Editor's Note: The following contains spoilers for Euphoria Season 2, Episode 6.The most recent episode of Euphoria, “A Thousand Little Trees of Blood,” had a lot of good momentum going into it that it ultimately squandered. The previous episode had seen Zendaya get things back in focus with a transcendent performance that made it one of the show’s best. However, as with much of this show, the good aspects are often lost in the muddled aspects of the rest of the narrative. Specifically, there is one lingering aspect of the show that this season has been painfully unable to make work. Yes, it is now high time we talk about how Kat is being done a grave disservice by this season’s story. It has been a long-time coming, though it all came to a head in the show’s sixth episode.

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Up until this season and particularly egregious episode, Kat had been one of the show’s most interesting characters. Much of this was due to the strength of Barbie Ferreira’s performance in how she made Kat into a dynamic presence even as she was faced with great uncertainties. Central to this is her own identity and sense of direction, an element the first season saw her embracing in a process of self-discovery that was consistently engaging. It wasn’t always easy and was often painful, though it was a testament to Ferreira that the humanity of the character always shone through at every single turn.

Unfortunately, that was last season and this season could not be any more different. Not only is Kat absent from much of the show, but the aspects we do see of her are rushed to the point of being superficial. In the entirety of the season thus far, series creator Sam Levinson has inexplicably turned her from being a multidimensional character into a shallow sideshow that is in a narrative rut. In addition to completely jettisoning all the nuances of who Kat was up until this point, it betrays a deeper narrative uncertainty that has consistently plagued Euphoria.

From storyline to storyline, the show can vary wildly in both quality and narrative direction. Episode 6 is only the most recent example of how all over the place and poorly constructed the story can be when it lacks a clear focus. There has always been a feeling that the show was only holding things together by a thread. One hoped it could hold together, but it was always tenuous.

In this particularly poorly written episode, the show’s narrative house of cards came crashing down with Kat left in the rubble. It left Ferreira nothing to build on, stripping away all the work she had done to craft a nuanced character. In a baffling scene that falls utterly and completely flat on its face, Kat invites her boyfriend, Ethan (Austin Abrams), out for what he believes is a serious conversation. He cancels rehearsal and shows up, open to listening to whatever it is that she wants to say to him. While Ethan himself has similarly been forgotten in recent episodes, what we do remember of him from the first season is that he is a kind yet dorky guy. He hasn’t done anything wrong, he just isn’t the right person for Kat.

Kat has clearly been wanting to break up with Ethan after realizing that the relationship isn’t what she wants anymore. It is a decision that has been weighing on her since we last saw her an eternity ago at the beginning of this season. However, since the show seemed to forget about her almost entirely, it has been left hanging in the air without ever being substantially revisited. When it is now brought back up again several episodes later, the moment is completely undone by how underdeveloped the way Kat treats Ethan all ends up feeling. Rather than come out and say what she is feeling, she dances around the subject in a way that borders on being cruel. Ethan asks her for honesty, though Kat doesn’t back down from her out-of-character treatment of him that rings painfully hollow.

To be clear, this isn’t to say that characters need to always be kind and good people. There are many times when Euphoria has shown how the best of us can also hurt those we love, even when we don’t mean to. These moments, however hurtful and upsetting, made sense because we had seen how the characters were going down this path. It made the impact of the pain feel significant and meaningful. Not only has Kat not been given this path, but she hasn’t been on any path. Instead, the show just drops her into a scene as a totally different person out of nowhere with no clear development of her motivations or emotional state of mind. The scene flies by so quickly and feels so rushed that the only feeling you take away from it is narrative disillusionment. If the show cares so little for the characters that it doesn’t build any foundation for why they are doing anything, then why should we care?

By the time Ethan leaves the restaurant, hurt by Kat’s lack of openness with him, the only thing we are left with is a sense of bewilderment at what just happened. Euphoria being Euphoria, it bombards us with a bunch of other narrative developments with other characters. Usually, this might be enough to draw you back in. Increasingly, after inexplicable scenes like this, it is beginning to lose its impact.

Seeing scene after scene of chaos befall other characters, you can’t help but wonder what Kat is doing at this moment. Is she still sitting in the restaurant? How does she feel about things with Ethan? Does she regret how she handled it? Because of how little was offered in the build-up to this scene and its aftermath, the uncertainty about all these questions becomes a detriment to the story. The show doesn’t seem to know what it is doing or where it is going, a bad sign for the season’s remaining two episodes.

The impact of this perplexing and discordant scene overall is that it makes Kat into a completely different, one-note character that one worries will be what she is pigeonholed into for the rest of the season. Paired with a yawning narrative gap where there should have been character development, the audience is left without any sense of investment about what just happened or what comes next. Seeing Kat fall back into old habits and push people away would have been interesting if there had been any attempt to set up what was coming. Instead, there is just a void.

It feels like the type of scene you write out of obligation without any investment in what actually happens. You do it to write yourself out of a corner with the plan to never revisit it again by quickly abandoning it, hoping that no one will notice. The thing is, to steamroll over characters like Kat, is something we will continue to notice. No matter how much the show tries to distract us, if it loses the foundation of strong characters, the entire structure is at risk of collapsing and leaving only destruction behind.