.”

One viewer argued that Rue always narrates in the past tense, but others pointed out that she only does this about events that have already occurred — not relationships or facts that would still be true at the time that she is speaking.

The original user replied: “It wouldn’t be ‘was’ because even in past tense, if he was still [alive] he would still be [his] brother.”

And another clarified: “She does, but we’d assume that if Ash was still alive at the time Rue was narrating, she would say ‘Ash is his brother.’”

As if that wasn’t enough, it has now been revealed that we were all-but-shown shown Ashtray’s death in this episode in another subtle detail.

A flash of the character’s final scene is depicted through a yellow haze as Rue explains Fez’s childhood head injury.

“That was his first dark spot. He didn’t really remember anything for at least two months,” she says off-camera. “Just an occasional image, and an overwhelming fear about who was gonna take care of Ashtray.”

Before the finale aired, it was more widely believed that Fez would be the character to die, especially when the trailer for Episode 8 was released and showed Fez seemingly in pain as he lay on the floor.

During Ashtray’s final moments, Fez had told him to run away and that he’d take the rap for killing Custer, only for Ashtray to refuse and lock himself in the bathroom with his weapon.

It has now been pointed out that Ashtray has been incredibly protective of Fez throughout the season, so we should have known that he’d likely sacrifice himself before allowing anything to happen to his big brother.

Again, this was mostly reflected in the first episode of Season 2, with Ashtray killing Mouse with a hammer when he thought that Fez was in danger.

He is also the one to constantly monitor their home’s CCTV, and the first to reach for a weapon when he thinks that they might be under threat. As a result, it’s pretty safe to assume that as long as Ashtray was around, Fez would be safe.

Others argued that the trailer was a red herring and appeared to make it too obvious that Fez would die, which meant that he probably wouldn’t.

But considering the last scene that we saw him in heavily implied that he got shot in the middle of his forehead at close range, I definitely won’t be holding my breath for his return.