The Reason We Hate Cassie On ‘Euphoria’ Is Because We Know How Easily We Could Become Her

Warning: This article contains spoilers for Euphoria

As someone who only recently jumped on the “Euphoria” bandwagon, it’s not surprising that I ended up stumbling across quite a few spoilers. While at times this might have convinced me not to bother with a show at all, I still felt compelled to take a look at what the internet has been raving about. 

While most of the show can be, *ahem*, a LOT, it’s not a secret that the characters are what draw you in. You love them, and you hate them. You root for them, and you kind of hope something terrible happens to them at times. Whether you’re watching Rue relapse, observing as Jules falls into relationships that aren’t healthy for her, or Maddy trying to maintain her confident persona while not falling apart (or falling for Nate, ugh), the characters are fully fleshed out and full of complications and contradictions.

Enter Cassie Howard, this season’s potentially most hated character (outside of perhaps Nate).

Cassie, Maddy’s best friend, started the second season by stumbling right into Nate Jacobs’s arms after a crushing breakup with McKay. What began as the two almost hooking up and chalking it up to a mistake quickly becomes a secret relationship that the two are desperate to keep hidden from everyone—especially Maddy. The results have been messy and, honestly, infuriating. 

Outside of the fact that Nate is unarguably the worst, it’s the genuine friendship betrayal between Cassie and Maddy that has made the internet rage about Cassie’s poor choices. Cassie completely forsakes every relationship in her life—friends, family, and even at times herself—to appease Nate and make him want to stay with her. She changes her clothes, tells Nate he can fully have control over her, and goes out of her way to try and talk Maddy out of getting back together with Nate (which she should, but it’s clearly not for the right reasons). 

On top of all of this, Cassie tries to maintain the image that she is still an innocent party in this chaotic and problematic situation. She insists that she didn’t do anything wrong, given that Maddy and Nate were technically broken up when she and Nate first started sneaking around. She insists that the love she feels towards Nate is worth every sacrifice she must make, and she doesn’t hesitate to make every decision surrounding her relationship with him—even if it hurts everyone she loves. She bursts into tears multiple times an episode, lashes out at everyone in her life who tries to help her, and continues to return to Nate no matter how horribly he’s treated her (or anyone else, for that matter). It’s easy to get why plenty of people who watch the show can’t stand her character.

However, a deeper truth lies beneath the surface of all the hate Cassie gets. Sure, she’s unlikable in plenty of ways this season. Yes, she can be insufferable every time she plays the victim. Yes, it is so incredibly easy to judge her for the horrendous choices she makes.

Yet the reality is, the biggest reason we hate Cassie is because we know how easily we could become her.

Before you start saying, “That could never be me!” just wait a moment. Maybe you aren’t emotional. Maybe you can’t imagine betraying yourself and the people you love in exchange for a passionate romance. Maybe you make mistakes and could never do what Cassie does.

Yet, if you’ve ever been in a toxic or abusive relationship, you know that things can shift very quickly. It’s already established in Euphoria that Cassie thrives on being loved. Her father abandoning her family left an impact on her, and it proves to be a void she aches to fill with someone who will stay. She keeps reaching for love, only to constantly feel as if it’s slipping away. She goes out of her way to do whatever men want to keep them satisfied— and hopefully keep them, period. However, time after time, Cassie seems to end up with her heart broken, feeling a little more used and less desirable. 

So when Nate approaches her at the gas station, where she is drunk and vulnerable, it isn’t that much of a surprise that she responds to his perceived kindness. That she leaps towards him and clings to him the moment he shows interest in her. This time, she knows exactly who this person is and what he likes, and she’s not letting him go without a fight.

Additionally, while we already know Nate is a terrible human being, he’s also a manipulative abuser. He genuinely seems to have no empathy for anyone he knows. Any kindness or good deed he appears to give has an ulterior motive attached, always. He preys on the weak and the vulnerable, making Cassie the ideal target. 

Obviously, this doesn’t excuse Cassie from her horrible choices. It doesn’t change the betrayal and hurt she is causing everyone around her. It does show, though, how easily a person can become wrapped up in another human being, especially when they are at their lowest. Cassie justifies every reason to stay with Nate, and she refuses to acknowledge his flaws and terrible qualities. All she is willing to see is a man who loves her—even if that may not be the truth. 

We have all had a relationship with a person that we knew was awful to us and for us, but we were too addicted to them to walk away. We convinced ourselves that they really did love us. When they tried to change us, it was in our best interest. When they treated us poorly, it was our fault, not theirs. And if anyone tried to stop us or convince us to leave? We were sure they were just jealous or didn’t understand, or even that they just wanted us to be unhappy. The person we were obsessed with was all that mattered.

Even if we managed to break away eventually, we know that those moments we were still there were dark and complicated. Sometimes, seeing a person like Cassie can bring up those old resentful feelings, whether on screen or in real life. It shows us a side of being human that we hate—a side that often craves validation and will choose it over any cost. It’s a version of ourselves that we hate to admit could exist, or that maybe once did. We can’t fathom how someone else could be so thoughtless and terrible to the people around them, knowing that we might do something similar under certain circumstances. 

Yet being faced with that reality doesn’t always make us more empathetic. Sometimes it makes us angry, even judgmental. We are so repulsed by these actions we can’t stand that we target our anger and aggression on the person making those decisions. While a TV character is a harmless substitute to let out our processed emotions, we also often target real people with the same type of vitriol and hate. We determine that we are so far above that person for making a decision we disagree with that we lose sight of the fact that they are a person, too.

Of course, having empathy and understanding a person’s actions doesn’t mean Cassie should be given a pass for acting the way she is, and the show certainly seems to be doing a good job of ensuring that she doesn’t (I mean, Lexi’s play? GOLDEN). However, with another season in the works, I am hoping Cassie is able to find some redemption. I hope that she hasn’t gone too far where she won’t ever return. She may not be able to mend her relationships to the level they were before, but I am hoping that she is able to escape her toxic entanglement with Nate and hopefully start to heal her attachment wounds. 

And I hope that next season, we can extend Cassie—and those like her—a little more grace than we are tempted to. Not because she deserves it, but because deep down, we would hope someone wouldn’t give up on us if we were in the same predicament she was in. 

We would hope someone would see more to us than the horrible things we are willing to do for love. We hope that someone will see us in all our broken and messy humanity. 

That someone would still look at us and want to help us find our way back to ourselves again.