Warning: Major spoilers ahead

After being pulled over by the DEA, Rue is arrested and hauled in for questioning. They grill her on where she was going and has to think on her feet when giving them answers. When they ask her about her relationship with Laurie, she denies knowing her well, referring to her only as “the monotone lady”.

She lies about ever having been to Mexico, but when they show her a photo, as well as the bag of drugs found in her car, it’s hard to deny what’s going on. They say she faces decades in federal prison, but they tell her they can help – if she becomes an informant for them in their case against Alamo and Laurie. She breaks down in tears and reluctantly agrees to be their snitch.

They switch out the drugs in her possession with sugar pills and laxatives and tap her phone so they can contact her when they need to. They set it up so that their calls will show up on screen as “Mom”.

When she returns to Alamo’s office, she’s in a bad state and he notices this. However, he is more preoccupied by a new girl, Kitty, who is auditioning. Alamo tells her they gave Laurie ‘a taste of her own medicine’, making it clear they killed her pet parrot.

Alamo then takes Kitty through the club and into a backroom, where he has sex with her. Meanwhile Rue hands over the fake drugs to Big Eddy, who puts them in a safe.

At his home, a battered and bruised Nate is trying to make the most of his bad situation. The toe he had cut off has been sewn back on, but as Cassie looks after him, he says he considers it a “metaphor” for their marriage. He thinks that the scar will be a motivator for him to do better in future.

Cassie is not as convinced though, especially when he can’t even keep his metaphor straight. When she asks how much he owes, he hesitates, but eventually buckles and estimates around $1million. Cassie is furious, and even though he asks her to keep her faith in him and their relationship, she tells him the fairytale is over, packs some suitcases, and calls Maddy to get her out of there.

As the pair get to work on building up Cassie’s OnlyFans brand, Maddy suggests they do something with her look. Together, she oversees a team as they provide Cassie with a makeover. Cassie pawns her wedding ring, rents an apartment across the way from her sister Lexi, and “invests in herself”.

Meanwhile, Jules gets a call from Lexi with a work opportunity. She wants her to create a piece of art for the TV show that she's working on, and Jules excitedly agrees. After showing her a canvas with a fairly vague brief, she lets Jules get to it.

However, after Jules’ artwork is installed, the producers get a panicked call - Jule’s piece features transexual figures in a park with exposed penises. Lexi’s boss takes it out on her, asking what she was thinking by hiring someone who would do that for a network TV show. Lexi is stunned, and Jules is hauled in for a correction. However, on learning that she is trans, they attempt to handle the matter delicately.

Jules is visibly distraught when asked to remove the nudity from the painting. Upon learning how long it would take for the picture to be amended, a producer reschedules the shoot to the next week.

Lexi apologises to her boss, who tells her mistakes happen, but this was an expensive one. An hour-and-a-half of shooting equates to $56,000. With an extension for a week at the studio, the bill rises to $191,000. She warns Lexi not to be a “net negative”. Downhearted, Lexi returns to her apartment, where she is disturbed by her sister taking pictures for her OnlyFans across the way.

Back in front of the canvas, rather than paint clothes on the portrait, Jules furiously covers the entire thing in swirls of red paint – including another phallus – before walking away.

At Laurie’s ranch, she holds a funeral for Paladin, while the rest of her crew plan a way to get back at Alamo. Rue gets a call from the DEA for an update, but she warns them that they’ll unlikely ever do business together after Alamo murdered the bird. They tell her that if she can’t find a way to link the two groups, they will bring her in under the original charges.

At her and Lexi’s complex, Cassie gets to work posing for photos by the pool, as the gardener points a leaf blower in her direction to create a windswept look. Maddy takes the pictures on her camera, while Lexi looks on unimpressed at her sister’s new career venture. She tries to tell Cassie that she is worth so much more than her body, but she brushes this off, replying that “my body is worth a lot”.

Rue arrives asking Maddy to help get her some drugs, which concerns Lexi, although she insists she’s getting them for her boss. Maddy says she’s not willing to help her drug-addicted friend find a dealer, and Lexi calls them all out for their ‘pathetic and disturbing’ behaviour in the name of getting money.

Nate heads to a councillors’ hearing to make his plea to get his project back on track, construction having been disrupted by the endangered flowers found on site. Presenting a restructure of the building, he begs them to let him continue with the build, but is swiftly denied. He breaks down in tears, begging them to reconsider as he’s losing everything. He makes a personal plea to Bill on the board, getting on his hands and knees, but it amounts to nothing.

Rue joins Alamo and Bishop in a poker game, where she tries to record him greenlighting a drug deal. However, it raises his suspicions that she’s suddenly so interested in his drug business, especially when she wanted to "go legit.” He presses her, and she panics.

When he realises she’s hiding something, he calls her a rat – but arrives at the incrrect conclusion, assuming that she’s using again. She tells him she had a “slip up”, but the tension is deescalated when she miraculously beats Bishop’s full house on the river. Despite this, he’s still mad at her, warning that drugs will get her killed if she continues. She promises it won’t happen again.

Later that evening, she cleans up Angel’s locker for new girl Kitty. The other girls notice, but simply state life goes on. That evening, Kitty takes to the stage for the first time, and Rue notices Alamo with a group of men looking on backstage. She notices them hand Alamo money, before he takes them to meet Kitty, and they head to a private room.

Once inside, Kitty snorts drugs as the group of men sip champagne. From the office security camera, Rue sees them have group sex, with it being implied that the men are violently abusing her.

Across town, Cassie and Maddy head to a party held by TikTok celebrity Brandon, where Maddy promises to “introduce her to some friends”. Maddy warns Cassie to stay sharp and focused because the other women at the party are sharks, telling her that her mission is to tease Brandon but not have sex with him, as he’ll never see them again otherwise.

Cassie quickly brings attention to herself by dancing on a table with another girl and kissing her, with Brandon soon joining them. They head into a bedroom with Brandon to do cocaine.

It’s revealed that the other girl knows Maddy, and when Cassie talks about how she is a Hollywood agent, she reacts with confusion.

Maddy, who has become separated from Cassie, finds the room they are in and starts banging on the door. Cassie ignores them, and snorts cocaine off the stomach of the other model to illicit Brandon’s attention. As the group all start doing cocaine, the other model starts to feel ill and is sick in the bathroom. Left alone and high as a kite, Cassie pulls out all the stops to seduce Brandon – with the powder going everywhere.

Maddy finds a bunch of Brandon friends to knock the door down. They get in just as Brandon straddles Cassie – the timing is perfect as Maddy records the whole thing and Cassie tells everyone where to find her on OnlyFans.

Back at the Silver Slipper, Rue checks in on Kitty as she cleans herself up in the bathroom. She’s out of it, and her makeup is running. She asks Rue is she has any more ketamine. Rue asks if she’s doing OK, or if the men hurt her. Kitty says no.

When Rue asks if she’s being forced to do this, Kitty vacantly tells her she “likes to dance”. Despite having checked under the stalls to see if the coast was clear, the conversation is overheard by Magick, another dancer at the club, who had raised her feet up. She makes her presence known, leaving the bathroom while whistling a tune.

Rue heads outside for some air, looking sick. She tries to make a phone call but realises she has left her phone in the office. Big Eddy finds it and sees her lockscreen is a photo of Rue with Fez. Magick storms in and tells him what she overheard in the bathroom, saying she doesn’t trust her and accusing her of being a rat.

When Rue heads back inside, she sees Kitty already dancing with a new client. In the office, she asks Big Eddy for her phone, but he stops her, saying he’s broken one of his rules by entering his office alone. Just then her “Mom” calls, and knowing it’s actually the DEA, she asks if she take it. Having heard everything over the wire, they warn her she’s been compromised and will need to discredit Magick if she’s to keep up the ruse.

Back in the office, she lays into Magick, calling her a “hood rat” which makes Magick furious. When Big Eddy asks if she spoke to Kitty or not, Rue says she did, but only to check if she was OK because that’s her job. She then accuses Magick of being on drugs and tells Big Eddy to search her locker.

However, their argument is interrupted by the arrival of two armed men in Barak Obama masks who hold up the office. Holding a gun to Rue’s temple, one threatens to shoot unless they open the safe. When Big Eddy refuses, he’s shot in the stomach. It’s drowned out by the noise of the club, with only Kitty hearing it from the dressing room – but she snorts more drugs and ignores it.

As he bleeds out, Big Eddy folds and tells him the drugs and money are behind the safe. He opens it at gunpoint while Rue and Magick sit wide-eyed and blood-soaked on the couch. Once they grab the drugs and money, they run to a getaway car and flee.

Rue calls Alamo and tends to the wound, but he tells them to wait. Magick goes through the CCTV footage to try and find something that gives them away – and sees that the getaway driver is a blonde girl with big lips. Rue recognises it as Faye, knowing it must have been Laurie’s gang.

As Cassie and Maddy head home, Cassie’s phone is inundated with new subscribers to her OnlyFans account. Maddy tells her she has people’s attention... now she just needs to keep it.