The Drama: Fans Think They've Found The Real Villain In Zendaya's Divisive Comedy

Do not attend any weddings or continue reading this article if you haven't seen "The Drama," the new dark comedy starring Zendaya and Robert Pattinson. You've been warned: full spoilers lie ahead!

Kristoffer Borgli's bleak, uncomfortable, and thought-provoking dark comedy "The Drama" has fans absolutely freaking out on social media — and it looks like they've pinpointed the "real villain" of the movie. It's not Zendaya's Emma Harwood, who's set to marry Robert Pattinson's Charlie Thompson before she reveals a secret that changes everything. It's Alana Haim's Rachel.

If you've seen "The Drama" — and, based on the movie's solid box-office haul, it's quite possible that you did — you know that the secret Emma reveals is that, as a lonely and depressed teenager, she planned a school shooting. She very nearly went through with it, but after a different mass act of violence at a mall killed one of her classmates, she changed course and instead, quite ironically, became an anti-gun activist. This is the secret that Emma shares, one drunken night, with Charlie and their friends Rachel and Mike (Mamoudou Athie). Why? It's actually Rachel's fault; she and Mike reveal that they shared the worst things they'd ever done before their own wedding, so they go around and share them again. Mike used an ex-girlfriend as a human shield against an aggressive dog, Rachel locked a young neighbor into a secluded and abandoned RV for many hours (at least overnight, possibly for multiple days), and Charlie cyber-bullied someone. When Emma shares her secret, Rachel absolutely erupts, claiming that her negative reaction is because Rachel's cousin Sam (Anna Baryshnikov) is in a wheelchair because of a mass shooting. 

As "The Drama" continues, though, Rachel's behavior looks like the least acceptable — and fans are taking notice on social media. In fact, they've decided that Rachel is the story's bad guy.

Over on X, people have big feelings about Rachel and why she's the real villain of "The Drama," but let me clarify something extremely important. Rachel is a total horror show, and I agree with that ... which is precisely why Alana Haim's talent should be celebrated. We've all met this woman. We've all hated this woman and cringed while she berated a server in front of us because there's too much ice in her drink. Haim's performance as one of the worst people anyone's ever met is truly universal, which is obviously why there's so much social media chatter about her.

As content creator Anmol Jamwal wrote on his X account, Rachel is the "most insufferable character," and he made a great point about why she's all too familiar. "Everyone has had this person in their friend group. Showcase moral superiority but don't back it with their actions," he mused. "Their conversations are laced with condescension and each statement is intended to make you self doubt!" @watchwithdiya echoed this sentiment, writing, "[T]he hypocrisy in ['The Drama'] is insane but also very well thought out because [Rachel] actually DID something objectively awful but still positions herself as morally superior!! It's such a perfect portrayal of how people weaponize morality." @SammyJReacts simply posted a picture of Rachel with the caption, "Biggest movie villain of 2026 so far."

My favorite read, though, came from critic Courtney Howard. "I thought Alana Haim's character's dark secret in ['The Drama'] was more disturbing than Zendaya's because she went through with it and it was actually traumatizing to another human," she wrote. "The underlying commentary is about who gets to be given grace and who doesn't." This, I think, is the salient point.

Now that "The Drama" is out there in the world, I admittedly am worried that people will focus way more on Emma's hastily canceled violent plot than something I think Courtney Howard pointed out pretty beautifully. What Rachel did is, arguably, a lot worse than what Emma, in fact, did not do; Rachel left a child locked in a small space alone in the remote woods and then didn't tell any adults where he was. (Worse still, she offhandedly says the kid was "fine," but she doesn't really seem all that sure.) Beyond that, though, the way Rachel handles this entire ordeal is categorically insane. She stops speaking to her friend, uses her cousin as her own human shield of sorts, and then delivers one of the worst maid of honor speeches in cinematic history ... complete with sassy little finger-guns.

Zendaya, who's shown us throughout her run on "Euphoria" that she's willing to play morally ambiguous characters, delivers a truly astonishing and layered performance as Emma, a person who does seem to have grown and changed since she struggled as a teenager. When I left "The Drama," I didn't, at any point, think it was actually about this act of mass violence. Instead, I saw it as a film that asks what we can forgive in someone we love ... and whether or not we're able to do that. (By the end of the story, both Emma and Charlie have done some pretty bad things, and the movie's final moments certainly indicate that the two strive to start fresh and reconcile.) "The Drama" is a sharp and insightful movie about love and forgiveness — and the villain isn't Emma. It's Rachel.