Zendaya looks on the verge of tears in the new teaser trailer for Euphoria’s upcoming special

HBO released the first teaser trailer for its upcoming Euphoria special on Monday.

Zendaya, 24, was featured front and center as the series’ lead Rue Bennett, while her costar Hunter Schafer made a brief appearance in flash back.

The special is the first of two stopgap episodes to tide viewers over after filming on the show’s second season was delayed by the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.

The new teaser appears to take place in the immediate aftermath of the season one finale, in which Rue opted not to follow her friend Jules (Schafer) on a train out of town.

Following their separation, she returned home and snorted a line of cocaine, which launched into a fantasy musical number, leading some fans to worry she might have overdosed and even died.

The teaser confirms that Rue is alive, though clearly on shaky ground. 

She looks depressed as she sits in a booth in a diner late at night in her customary burgundy hoodie while replaying the memory of their manic trip to the train station.

‘What if we just go to the city? What if we just f**king left?’ she recalls herself suggesting to Jules.

Jules is bathed in eerie white light in the flashback, and both sport glittering eye makeup.

‘Rue, it was your idea,’ she hears Jules saying as she’s about to get aboard the passenger train.

‘I know it was my idea, but I just, I don’t think we’re gonna…’ she replies before the memory fades away and the train pulls out from the station. 

‘Maybe I deserved it,’ she muses in voiceover as she curls herself up in her booth while staring at the ceiling.

But the teaser ends with a hint of hope, as Ali, a member of Rue’s Narcotics Anonymous group, meets her in the diner.

‘Rue, why’d you call me? he asks, suggesting she may be getting some much-needed more support at a moment of crisis.

The episode was originally reported to be titled Trouble Don’t Last Always, but the teaser lists it simply as Part I: Rue, suggesting the second stopgap special will focus on another character in the series.

Zendaya, who became the youngest person ever to win the Emmy for best lead actress in a drama this year, revealed to Essence this month that the new episodes were expanded from one of her favorite scenes in the scripts originally intended for the second season.

‘Sam [Levinson] and I talk a lot over the phone, and during one of those conversations he was like, “What if we just did a few little in-between episodes that we could put between the seasons, just to give people something?”’ 

She continued: ‘He basically turned it into one long episode. The storytelling method is so different from the first season. It feels like Euphoria but feels nothing like Euphoria, in a beautiful way.’

The former Disney star added that she was ‘so excited to be able to get back to it, because I miss playing Rue. Being able to get back into her Chucks definitely was very, very special for me.’

Euphoria’s first special episode will air on HBO and HBO Max on December 6.