3 days ago
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I guess this is growing up. It’s been four years since Euphoria was last on our screens, and in its season three premiere, we reunite with our favourite messed-up teenagers five years since we last saw them either watching a school play or dodging bullets. Without the common thread of high school tying their drug binges, criminality and playwriting together, though, the result is an assemblage of highly stylised, richly saturated stories whose common thread seems to be “how much can we get away with?”
Where are they now?
We find Rue (Zendaya) returning to America after a drug run over the border. More than three years after her mum flushed the suitcase of drugs she’d stolen from Laurie (Martha Kelly), the kingpin (queenpin?) comes to collect – with interest. “And that’s how I became a drug mule,” Rue’s voiceover explains, as we watch her and Faye (Chloe Cherry) gag, spit and choke on dozens of balloons filled with fentanyl ahead of another border run.
There’s always been a level of debasement inflicted on the show’s female stars by its creator Sam Levinson. Cherry, a former adult performer, once said Levinson intended for her to be naked during her first scene of the show. Season two guest star Minka Kelly had a nearly identical experience. Add to this the stories about Sydney Sweeney, who plays Cassie, pushing back on requests for her to be topless, and a not-unsubtle trend starts to emerge.
By the end of the episode, we’ve watched Cassie play-act as a sexy puppy for a camera held aloft by her housekeeper, and beg her Cybertruck-driving fiancee, Nate (Jacob Elordi), for permission to make an OnlyFans account so she can make money for their upcoming wedding. Maddie (Alexa Demie), meanwhile, is working as an assistant to a Hollywood talent manager, looking after an actor who stars on the soap Lexi (Maude Apatow) works on.
We don’t see them, but learn through exposition that Fez, the character played by Angus Cloud, who died in 2023, is serving 30 years in prison after the drug bust that closed out season two and that Rue’s one-time girlfriend Jules (Hunter Schaefer) is doing sex work as a sugar baby. The more things change, the more Levinson refuses to.
The off-screen drama colouring season three
In the interests of time, let’s speed-run through an incomplete list of the controversies plaguing Euphoria’s return. After walking off set during production of season three, lead Barbie Ferreira announced her departure from the show in 2022 after seeing her character, Kat, reduced to an inconsequential sidekick.
British composer Labrinth, who created the show’s iconic score, posted “DOUBLE F--- EUPHORIA” on his Instagram, perhaps in response to Levinson replacing him with Hans Zimmer.
Last year, Nika King, who played Rue’s mother, posted a video of herself cleaning a cafe’s commercial kitchen overlaid with the text: “When people ask me if I’m filming S3 of Euphoria”, along with the caption “a job’s a job”. At an appearance, she told a crowd “I need season three! I haven’t paid my rent in six months … And Zendaya’s over in Paris at Fashion Week. I’m like, bitch, come home! I need you! Mama needs you!”
Zendaya and Levinson’s teams went back and forth in the press over whose schedule contributed to the delay in production – her team claiming his attention was on the maligned pop star project The Idol, his putting the blame on her schedule as the in-demand lead of films such as Dune and Challengers. It’s also rumoured she was eager to put distance between herself and Sweeney, whose American Eagle jeans commercial last year made her the accidental (?) face of eugenics. Footage from the recent Euphoria premiere showed Zendaya dodging photos with Levinson and Sweeney.
What is Euphoria trying to say?
That’s the big question. When we first met Rue, she was a troubled teenager fresh out of rehab, tortured by the cruelty of the world. Born close to 9/11, raised learning school shooter drills, left unsupervised and floundering. Levinson used his own teen years as a recovering addict as inspiration for the first season.
Watching Rue trying to manoeuvre a car across a quivering ramp erected over the border, seeing Cassie play house poolside as Nate fumbles his way through a real estate deal (he took over the family business from his dad, played by Eric Dane, who died from ALS in February), it feels something like fan fiction: taking characters from one universe and dropping them into another, then tapping the glass to see how they squirm.
Is it as bad as everyone’s saying?
“Euphoria has become a series with very little to say, none of it very audacious or compelling,” the BBC declared, while The Guardian called it “a grubby, humourless work of torture porn that’s obsessed with and repulsed by sex work”.
None of that is untrue. Perhaps the biggest disappointment of this third season is the feeling none of this matters. If there’s a bigger message to send about women selling their image, or immigration across the US border with Mexico, Levinson has proved himself an untrustworthy narrator.
As with the first two seasons, Zendaya’s performance is the show’s emotional compass, but distancing her from all that mattered – her mother, sister and Jules – only leaves her with apathy and violence. Watching Euphoria has always felt like being on a rollercoaster, but this season feels like the neon lights have burnt out and all it leaves you with is an upset stomach.
Where to from here?
Besides Lexi’s run-ins with Maddie at work and her open-door-policy that lets Rue crash on her couch, it’s unclear how much these characters are due to intersect this season.
By the end of episode one, Rue’s plotted to steal cash from one of Laurie’s minions, delivered pills to a strip club owner called Alamo Brown (Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje) then hung around too long – lured by his grotto full of topless, gyrating girls – discussing the “mystic power” of “that thing between your legs” with the man. It means she’s still in his house when one of his girls dies, and they realise Laurie’s gear is laced with fentanyl.
Rue’s been searching for some kind of god all episode: in a family in the desert who eschew technology, in Bible audiobooks she listens to while driving Uber and in the apple Alamo balances on her head before shooting it off. The door’s open to something new for Rue. God give us all strength to watch her step through it.
Euphoria (season three) is now streaming on HBO Max, with new episodes dropping on Mondays.
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