Euphoria S3: Why did the writer change Alamo Brown’s original ending?

The sudden demise of Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje’s character, Alamo Brown, served as one of the most jarring twists in the Euphoria finale, but it wasn’t always written that way.

Initial script drafts saw the season three antagonist bowing out at the absolute peak of his power, having just toppled rival drug kingpin Laurie (Martha Kelly), outsmarted the DEA, and orchestrated the fatal downfall of Zendaya’s Rue. However, a creative breakthrough between Akinnuoye-Agbaje and series creator Sam Levinson fundamentally shifted the villain’s trajectory. Realizing that a standard, triumphant exit lacked depth, the duo decided to trade the character’s typical ruthlessness for a more poignant, self-reflective final moment that ultimately redefined the season’s climax.

“We asked ourselves, was his journey really just about chasing money and women?” says Akinnuoye-Agbaje. “We thought it would be more substantive to have a reflective moment where he realizes he has everything, and yet nothing. He should be thinking, ‘Is this really what it’s all about?’”

Levinson then wrote the scene that audiences saw on Sunday night, Alamo watching everyone celebrating at the strip club, feeling too sick to eat his steak, and then professing his desire to find love and start a family. It was a far cry from the ruthlessness that dominated the season, but Akinnuoye-Agbaje is pleased with the reflective arc.

He also noted, “When we meet my character at the beginning, he’s professing to be the king of pussy, and he thinks he’s pimped the game of exploiting women. But by the end, he’s realized he wants to surrender to the power of women.”

The actor, a veteran of prestige projects for the past 30 years, with roles on projects like Lost, The Bourne Identity, and His Dark Materials (as well as blockbusters like The Mummy Returns and Suicide Squad), makes it a habit to be this inquisitive about his roles. His high-level character analysis earned him a breakout role on Oz, the groundbreaking HBO series about life inside a maximum security prison.

During his audition, he suggested to Levinson and co-creator Tom Fontana that the character, who was written as an American gang-banger, actually be African. The pair loved the idea, and the character of Simon Adebisi was born.

“They’d never written for an African character before, so they would write in American vernacular and then I would translate it, and that’s where you get these wonderful nuances in him,” he says. “You’ve got to read the room before you do something as I did, but both of the Levinsons create a space where an actor can really be creative, and that’s why they get such brilliant performances.”

Later, after the younger Levinson and Akinnuoye-Agbaje were working together, Sam revealed that he was so scared straight by Simon Adebisi when he was younger that he believes it is what kept him out of prison.

When he got the call that HBO was looking for their prime antagonist in season three, and was “casting a wide net” in the search, Akinnuoye-Agbaje was instantly interested. He’d long been impressed by the way Levinson was able to elicit high-level performances from new (and even non-) actors, and he was desperate to play the modern-day cowboy that he read about in the script (even though he knew that meant he would need to learn how to ride a horse and quickly).

His self-tape got him a meeting with Levinson, and he decided, based on a well-thought-out hunch about the character, to try out something different in the audition. “I had been trying to figure out why Alamo was in the strip club business, and so I told Sam about my idea that Alamo has this theory that everything on two legs comes out of a woman, and we spend the rest of our lives trying to go back in there,” he says.

“And if he could put a cash register next to that, it’s an eternal cycle of money.” Levinson loved the idea so much that he not only gave the actor the role, but he worked that theory into the show (it became Alamo’s viral episode one line of “ca-ching, ca-ching, ca-mother-fucking ching.”)

Once Akinnuoye-Agbaje arrived on set, he was taken with how the young cast’s camaraderie (“they’re really tight, and you feel that”), but decided to keep himself as separated as possible to preserve both his accent and the darkness that Alamo required; sort of a method-lite approach. He held steadfast to that even when the elder Levinson came, along with Sam’s mother, to visit the set for a reunion that he describes as “a lovely full circle moment,” and when Colman Domingo reported for work to film the scene in which Domingo killed Akinnuoye-Agbaje with a sawed-off shotgun.

They were only going to get two chances to film the shootout, thanks to the mess of the fake blood and how long it would take to reset, so they were on a tight schedule. “Our first introduction as actors and as people was cussing each other out,” he laughs. “We found that really funny, and when we broke, we got a chance to introduce ourselves. It was quite light, considering the gravity of the scene.”

He did, however, break character on Zendaya’s last day. Akinnuoye-Agbaje wasn’t on the call sheet, as the actress’s final scene was one with Hunter Schafer at Jules’ apartment, but he wanted to be part of her sendoff and to pay his respects.

They finished filming at one in the morning, and her family and friends joined the cast and crew for champagne and cake. It was far more closure than their characters’ relatively anticlimactic final scene together, in which Alamo gives Rue a bottle of what the audience later learns is Fentanyl-laced Percocet.

“That’s exactly how Alamo moves,” he says. “He likes the Chess game. When he identifies that Rue is a snitch and a traitor, he’s already made up his mind that he’s going to deal with her in a way that best serves him productively, but also serves his sadistic nature. If he can force her to kill herself, it’s far more poetic. And, if were ever to come to bear, it’s an alibi.”

Throughout this season, the longtime character actor has felt more attention from the public than ever, and from an entirely different fan base than his other projects. “This show is the voice of Gen Z, and most of them don’t know that I’ve been doing this for 30 years or that I’m British,” he laughs. He also knows that being the face of the man responsible for the death of the show’s protagonist even if that man was brought to (very bloody) justice.

Zendaya has created this character who is beloved by a generation, so it’s personal to them. And the manner in which she goes, I think, is going to stir up a lot of dialogue. Alamo was an amazing character to play, but I was happy to bid him farewell, and now I’m happy to leave him with the voracious fans.”