Photo via HBO
“You’ve been a bad, bad dog”, Nate (Jacob Elordi) half-heartedly sneers down to Cassie (Sydney Sweeney). “Woof woof”, she responds.
Four years since the last season, Sam Levinson’s teen drama Euphoria is back. But no one is a teen, or even pretending to be one, anymore. So how do you force a show defined by adolescence into adulthood? It’s a well-trodden problem, almost impossible to do well. Euphoria’s season three has lost not only its setting, but its sense of purpose.
Nate has taken over his dad’s construction company, he lives in a California McMansion, he drives a Cybertruck, and he’s hoping to build a cliffside retirement village. He’s also engaged to Cassie, a loveless and silent relationship born of poor decisions in high school – but there’s nothing a lavish wedding can’t fix. The issue (and the reason for the “woof woof”) is that Nate doesn’t want to splash out $50k for flowers, and Cassie, well, she hasn’t “waited [her] whole life for a ghetto wedding”. If she has to pay for her own flowers, that’s what she’ll do. And if her only means of making money is taking pictures for OnlyFans dressed as a dog or a baby, that’s what she’ll do.
But Nate and Cassie’s suburban nightmare isn’t the sole focus of Euphoria’s new season; these scenes of domestic hell act as a relief for the Breaking Bad / Grand Theft Auto mashup that has become Rue’s (Zendaya) life. Since leaving high school, Rue, the troubled teenage addict, has been taking more drugs than ever. It seems she’s no longer simply ingesting them but rather smuggling them across the Mexican-American border in balloons the size of golf balls inside her stomach. She’s also toying with the idea of finding God, or becoming a pimp.
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These characters have long since left the high school that bound their lives together, and it seems that the show is struggling to find anything to replace this. There are glimpses of Maddie (Alexa Demie) and Lexi (Maude Apatow) working in Hollywood, and apparently, Jules (Hunter Schafer) has become a sugar baby. But there are no more house parties or hallway run-ins, leaving the show feel at best highly disjointed, each character siloed into a storyline more ridiculous than the last.
Some of that disjointedness reflects what’s happened off-screen. Since the release of the last season many of the actors who got their start in this show have reached dizzying heights of fame, lauded with awards, contracts, and controversies. There’s also been real life tragedy. Eric Dane, who played Nate’s violent father, filmed his last scenes shortly before he died of motor neurone disease. Angus Cloud, who played the earnest drug dealer Fezco, passed away from an accidental overdose in 2023 – his story, which was one of the best in season two, is brushed away with a mention that Fezco is in prison.
Euphoria’s depiction of drugs, sex and abuse for its underage audience has always been controversial. But the first two seasons pulled it off. In the most extreme and cinematic ways, it spoke to the loneliness and claustrophobia of adolescence. The teenagers made terrible decisions, but there was always the hope of redemption – a better life after high school.
Much of the craft that sustained that balance has either dulled or disappeared. The dream-like aesthetic, the rhinestones in suburbia, have been swapped out for something harsher: striplighting, sand and fentanyl dens. Labrinth, who acrimoniously departed the project, previously provided the score which acted as the beating heart of the show. He has been replaced by Hans Zimmer, a titan in the industry, but this orchestral score is more suited to a space epic than youthful ennui.
The performances, too, feel diminished. Zendaya remains compulsively watchable, capable of holding attention even when the material falters. But that’s not a triumph of writing; it’s a testament to her presence. (I recently spent three minutes watching her advertise athleisure dressed as a triangle and was just as engrossed.) Sweeney and Elordi, meanwhile, seem drained of the volatility that once made their performances compelling, stranded in scenes that mistake degradation for depth.
Levinson has brought this cast, now at the height of their fame, back for what feels more like a humiliation ritual than a victory lap. These actors have graduated from Euphoria High, and the thing with school reunions is no one wants them.
[Further reading: Gwendoline Riley is haunted by herself]
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