When the third (and likely final) season of Euphoria premiered on HBO last night, the internet was…weirdly quiet about it? Positive sentiment about the first episode was hard to come by. And it’s not entirely surprising.
The show kept its fans waiting for literal years for season 3 (four, to be exact). That is far longer than a normal gap between seasons, even in an era where a two-year gap is fairly common (House of the Dragon, The White Lotus, etc.). Then there was the drama behind the scenes, reported on exhaustively in the press, which left an icky feeling (at least for me). Rumored beef between cast members may or may not be real, but when trying to find an image for this story, I realized there wasn’t a single photo of the full cast together at the premiere, and there were even videos of Zendaya scurrying away before they could take group photos.
And the most devastating fact—that two cast members and one producer passed away in the time between seasons—gave the whole return an “in memoriam” feeling. All of this would give audience members a good reason to tap out. But one of the main reasons for the lack of fanfare could be that the actors within the show don’t seem that excited to be back.
Euphoria season 1 introduced us to a mostly new cast of incredibly promising talent. Imagine a world where we had no idea who Jacob Elordi, Sydney Sweeney, Hunter Schafer, Maude Apatow, Barbie Ferreira, and Alexa Demie were. It wasn’t that long ago! Zendaya, while extremely popular for her work on the Disney Channel and as MJ in Spider-Man, was still seen mostly in the safe, Disney-approved lane and not taken seriously as an adult actor. The show launched and cemented those people as the next wave of Hollywood stars, giving them a way to show a wider range than teen roles would typically allow for. Those casting directors truly deserve a medal.
But in the four years since season 2 premiered, those same actors’ schedules have become increasingly booked with projects that are far more interesting than Euphoria. Take Zendaya’s latest turn in The Drama or the fact that she is about to be in the biggest movie of the year, The Odyssey, and probably the second biggest movie of the year, Dune: Part Three. Or take Jacob Elordi’s role in Frankenstein, a mostly nonverbal performance that earned him an Oscar nomination. He also took on one of the most famous brooding bad boy characters in literary history this spring with Wuthering Heights, hoisting that movie by the corset to its Valentine’s Day success. And say what you will, but Sydney Sweeney’s The Housemaid made nearly $400 million at the box office and instantly guaranteed itself a sequel.
Seeing them all in Euphoria again, it seems that they are more capable than what the material demands of them. My gripe with the series is that it has always been a show of stereotypes cobbled together for provocation, and it seems to lean even more heavily into that in season 3. Rue is a drug mule, Cassie has an OnlyFans, and Jules, the one trans person on the show, is a sugar baby. It’s all…a little tired. A pervy view of Gen Z from a middle-aged white man, leaning a bit too much toward trauma porn for my taste.
It’s starting to feel like the characters of Euphoria didn’t just graduate high school, but the cast itself has graduated beyond the need for this show. After watching the premiere, it’s hard to blame them.
