The success of Euphoria can be credited to a unique period in television history where anything that resembled an “auteur-driven” project was given additional credibility, because it didn’t conform to the banality of streaming releases. Given how many Netflix or Amazon shows are unnecessarily stretched out beyond reasonable length, and tease future seasons that may not materialize, Euphoria was committed to doing something bizarre and inventive every episode. It was also a series that could blame its immaturity on the fact that it was about erratic, confused high school students; no one would expect the dramatic poignance of Succession or The Pitt, even if Euphoria used its indulgent, graphic material to mask any insight on the generation it depicted.
Euphoria could be considered “dangerous” by the most illiterate viewers because showrunner Sam Levinson’s desire was to include any “hot-button” topic of conversation into a single series, regardless of how easily it would collapse. While there might be a kernel of truth within some of the show’s thoughts on addiction, abusive relationships, and family secrets, they formed a collage that reached daytime soap opera levels of superficiality. Levinson’s insistence that Euphoria is a work of representation has shielded him from the criticism that the series has nothing to say, and has characters that are only slightly removed stereotypes. Its success came not just because of how industry-wide taboos have made anything indulgent or racy to be taboo, but because Levinson happened to cast a few young stars who’d emerge to be A-listers.
The shock value of previous seasons wasn’t because Euphoria had fully developed its ideas, but because it was unusual to see such depraved and nihilistic material in a show that was ostensibly about high school, even if its cast is now in its late-20s. The third season isn’t given that luxury because of Levinson’s own toxic working environment, which delayed the production. While Zendaya and Jacob Elordi emerged as breakouts of the first season, they’ve now done challenging work. Zendaya has one of the year’s best films with The Drama, and Elordi is coming off of an Oscar nomination for Frankenstein; to return to such an amateurish work of drama might be embarrassing.
The scheduling conflict that emerged from the actors resulted in a transparent delineation of storylines in the third season. Since it’s unlikely they would’ve been able to appear in one place for an extended amount of time, each Euphoria character is essentially in their own show, which is cobbled together like an anthology. Zendaya’s Rue has seemingly been transported to the Breaking Bad universe because her high school drug addictions apparently escalated to the point that she is now a drug mule for the gangster Alamo (Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje), who’s surrounded by scantily-clad women in a way that invokes parallels to a Bond villain. That Levinson has seen Rue as a self-insert is inadvertently hilarious; he’s projected his own fantasies of being a complex, yet endearingly self-deflective anti-hero onto a black lesbian woman, who he might’ve thought would be immune to backlash. The issue is that Rue is now lacking in any interiority, and has evolved into a character that’s closer to Zendaya’s off-screen persona.
The abusive, yet sexually-confused football star Nate Jacobs (Elordi) would be a character with all the hallmarks of a clear-cut villain if Levinson wasn’t trying to imply he’s had some sort of victim complex. What’s most shocking about his reappearance in the third season is how clearly Levinson’s writing is to blame for the character’s sociopathic appearance; Elordi has now worked with Guillermo del Toro, Sofia Coppola, Paul Schrader, and Ridley Scott, and would have easily been able to give a less heavy-handed portrayal had the scripts (exclusively credited to Levinson) had given him anything to do. The most that’s revealed about Nate is that he’s now engaged to his on-again, off-again high school sweetheart Cassie (Sydney Sweeney), who’s now decided to use an OnlyFans account to pay for their wedding. Euphoria has faced criticism from its inception about its use of Sweeney’s sexualized image to generate uproar, and to Levinson’s credit, he hasn’t tried to deny the accusations in the new season. Nate’s exasperated response to Cassie’s new endeavor (because he’s rich and they’d have no trouble paying for the ceremony) is an admittance that this ordeal is unnecessary.
The most absurd storyline in Euphoria’s third season has nothing to do with salacious and exploitative content, but the presumption of self-awareness. Lexi (Maude Apatow), Cassie’s older sister, ended the last season by making an ambitious musical that recounted the events of the show thus far in flamboyant fashion. She’s now a production assistant at Warner Bros. Discovery show, and has asked to make the most hackneyed series that she can. It’s as if Levinson has staked his position as a true auteur, and declared Euphoria as an outlier that rebelled against the system that fostered it. There’s something ironic about the blatant privilege to include this scene, given that it is starring Judd Apatow’s daughter and created by Barry Levinson’s son.
It’s not unusual for a series to flame out in its final season, but Euphoria hasn’t set itself up to be a crushing disappointment in the vein of Game of Thrones or Lost. The anger felt towards those finales was because there was appreciation and interest in the characters, storylines, and filmmaking choices that preceded them, and dedicated viewers were able to forgive the uneven aspects to find a diamond in the rough. Euphoria is so attached to any emergent trend or chance to tick off its critics that it’s never had an identity. Despite being accused of having morally corrupt motivations, the biggest crime committed by the third season of Euphoria is that it’s boring.