Euphoria's Javon Walton Hinted Ashtray Could Still Be Alive
Seems like a long shot, but I'll take it.
Euphoria’s second season ended with a massive bang, as multiple storylines crashed to a head in the finale. From things finally going down between Cassie and Maddy to Nate’s overdue decision about his father, it felt like the peak drama was everywhere except onstage with Lexi’s play. But it was the shootout at Fezco’s apartment that sealed the deal for fans, tearing his little family apart. However, in a recent interview, Euphoria star Javon Walton suggested Ashtray may still find a way to return for Season 3.
Warning: Spoilers for the Euphoria Season 2 finale follow. Ever since Ashtray’s instinctual murder of Mouse in the Season 2 premiere, things in Fezco’s house have been on a crash course with the cops. But Ashtray’s stabbing Custer in the neck at the first sign of cooperation with the cops sealed the deal. Fez tried to tell his kid brouther that he would take the fall for him, but Ashtray wasn’t going to listen — he was going to go out in a blaze of glory.
Although the cops busting into Fez’s apartment and raining down a hail of bullets on Ashtray through the bathroom door didn’t take out the kid immediately, the odds were never in his favor. The last shot of Ashtray was of him in the bathroom, a red circle of a laser sight from a rifle glowing on his forehead. The camera cut away, the shot was fired, and the thud of a body hitting the floor followed. Twitter grieved.
However, as Lexi might say, it is a truth universally acknowledged that a character dying onscreen is not officially dead until fans have seen the body. And although one might think (hope) that Euphoria’s cutaway was to spare us all the sight of a kid being gunned down by cops, some are not convinced. And that includes actor Javon Walton, who plays Ashtray.
Walton has good reason to doubt his character’s fate. For one thing, up until the day before Walton shot the scene, Ashtray was supposed to survive Season 2. In an interview with Variety, he revealed the original victim was the more obvious candidate: “[Ashtray] wasn’t supposed to get shot! It was Fez that was supposed to get shot at first, which is crazy. And then, like a day before, they changed the storyline to me getting shot.”
According to Walton, many things changed in the final hours before the finale was filmed, including all of his lines. “Ashtray was supposed to have certain dialogue, and Sam [Levinson, the show’s creator] just decided to cut it because he likes [that with] Ashtray, there’s a lot of mystery behind him,” he told Variety.
Perhaps that is why, despite talking about the finale being his last time on set, he still hopes the character could return. “There’s definitely hope for Ashtray to still be alive,” he said. “Because if there’s somebody who could take a bullet in the show, it’s Ashtray... I believe he has a shot about being around for Season 3.”
Euphoria Seasons 1 and 2 are streaming on HBO Max. Season 3 is greenlit but does not yet have a release date.
