The Most Shocking Part of HBO’s ‘Euphoria’ is Ashtray, the Drug-Dealing 11-Year-Old

From the get-go, I understood that Euphoria wanted to scandalize me. HBO’s new teen drama opens with a clunker of an introduction to its lead character: she was born three days after 9/11, so she’s doomed to depression, you dig? From there, we get rampant drug abuse, a scene in rehab, and our heroine, 17-year-old Rue (Zendaya) happily returning to her dealer for more drugs. However, it’s at this point where Euphoria really shocked me. Rue’s dealer is a CHILD. Perhaps nothing has scandalized my 30-something ass quite like seeing a 10-year-old with face tats speaking to Zendaya like he was Deadwood‘s Al Swearagin.

THIS IS A CHILD, I SAY! He’s the kind of kid who’s still supposed to be riding bikes around the neighborhood and struggling with long division homework. Rue’s dealer is not a teenager, or even a tween. This is a child who still might have some teeth to lose and stuff under his pillow for the Tooth Fairy. He is a little boy, and instead of playing arcade games and watching Batman cartoons, he’s counting cash, spitting expletives, and dealing LSD-like pills.

Euphoria‘s pint-sized pill seller’s name is Ashtray — ASHTRAY!!! His parents didn’t even give him a proper noun for a name! — and he’s played by 11-year-old boxing phenom Javon “Wanna” Walton. Now, I had to comb IMDB to figure this out, because Ashtray is not referred to by name in Euphoria‘s pilot. He’s just a kid, slurping up cereal behind a beer fridge, greeting Rue by politely saying, “I thought your ass was dead.”

But Ashtray’s name really is Ashtray, and if you need further proof, Walton has made #AshTray a thing on his Instagram. Walton also has this really inspiring photo from set, showing that he takes the artistic process seriously.

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Puttin in work 😈

A post shared by Javon "Wanna" Walton (@onwardwanna) on Jan 29, 2019 at 9:57am PST

To be honest, I’m happy for Walton. He seems to be a hard-working and incredibly talented kid who is already “puttin in work” on Gillian Flynn’s upcoming Amazon series Utopia. (Not content to just be a thespian, Walton is doing his own stunt work.) He is talented. As Ashtray, Walton conveys an unnerving maturity that chills me to the bone. That takes a combination of charisma and craft. However, again, it chills me to the bone.

On the one hand, is Ashtray based on real child drug lords? Are the suburbs of America littered with tattooed children skipping school to sell drugs behind refrigerators? Do tattoo artists happily brand the cherubic cheeks of middle schoolers? I don’t have a kid yet, but Ashtray’s very existence makes me wonder if I want one. If Euphoria is meant to be a “real” look at teen life, then what hope is there for my unborn children? When I was a kid, I went home after school and played Solitaire on the family PC before eating half a box of Cheez-Its and doing my homework. Will my future children have to know the chemical compounds in ecstasy and which pills “mad people like to fuck on?”

Or is Ashtray what I suspect he is? An exaggerated portrait of youth gone astray. Do I believe there is at least one child out there with face tats selling drugs to teenagers? Oh, yes. If former child warlords Johnny and Luther Htoo exist in this reality, then Ashtray-adjacent children certainly live in present day America. I merely remain skeptical that there’s an Ashtray in every neighborhood. In fact, I’m guessing there are only like 43 kids like Ashtray in all of the continental United States. Euphoria is just pushing Ashtray hard to up the ante on how much it can scandalize me.

Well, guess what, Euphoria? I am indeed scandalized.

Where to stream Euphoria