“That’s the beauty of this country we call America,” a new acquaintance tells Rue (Zendaya) in the season three premiere of “Euphoria.” “Anyone can reinvent themselves.”
It’s a line that practically demands to be placed at the top of a review: a statement of purpose so direct that a reviewer could almost resent the lack of interpretation required. But in its typically maximalist style, the HBO drama doesn’t end there. In the next episode, Rue gets another piece of advice, this one from her ex Jules (Hunter Schafer): “You can’t just show up after all this time and think everything’s going to be the same.”
It’s been more than four years since “Euphoria” first hit the airwaves and, indeed, very little is the same. Nor could it be: since 2022, author Sam Levinson’s iconic creation has suffered the tragic deaths of cast members Angus Cloud and Eric Dane, as well as the departure of a third, Barbie Ferreira. (Dane had completed filming season 3 before passing away from ALS complications earlier this year, while Cloud did not.) Behind the scenes, producer and key Levinson collaborator Kevin Turen died in the fall of 2023. Such unforeseen catastrophes, together With the Hollywood strikes and the busy schedules of the increasingly famous cast, pushed “Euphoria” further and further beyond the plausible time window for a show set in high school.
Creative differences between Levinson and HBO over where to go from this existential crossroads further delayed the season. As my colleagues reported, possible directions included Rue, introduced as a teenager working to overcome her substance addiction, working as a surrogate mother or a private detective, but “the new scripts just didn’t seem like the tone of the show.”
After all that angst, the first three episodes of season 3 (of an eventual eight) do Feel like “Euphoria”: bombastic, elegant, and able to offset grandiosity with sly, cutting humor. what they No I feel like it’s tied to the ballast that kept the first two seasons on the rails even at its most over-the-top. “Euphoria,” the first teen-centric show in the history of its prestigious network, has always been the R-rated version of a high school drama, but a high school drama nonetheless. The characters fit certain archetypes: Rue’s friend Lexi (Maude Apatow) was the shy, perceptive nerd; Bully Nate (Jacob Elordi) was the rich jock who gleefully abused his abundant privilege. Crucially, the show’s histrionic extravagance was meant to illustrate the life-or-death risks of youthful emotions. It was absurd to juxtapose Lexi’s revealing school play with a deadly drug bust, as the Season 2 finale did. It was also effective.
In season 3, “Euphoria” retains the crime elements without the strategic contrast. Rue has spent the last five years transporting fentanyl across the Mexican border, paying off her debt to American trafficker Laurie (Martha Kelly). The premiere begins with Rue driving her beat-up car up a makeshift ramp and over the border wall, only to leave it suspended in the air after several fascinating minutes of silent maneuvering. In a sense, it is the ideal reintroduction. The scene is gorgeously shot by cinematographer Marcell Rév and absorbingly performed by Zendaya, whose star power is on full display as she wordlessly directs the camera. But it’s also a bit empty and flashy on its own, which the viewer may realize when they later learn that Rue has crossed the border crossing many times without incident. (She’s become a pro at smuggling bags into her gut, as demonstrated in a gruesome, gag-filled montage.) Why leave the vehicle hanging? Because it seems incredible, we guess. Any story progression is just a nice bonus.
Such spectacularity is nothing new; However, the absence of a center of gravity to control Levinson’s instinct for excess is. The best attempt at a replacement for “Euphoria” is a sudden emphasis on the sex trade that encompasses the cast. Through a series of maneuvers, Rue manages to exchange Laurie’s coercive employment for that of Alamo Brown (Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje), a strip club magnate who quickly puts her to work managing one of his establishments. Rue is on the same path as several of her former classmates: Jules dropped out of art school and hired a sugar daddy to support her painting practice; The moody and self-pitying Cassie (Sydney Sweeney) has started an Onlyfans to fund her upcoming dream wedding to Nate.
The change in the union of themes is so total and abrupt that it cannot help but seem somewhat random. Addiction has not completely disappeared from history; Rue lies to Jules that she is now “sober in California” and that her duties at the Silver Slipper club include accompanying employees in rehab. In a note accompanying the advanced evaluators, Levinson cites the third of the 12 steps of the Alcoholics Anonymous program (surrendering control to a higher power) as inspiration, and Rue flirts with Christianity in conversations with her sponsor Ali (Colman Domingo). But at least in the first half of the season, Rue’s recovery is no longer the driving force of “Euphoria,” even though the show is still named after the high she’s chasing with drugs. And three hours later, it’s still unclear what drives Levinson so much about trading intimacy for money that he’s made it the show’s new focus, besides (optimistically) the ambition to make radical social statements about America under late capitalism or (cynically) the desire to pose Sweeney in various skimpy outfits.
And still! Levinson still gets the best performance from Sweeney, the rising star he has given since… the last season of “Euphoria.” “The Housemaid” and “Anyone But You” may be box office hits, but it’s here that she plays the wide-eyed Cassie who hardens into a demanding, materialistic housewife in training. Even if her character no longer makes much sense (20-something Cassie seems to crave a pampered domestic life and online notoriety in equal measure), Sweeney has plenty to work with, including a long-awaited confrontation with her former best friend Maddy (Alexa Demie), and she rises to the occasion. In that poolside scene alone, she is both vulnerable and defensive, performative and pleading. Given how stiff the performer can be at her weakest, “Euphoria” seems to unlock something in Sweeney, just as the tomboyish, deadpan but sensitive Rue remains one of Zendaya’s signature roles even as she unleashes original adult films like “The Drama” at the box office.
Watching Season 3, it’s easy to see why “Euphoria” launched or accelerated so many careers and why (aside from contractual obligation) most returned for what surely seems like one last hurray. It’s also apparently not about raising profiles: Akinnuoye-Agbaje is a veteran actor, but he is positively magnetic as the seductive and menacing Alamo, whom Rue compares to the devil with a characteristic touch of subtlety. Guest stars like Sharon Stone and Spanish pop star Rosalía have shades of stunt casting, though they are strategically deployed, in Rosalía’s case, pole dancing in a neck brace. It is clearly rewarding and, equally important, fun act on the basis of “euphoria”, perhaps even more so when history is increasingly detached from any stable basis.
As a result, “Euphoria” never stops being entertaining. Over the years, Levinson has proven capable of creating an engaging spectacle while he sleeps. (Even “The Idol,” his disastrous collaboration with The Weeknd, demanded attention, if not approval.) There’s simply a lack of articulation in the various elements of Season 3 that this new incarnation of “Euphoria” has yet to overcome. The Western landscapes that form Levinson’s latest visual obsession are a joy to behold, but the new genre feels no more connected to a suburban coming-of-age story than the characters’ new activities.
The few attempts at cohesion that exist only highlight the extent to which “euphoria” has surpassed or outlived its origins. Lexi now works in a Hollywood writers’ room, which traces her past as a playwright; Maddy, who works as a talent manager for the star of Lexi’s show, is more convenient than convincing. At least Cassie and Nate’s seemingly doomed union, if not their new side business, feels like an extension of the original mission: They’re becoming their parents, as underscored by Dane and Alanna Ubach’s touching, sometimes hilarious turns as Cassie and Lexi’s mother. Elsewhere, it’s hard to shake the feeling that “Euphoria” has become a fanfiction unto itself, or perhaps a Trojan horse for a loose set of ideas that Levinson has shoehorned into his current platform. When I pressed play on the Season 3 premiere, I was eager to find out what kind of show “Euphoria” is now. About halfway there, I still don’t really know.
The third season of “Euphoria” will premiere on HBO and HBO Max on April 12 at 9 p.m. ET, with the remaining episodes airing weekly on Sundays.
