Is "Euphoria's" Nate Jacobs A Literal Sociopath?

As the first season of Euphoria comes to a close, one character is starting to reveal himself more and more as the show’s go-to villain. Nate Jacobs began the season as a typical douchey jock with some anger issues who also might also be going through a sexual identity crisis. Typical teenage problems, or as shown on television anyway. Fans were even rooting for him when he was cat-fishing Jules for weeks, thinking he was just too shy to expose his true self to her. When they finally decided to meet in person we were all anxious to see Jules’ reaction and hear Nate’s confession. That anxious excitement quickly turned to shock when Nate did a complete 180 and essentially threatened Jules to stay away from his family. Since then, the jock’s actions have only gotten more concerning and has me asking myself, is Nate Jacobs an actual sociopath?

Some common sociopathic traits include arrogance, deceitfulness, aggression, and lack of remorse. Sound familiar? That’s because in the last few episode Nate has shown each one of these traits and then some. First of all, arrogance is in his DNA. He is a wealthy, conventionally attractive, appearingly heterosexual white male living in a town that his father owns most of. Honestly, I’d be surprised if he wasn’t arrogant. Through his interactions with nearly every character on the show in his age bracket, he flexes his privilege. For example, the way he tries to intimidate Jules at a party before even formally meeting her shows his desire to dominate a complete stranger who he recognized to have less power than he did.

As for his deceitfulness, the most glaring example of this is when he spends weeks texting back and forth with Jules under the alias “Tyler”, getting her to send nudes to him only to use them against her later. Personally, I can’t get over the fact that he took that much time out of his own life to deceive a girl into falling for him, just to later stab her in the back. Nate’s anger manifests itself several times throughout the season. Maddy, Jules, and Tyler are all victims of his angry outbursts, but the one that we all thought would finally get him the justice he deserved ended in a way I could have never predicted.

In an episode that touches on domestic violence, Nate finally seems to be getting consequences for his actions. After getting upset at his girlfriend Maddy, he grabs her neck and chokes her, leaving noticeable bruises the next day. Maddy’s parents end up pressing charges, but Nate manages to come up with a scheme that proves his innocence. This is when his behavior jumps from troubled teen to full blown sociopathic. He ends up coercing Tyler (who he previously beat up almost to the point of death) into confessing to assaulting Maddy. You’re probably wondering why anyone would ever confess to a crime they didn’t commit. Well, this brings us back to the original reason Nate assaulted Tyler. Maddy and Tyler had relations and seeing how Nate believes that he possesses Maddy, this didn’t gel well with his anger issues. Since Tyler is 22 and Maddy is 17, Nate gave him an ultimatum: either confess to a crime he didn’t commit, or Nate would get multiple witnesses to report a statutory rape crime against him. He used a similar tactic to get Jules to testify against Tyler for the assault charge. Either testify, or he’d turn her in for sending nudes, i.e distributing child pornography.

This brings us to the most obvious sign of a potential sociopath. The scariest part about all of this and Nate is that he shows absolutely no remorse for any of it. In fact, he is amused by all the chaos. Fans on Twitter have crowned Nate Jacobs top five scariest villains because of how realistic his character is, encouraging his demise by the time the season finale premieres. Now all we can do it wait until Sunday to see how the mayhem unfolds.