Ramy kicks off the newest season preoccupied with the everlasting struggle between fate and free will. A quick montage of Ramy’s new life — exercising, going on walks with his dog, without his beard (it took me forever to realize why his face looked so different) — suggests he is doing a little better than last season. And while all seems calm on the surface, underneath there’s still doubt. “Do you believe in fate?” he asks in narration. He explains the meaning of inshallah (which translates to “if God willed it”) and how, in Islam, while everything is already fated and written, free will still exists. “It’s already been chosen, but we still have a choice,” he summarizes, noting the contradiction: Why even try if everything is already decided and fated?
From the jump, the premiere shows just how much Ramy has changed since last season. He’s not the same person he once was, and he seems, understandably, sadder. Ramy Youssef’s acting is also more substantial than ever as his character navigates his day-to-day life and questions the beliefs he once held so firmly.
“Did I fuck up my life, or was it always going to be fucked up?” he asks.
It’s difficult to tell if Ramy is being philosophical, pondering on the age-old question of fate, or if he’s looking for an excuse. Is he trying to say he’s been making bad choices and hurting people because God wrote it that way?
It’s been two years since the events at the end of season two, after he got married and told his new wife, Zainab, that he slept with his cousin the night prior, leading her to leave before morning. Ramy is still working for Uncle Naseem in the Diamond District, spending that time building up the shop online and getting over a million followers. Props to Ramy! Maybe he should quit the jewelry business and become a social-media manager. Regardless, he’s not done growing the business. He goes with his co-worker Yuval to meet with the Diamond Club, a group of Orthodox Jews with access to the best jewelry suppliers. In the meeting, Ramy is left alone with one of the Diamond Club representatives, Salim, who switches between speaking in Hebrew, English, and Arabic.
It comes as a shock when Salim asks Ramy if he believes in God, and Ramy says he isn’t sure. Although Ramy has been nowhere near a perfect Muslim for the past two seasons, he’s always been unwavering in his faith. Now he says he used to believe in God, but he doesn’t know anymore. Ramy’s ruminations on fate have a different meaning if he doesn’t believe in God. Inshallah is an empty promise now — God can’t will it if God doesn’t exist.
Salim tells Ramy that to get the club’s connections, Ramy needs to go with them to Israel to meet the big boss. What’s more, the Diamond Club is essentially the mob. It’s here that Ramy finds himself on the fence, but I have a feeling he’s going to work with them anyway. Ramy has never been one to make good choices. Or perhaps this is just another example of fate stepping in, giving Ramy another excuse for his bad decisions.
Back at home, we see why Ramy is so desperate to elevate the jewelry store and help his family: He owes $100,000 in dowry to Zainab. Obviously he doesn’t have the cash. Zainab’s two friends who were waiting to shake him down leave — but not before telling Ramy that he’s in “spiritual debt.” They’re certainly not wrong given what he did to Zainab, though $100,000 is a steep debt to pay. Plus, Egyptians don’t do dowry.
For a little while, the episode had me believing that Ramy had fully changed. He’s trying to better his life and help his family while questioning his fate. But then he shows us that he’s still the same in many ways, as the next scene finds him in Brooklyn at some random white girl’s house to have sex. Classic Ramy. Only this time, he has a few performance issues and the girl kicks him out.
To deal with those performance issues, Ramy meets up with his doctor friend, Ahmed, who has him hooked up to a monitor that scans his brain (unclear if this is a real thing; it seems dubious) and shows him pictures that might turn him on to figure out why he can’t get hard. Ramy, a notorious porn addict, says even porn is barely doing it for him anymore. Some of the images Ahmed shows Ramy include Bradley Cooper, “Sarah, the girl who wouldn’t let you ruin her life,” and a January 6 rioter fake-masturbating next to a picture of Bill Clinton. (I can’t imagine why none of it worked.)
Later, Ramy goes on a date with Sarah, whom we haven’t seen since season one. The date goes poorly, and Sarah leaves after they get into a spat about her nonprofit work, in which he says she can do that work because she’s rich and doesn’t have to worry about money. Ramy is on edge after she leaves, vaping in the bar’s doorway, when a white couple starts chatting with him. The man, who speaks some Arabic, notices the Arabic writing on Ramy’s necklace and asks what it says. It’s the Fatiha, the first verse in the Quran, which begins with an affirmation that God is gracious and merciful and asks God to show us the way. The white guy calls it a “banger,” while the woman he’s with claims to be a witch and says she feels some connection to Ramy as a member of a persecuted group. Ramy tells her it’s not the same. She didn’t grow up fearing hell, having constant guilt, or feeling like entire groups of people hated her. But, hey, she had Harry Potter.
“You just woke up one day and were like, I’m a witch,” Ramy says. “What have you been through, the witch community? Like, Salem? That really fucked you up?”
The boyfriend grabs hold of Ramy’s shoulders and tells him to take a breath and think about the passage on his neck. And then Ramy throws a punch, but it’s no doubt all the more frustrating to him when the guy doesn’t fight back and just holds him afterward, saying in Arabic, “May Allah protect you.”
I loved seeing Ramy call out the woman for comparing his experiences to hers. She became a witch during the pandemic and never had to deal with the emotional baggage of being Muslim or the racism and Islamophobia that Muslim kids dealt with post-9/11. The couple had good intentions, sure, but their comments exuded the ignorance of many self-proclaimed liberal white people in America who often like to pretend they’re also oppressed. And, yes, the punch was excessive, but Ramy’s bad decisions often lead him to introspection and revelations. (Plus they’re just entertaining.)
So was it a bad decision, or was Ramy always fated to end up here, throwing a punch at a witch’s boyfriend? Ahmed showed him a picture of Sarah, which led to his date with her, which led to this fight. Ramy has free will and made the choices that led him here, but how much was destined? Either way, I can’t wait to see what bad decisions Ramy makes next.
What’s a God to a Witch?
• Interestingly, though Ramy says he’s not sure he believes in God anymore, he still holds true to some of his values and traditions. The episode made a point to note that Ramy doesn’t drink. Sure, he has sex and breaks so many rules of Islam, but there are some things he still can’t shake.
• “All your relationships sound like porn,” Ahmed says to Ramy. This is too funny because it’s so true.
• Quick family update: They’ve been in major debt since his dad, Farouk, lost his job, and they may have to sell the house. Ramy’s cousin Shadi from Egypt is living in their garage. And don’t think I forgot about my favorite character, Dena, because I would never. Dena has a radical idea: Maybe they should sell the house and all live apart. Farouk loves the idea. He says Ramy and Shadi can get their own place, while he, Maysa, and Dena can get a small space together. A look of disappointment washes over Dena’s face as she quietly tells them that’s not what she meant. I wish Dena could speak up and move out, but it seems her parents’ traditional values still shackle her. She’s the girl; she can’t live on her own.
• Uncle Naseem hasn’t changed at all. At one point, he rattles off a list of the different ethnicities he doesn’t like in order of which ones he likes the least.
• Cousin Shadi is back, and he does not disappoint. In the garage, Shadi is in literal tears because he just finished watching American Pie, a movie he has seen only in Egypt, where it was censored. He tells Ramy he never knew about that scene — the one with the pie. Back in Cairo, he always felt like everyone in America knew something he didn’t. They knew about the pie. It turns out Shadi had taken ’shrooms, of course.
• Ramy’s new friend Yuval, an Orthodox Jewish man around his age, is the nephew of the Diamond Club’s leader. He wants Ramy to come to Israel so his aunt can finally see he’s doing well as a jeweler. Ramy, whom he calls the “Mo Salah of jewelry,” will make him look good.
• This episode also introduced the idea that Jews and Muslims are not very different at all. Ramy goes on a Christmas-Santa rant on Salim, but the point of the conversation is to show that, despite the constant global conflict between the two groups, Jews and Muslims are very alike. Given the possible trip to Israel and Ramy’s new relationship with this group of Orthodox Jews, I’m curious to see how this theme continues to play out.
• I loved it when the guy outside the bar called the Fatiha a “banger,” because it’s only a matter of time until some DJ makes a Quranic club remix, “Bismillah,” bumping over some heavy-bass beat.
