Four years is a long time for any television series to disappear and come back, but for HBO’s “Euphoria,” it feels like a different lifetime. The glitter eyeshadow is gone. The purple haze, bathroom standoffs and high school chaos are gone. Everything that made the show such a cultural phenomenon when it first came out in 2019? Gone.
Three episodes into its third and final season, “Euphoria” is almost unrecognizable, and not in a good way.
The season opens with a five-year time jump that pushes Rue Bennett (Zendaya) and her circle out of the fictional California town of East Highland and into adulthood. The friend group that was once tightly bound together (See: “Is this … play about us?”) is now scattered across cities and storylines, loosely connected by Rue’s narration.
Rue’s storyline is the most extreme. Still dealing with the fallout of her opioid addiction, she is now working as a drug mule for her previous supplier Laurie (Martha Kelly), due to the debt Rue owes her for the $13,000 worth of drugs that Rue’s mother flushed down the toilet in season two. This means swallowing balloons of fentanyl to traffic across the Mexican border. It is graphic, unsettling and just plain disturbing to watch. Eventually, she ends up working for a strip club owned by Alamo Brown (Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje), a ruthless man with a rehabilitation center on speed dial.
Earlier seasons of “Euphoria” were chaotic, but they had a point. They said something about adolescence, identity and self-destruction, and opened up larger conversations about the reality of drug and alcohol usage in high school.
At the same time, Rue is exploring Christianity — or at least the idea of it. She is searching for redemption or some kind of reset, which becomes one of the storylines asking a bigger question: Can someone really reinvent themselves, or are they always tied to who they were? It is the most grounded theme in the show right now despite everything else happening around it (and the fact that Rue considers herself “California sober,” but we will let her have her moment). Outside of Rue, things quickly become a whirlwind of odd dynamics and poor plot meshing.
Maddy Perez (Alexa Demie) and Lexi Howard (Maude Apatow) are both trying to climb social ladders in Hollywood. Cassie Howard (Sydney Sweeney) has become an OnlyFans entrepreneur, now engaged to Nate Jacobs (Jacob Elordi), who is struggling financially after taking over his father’s real estate business. Their relationship is still horrifyingly toxic, but it is missing that fresh tension which previously made it interesting. Jules Vaughn (Hunter Schafer) is pushed to the side as a sugar baby, reduced more to a topic for gossip than an actual perspective.
That is where the biggest issue starts to come into focus: What is this season actually about?
Earlier seasons of “Euphoria” were chaotic, but they had a point. They said something about adolescence, identity and self-destruction, and opened up larger conversations about the reality of drug and alcohol usage in high school.
Now, the chaos feels more random than intentional. The show jumps between tones — part crime drama, part Western, part industry satire — without ever fully committing to any of them.
Zendaya once again carries the emotional weight of the series. There are small moments where Rue’s exhaustion and vulnerability break through, and in those moments, the show briefly feels like itself again.
It is still visually striking, but the dreamy, stylized look that defined the show has been replaced with something darker. It fits the characters’ transition into adulthood, but it also strips away a layer of what made “Euphoria” so euphoric in the first place.
And then, there is the teeth-grinding aspect that has followed the show since the beginning: its fixation on sex and women’s bodies. “Euphoria” has always been hypersexual, but now it is getting old. Nearly every woman character is pushed into some form of sex work, and the camera lingers on them in a way that feels unnecessary.
Despite all of this, I am still sat in front of the TV every Sunday night.
Part of its allure is the cast’s performances. Zendaya once again carries the emotional weight of the series. There are small moments where Rue’s exhaustion and vulnerability break through, and in those moments, the show briefly feels like itself again. Priscilla Delgado also deserves accolades, as she plays Angel, a fiery stripper working at Alamo’s club, with an intensity that cannot be matched.
At this point, the biggest thing is wondering what this season is going to leave behind. “Euphoria” was once emblematic of a distinct moment in pop culture. It shaped conversations, aesthetics and careers. Now, it feels like it is searching for meaning instead of making a statement. There is still time for it to pull everything together. Rue’s storyline, especially with its focus on faith and redemption, hints at something deeper that could anchor the rest of the season.
And maybe that is what makes it so hard to stop watching. Not because “Euphoria” is at its best, but because there is still a chance that it might get there again.