Stars Break Down Bishop and Laurie’s Paladin Problem (Exclusive)

The battle between Alamo (Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje) and Laurie (Martha Kelly) went from bad to worse in Euphoria‘s latest episode, and it seems as though his right-hand man, Bishop (Darrell Britt-Gibson), has lit a match to ignite a war. Warning: Spoilers for Euphoria Season 3 Episode 3 ahead!

After calling Alamo a pig over the phone, Laurie was gifted with a literal pig in Episode 2, but this latest installment saw her send the pig back, having it dropped into the Silver Slipper, which led the proprietor to shoot the animal with his golden gun. As a means of getting back at Laurie, Alamo sought to take something from her that would hurt. According to Rue (Zendaya), that was her bird, Paladin.

And so, Rue and Bishop showed up at Laurie’s under the guise of purchasing drugs, but it’s a cover to get into the building so Bishop can poison her beloved bird. The tension in the scene itself is so thick, you could cut it with a knife, particularly when it comes to Bishop’s demeanor.

HBO

While we’ve gotten glimpses of him in the first couple of episodes, his emotionless approach makes us wonder if he’s Season 3’s true antagonist, to which Britt-Gibson notes, “It’s such a fascinating character, sort of like the baked onion… slowly peeling back the layers of him, and you never know when you’re gonna get to the center of it, and that’s what makes it so interesting. It’s unlike anything I’ve ever done.”

As he’s forced to put up with Laurie’s racist cousins, Bishop asks Laurie if she named the bird after Richard Boone‘s character. She remarks that she’s surprised her knows Westerns as a Black man, and he counters that it isn’t a Black or white thing. When asked if he related to cowboys or Indians, Bishop stated Cowboy, just moments before he tossed a wad of cash toward Laurie and her cousins, shooting at the stack with a finger gun.

The moment is undoubtedly cool for his character, who calmly poisoned the bird moments before Laurie walked over (he even plucks a feather from the doomed pet to wear in his afro). “I love that scene,” Britt-Gibson shared. “I love the way that Sam shot it.  I love the tension that builds in that scene. I love the dynamic of the players within that scene. There are real stakes, but also there’s this air of… the unknown exists heavily in that scene, and that’s what I love about it,” he continues. “It does set the stage, and I just think that it’s, again, peeling back the layers of the onion. It’s just the beginning.”

In other words, Bishop has only just lit a match, and Kelly seems to confirm this as she shares, “I think that Paladin was the closest thing to a real attachment that she’s capable of. I think that humans are probably too complicated for Laurie because she’s either a narcissist or a sociopath or both, but a pet like a bird doesn’t ask really anything of you, and so there’s no room for her to get mad or feel betrayed by the bird.”

As for what Paladin’s loss, which occurs moments before the final credits for the episode play, does to Laurie, Kelly shares, “She is devastated by his loss, and I don’t really think she ever recovers fully and ever feels like she’s fully on her feet again.” But rest assured, because no real animals were harmed in the making of this episode.

“It was a fully animatronic robot, and when we were filming, it was late at night, and they had to keep moving the position to get it to fall in a way they wanted it to fall,” Kelly recalls of filming Paladin’s death scene. “The guys who made this robot and were operating it were amazing.”

Despite the very fake bird that died onscreen, Kelly was still impacted by Paladin’s death as she reveals, “When I watched the episode, when he dies, it made me really sad, even though I knew it was a robot, because I love that bird in real life, he’s great.”

Will a war break out, and what will it look like? Only time will tell, but after Rue is nabbed by authorities on the ride out of Laurie’s, we can’t help but feel like the situation is about to get even more intense if she’s recruited to be an informant on these major drug players. Stay tuned and let us know your thoughts about the latest twist in the comments section below.

Euphoria, Season 3, Sundays, 9/8c, HBO