Warning: Spoilers forEuphoriathrough episode 6 ahead.
Nate Jacobs (played byJacob Elordi) inspires a wide range of emotions fromEuphoriafans.
High among them seems to be anger and disgust at his seemingly sociopathic behavior.
Eddy Chen/HBO
One interesting emotion that I’ve noticed he elicitsparticularly in marginalized audiencesis terror.
But what exactly makes him so terrifying to these audiences?
Is it the ease at which this town allows him to carry out his evil misdeeds?
Eddy Chen/HBO
How he moves within it as if he is invisible?
Truth be told, all of these things make him relatively terrifying.
And how these power imbalances start relatively young.
Eddy Chen/HBO
He’s a cishet white male who can fall back on the safety cushion that is his wealthy family.
His dad, Cal Jacobs (played byEric Dane), seems to own 99.9% of the town.
But Nate is far from “good.”
Eddy Chen/HBO
I’vesaid this jokingly before, but Nate truly is a mini-Patrick Bateman fromAmerican Psychoin the making.
That is someone with extreme privilege and someone who is not afraid tomisuseit.
Which is why his clearly-unaddressed rage should beterrifying.
This is compounded by the fact that something seems to be up with Nate’s own sexuality.
He’s also confessed to Maddy that he’s going through a lot and is “confused.”
Nor is he capable of such.
He merely only deals with fixation, preoccupation, and obsession.
And Jules and everything stands in the way of what hewantschallenges that and inspires this sociopathic rage in him.
Everyone has to pay for it.
If you take their toy away like Nate sees Tyler doing with Maddy?
You gotta suffer.
Hold them accountable for something they did, like with the school shunning Natefor choking Maddy?
You gotta suffer.
You gotta suffer.
Because this is all essentially about control.
Control of themselves, others, and most likely the status quo that finds them at the top.
And perhaps that disturbing realization is the point.
