Think Narcos. Think Breaking Bad. Think of modern-day cowboys, shoot-outs, drugs, and sexually-available women. Sam Levinson has decided to ditch the hyper-fantastical high school setting for the delirium of drug trafficking near the U.S.-Mexico border. This new season of Euphoria, coming to us after more than four years of waiting, is as subtle as western boots on desert-scapes. Yet it tracks a similar route as most Wild West media, including leveraging las malas mujeres trope, which this season is transforming and constraining Maddy Perez’s (Alexa Demie) arc.

If Euphoria is a brand, it’s characterized by suburban dreamy sequences, iconic makeup and fashion, and tweet-worthy shocks. The best part of watching Euphoria is talking about Euphoria. While audience engagement for this new season is left to be seen (RIP Twitter), one thing is clear after watching the first three episodes of the show: season 3 glides into gendered and sexual tropes that often plague borderland narratives.

To begin thinking of las malas mujeres in Euphoria’s Wild West, we must understand the bad hombres of the genre, the racialized villains. In the past, he was a treacherous bandido, but nowadays, he’s a narco-trafficante. Regardless, he’s bad because he’s a foil to the making of the United States, the person/people who must be kept out.

While Euphoria does not have a bad hombre, the trope is vital to the show’s Wild West vision of the American Dream. In the first scene of this season, Rue (Zendaya) is attempting to cross over the U.S.-Mexico border discreetly with the help of Mexican men (interestingly, later in the episode, she has no issue driving through a port of entry despite transporting drugs into the U.S.).

So, the opening scene makes the Mexican side of the border the source of drugs and deception. The men build a temporary bridge for Rue to drive across, and the visual of Rue’s car stopping right at the pinnacle of the border wall demonstrates her struggle with leaving behind the drugs and entering a place in which she can pursue a new life. On the U.S. side, there is violence and drugs, yet this gringo side offers the chance of attaining the American dream of wealth, power, and women.

Maddy is an interesting character this season because while she believes in the American Dream, she is also part of las malas mujeres. Desirable but bad, these women in the Westerns of the past and present may be prizes for the protagonist if they denounce los bad hombres (think of La Malinche), but her overwhelming sexuality is dangerous. Like Charles Ramírez-Berg argues in Latino Images in Film, these stereotypes are meant to degrade and generalize groups of people, although they can also toggle between progressive and regressive portrayals based on the specific narrative and performance. The main question we have to ask ourselves is: how much of whose story do we see and for what purposes/audiences?

In previous seasons, Maddy is fashion-forward, with some of the most intricate makeup and clothing in the show, at times referencing Alexa Demie’s Mexican roots. Besides her styling, her direct yet caring demeanor has made her a fan-favorite. While the show was set in (probably close to NYC) suburbia, this season places Maddy in Los Angeles as a talent manager. She traveled to Southern California believing in her grit and resourcefulness. And this new location could be an amazing opportunity to view the complexities of seeking the American Dream as a daughter of immigrants.

But she is once again thrown back to a similar storyline revolving her ex-boyfriend, Nate (Jacob Elordi), and ex-best friend, Cassie (Sydney Sweeney).

In the Wild West, las malas mujeres can also include sex workers, and Euphoria makes the only other Latina character this season, Angel (Priscilla Delgado), work as a stripper. While Maddy distances herself from sex work, she is still degraded by others, like Nate’s parents, for her full-swing mala mujer attire, with dark lips, rosarios, and cut-out clothing. And furthering her role as a secondary (aka not main) character, fans have speculated that she will enact a revenge plot against Nate and Cassie while simultaneously hustling for her own career.

In a show relishing in its own Wild West of bad hombres and malas mujeres, Euphoria seems content to leave Maddy Perez as a stereotype. Instead of investigating what Maddie’s overt sexuality means to her, season three is happy to use it as a trope, just another reason some shouldn’t have access to the American Dream.