Throughout the third season of HBO’s Euphoria, Rue (Zendaya) has escaped death’s grasp like the protagonist of a Final Destination movie, surviving a series of chaotic, near-fatal encounters by pure cunning, good luck, or divine intervention. But in the 93-minute series finale, “In God We Trust,” Rue’s Houdini act succumbs to her greatest temptation: she ingests a fentanyl-laced Percocet, given to her by strip-club owner and drug kingpin Alamo Brown (Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje) in a sinister act of revenge for her working with the DEA. Instead of reuniting and reconciling with her family and friends, Rue dies facedown on a couch, another statistic of an unrelenting addiction.

But like any great Western, creator Sam Levinson’s Euphoria ends with catharsis in the form of retribution. In the finale’s penultimate sequence, he stages an old-fashioned showdown inside Alamo’s grimy kingdom, The Silver Slipper, transforming the nightclub into the setting for one last reckoning—not with rival Laurie, but with Rue’s surrogate father and avenging angel, Ali (Colman Domingo). He enters in full military garb, armed with a sawed-off shotgun, and devoted to one primary mission: killing Alamo Brown. That turns out to be easier than expected when Alamo lines up to duel and squeezes the trigger of an empty revolver. Moments earlier, Bishop (Darrell Britt-Gibson), his taciturn right-hand man and closest confidant, had quietly removed the bullets, a betrayal that leaves Alamo defenseless. Ali finishes the job with a pair of shotgun blasts to the chest and one final shot to the head.

As the smoke settles, Bishop delivers the episode’s epitaph: “May God have mercy.”

When Britt-Gibson watched the finale beside a live audience earlier in the week, he quickly grew overwhelmed. “It literally spans the entire emotional spectrum,” he says. “I thought I was prepared and then I watched it, and I was like, ‘Well, I’m not prepared.’” Unlike his loquacious and sometimes flamboyant boss, Bishop operated in constant stealth mode for the entire season—quiet, still, and monotone, never affording an inkling of his intentions. But some sense of moral, spiritual justice overcame his loyalty to Alamo in the final hour, enabling Ali to settle his score and send Euphoria out on a redemptive but mournful note. As Bishop once told Rue, “You never really know a motherfucker’s true intentions.”

The opportunity to end Euphoria with some lingering, karmic justice is not lost on Britt-Gibson, who has crept into memorable TV and movie roles ever since playing Darius “O-Dog” Hill on The Wire. Admittedly, he says, when his character killed Preston “Bodie” Broadus in the Season 4 finale, his action’s stigma followed him around for years. “It took a long time for people to get over that,” he says. “Anywhere I went, people wouldn’t let me live it down.” Two decades later, he hopes Bishop’s righteous path will look favorably upon him in the HBO universe. “I think we just bought ourselves some good grace in the world,” he laughs.

GQ: Let’s talk about that ending scene at the Silver Slipper. What was your reaction to reading that final showdown? How did it make you feel?

Darrell Britt-Gibson: It was one of those things where Sam told me, and you don’t even have to find words. You’re like, “Really?” But it all makes sense to me. The way that it’s written and shot by Sam is so masterfully done. The minute that Maddy [Alexa Demie] and Bishop walk into that club, your heart was just in your throat, because you’re just like, “Oh, anything can happen.” And then you bring in the incredible dog, Snowflake, and you’re like, “Oh, this is just the most intense thing ever.” You have no idea what is going to happen. It’s a perfect storm of tension that you could just cut with a knife.