Welcome to Cheat Sheet, where we give you all the intel you need about iconic shows your friends have been bugging you to watch! In honour of its long awaited return after four years, we’re diving into teen (and now adult) drama, Euphoria.
In the summer of 2022, anyone who was anyone (and between the ages of 16 and 25) was watching the second season of American showrunner Sam Levinson’s boundary-pushing drama Euphoria.
The show had already captured a dedicated audience with a highly stylised debut season depicting oversexed US teens taking drugs, getting into fights and looking absolutely beautiful doing it. Boosted by lead (and at the time rising) actor Zendaya’s Emmy win for the show’s first season, Euphoria wasn’t just appointment viewing — it was a cultural movement.Â
Euphoria helped Zendaya launch her adult career, winning two Emmy awards for her portrayal of drug addict Rue. (Supplied: HBO)
But cultural movements are notoriously fickle and despite Euphoria being greenlit for a third season not long after the conclusion of the second in early 2022, fans would have to wait another four years for the end of the story.
In that time, an astronomical amount of action has kept the Euphoria gossip mill working overdrive.
Here’s what you need to know.
What is Euphoria about?
Euphoria was not born from the mind of showrunner Sam Levinson (son of legendary US director Barry Levinson) but rather based on a 2012 Israeli series of the same name, itself deeply inspired by landmark British teens-gone-wild series Skins, which ran from 2007 to 2013.
Sam Levinson (second from right) on set for the third season of Euphoria. (Supplied: HBO)
All three of these series show a parent’s worst nightmare: the underage set taking drugs, drinking alcohol, having sex, engaging in violence and disrespecting adults.
Levinson’s Euphoria simply updated the remit for post-social media tastes and end-of-the-decade aesthetics.
The world of Euphoria revolves around Rue (Zendaya), a 16-year-old drug addict fresh out of rehab and still mentally scrambled by the death of her father.Â
Cassie (second from left), Kat (second from right), and Maddy (far right) have their friendships tested repeatedly throughout seasons one and two. (Supplied: HBO)
Rue’s closest friends are sharp-tongued head cheerleader Maddy (Alexa Demie), her sycophantic sidekick Cassie (Sydney Sweeney), wallflower Kat (Barbie Ferreira) as well as Cassie’s little sister Lexi (Maude Apatow, daughter of director Judd Apatow and actor Leslie Mann).
Australian actor Jacob Elordi and Alexa Demie are volatile partners in the first season of Euphoria. (Supplied: IMDb)
Maddy’s on-again, off-again boyfriend is Nate (Australian actor Jacob Elordi), a testosterone-blinded jock in an illicit cyber flirtation with Jules (Hunter Schafer), an ethereal trans girl who’s new in town.Â
Jules also catches the eye of Rue, beginning a rollercoaster romance between the two teens.
Jules’s arrival not only sends Rue into a tizz, but her covert hook-up with Nate’s father, Cal Jacobs (Eric Dane) (and Cal’s even more covert filming of the event), sets off a dramatic chain of events that continues well into the second season.
The exposure of Cassie’s affair with her best friend’s ex was one of the defining moments of Euphoria season two. (Supplied: HBO)
The impact of Euphoria
With the first season and its two mid-series specials landing in the months before the COVID-19 pandemic, Euphoria had a captive audience to drench in its glittery vomit — even influencing the fashion and make-up trends of the time.
Critics lavished praise on Zendaya’s performance while concerned parents clutched their pearls over the young actor’s rendition of a teenager in the grips of drug addiction.
Euphoria’s glittery, loudly-coloured aesthetics, along with Rue’s more relaxed street style, bled into real-world trends. (Supplied: HBO)
By the time the second season rolled around in 2022, the weekly episodes pulled in an average of 6.6 million viewers each. By the end of its run, it had become HBO’s most-watched show behind Game of Thrones.
Twitter (now X) confirmed it had generated more than 34 million Tweets.
The series was greenlit for a third season almost immediately.
At the same time as the second season was ushering in the Summer of Euphoria, reports of cast members’ dissatisfaction with Levinson began to emerge. In a January 2022 interview, Sweeney said she requested the removal of some of the nudity requested of her by Levinson.
Sweeney told The Independent there were moments when her character was supposed to be shirtless. (Supplied: HBO)
A week later, The Daily Beast ran an interview with Chloe Cherry, a new character who appears in season two, where the former adult performer shared that Levinson wanted her completely nude for her first scene in the show, shot on her first day on set.
“Sam wanted to do the scene with me completely naked, and Tyler [Chase, Cherry’s co-star] was like, ‘That’s a lot,’ so they decided not to,” she said.
Chloe Cherry released a pornographic parody of Euphoria before being cast on the show. (Supplied: Euphoria)
In the following month, Martha Kelly, who plays straight-faced drug kingpin Laurie, and Minka Kelly (no relation), who guests as a rich housewife who employs Maddy as a babysitter, gave interviews revealing they had also questioned the nudity asked by Levinson.
A February 2022 Daily Beast investigation inflamed rumours of tension between Levinson and Barbie Ferreira, echoing fan complaints over her diminished character arc in season two and putting a question mark over her absence at the second season premiere.
Much of Kat’s season one arch revolved around body acceptance. (Supplied: HBO)
By August, Ferreira confirmed she would be leaving the show. She later clarified that it was a mutual decision, fuelled by a dead end for the Kat character and her desire to no longer play the “fat best friend”.
Why was there such a big gap between season two and three?
Originally slated to begin production in early 2023, Euphoria season three was consistently pushed back until it became tangled in the 2023 SAG AFTRA strike.
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Levinson spent a lot of the year hyping and then defending The Idol, his 2023 vanity vehicle for R&B star The Weeknd, which was widely panned by both critics and audiences, leading to a truncated season and an untimely cancellation.
The year also dealt Euphoria two more challenges, with the unexpected deaths of executive producer Kevin Turen, from cardiac arrest at 44, and Angus Cloud, the actor who played beloved dealer Fezco, who died from a drug overdose at 25.
The first two seasons of Euphoria also had the honour of ushering in the next generation of Hollywood A-listers.
Before Euphoria, Jacob Elordi’s biggest credit was Netflix’s The Kissing Booth, Sydney Sweeney was doing a bit part in a Quentin Tarantino film, Hunter Schafer was yet to make the jump from modelling to acting and Zendaya was still trying to shake off her Disney channel roots.
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Now, Elordi is an Oscar-nominee, Sweeney has proved herself able to carry a summer cinema-filler (although not without some bumps), Schafer has both indie and franchise chops and Zendaya has become one of the most famous actors in the world.
The growing popularity of Euphoria’s rising stars was a double-edged sword, as the show’s production had to work around its actors’ ballooning schedules, with HBO CEO Casey Bloys thanking the cast for “[moving] mountains” to make it work.Â
2024 came and went with a promise from HBO that filming for season three would start by January 2025 and, miraculously, it did. Filming wrapped in November last year, with the third season of Euphoria finally slated for release in April 2026, more than four years after the end of season two.
Angus Cloud’s character Fezco is still alive in season three, serving 30 years jail time. (Supplied: HBO)
All of the main cast, including Zendaya, who is doing press for her movie The Drama, attended the show’s season three LA premiere alongside Levinson.
What is Euphoria season three about?
Season two finished on several cliffhangers: Maddy’s promise of raining fire on Cassie after her dalliance with Maddy’s ex Nate is highlighted via Lexi’s school play; Fezco and his junior offsider Ashtray’s shootout with police; Nate getting his father arrested for filming sexual acts with underage people; Jules’s reconciliation with Rue and Rue’s commitment to staying clean.
Season three of Euphoria sees Maddy a little too supportive of Cassie’s modelling work. (Supplied: HBO)
It has been confirmed season three will jump five years forward, taking the action out of high school and into the real world, in part to align with the fact the main cast are now in their late-20s.
Trailers reveal Nate and Cassie married and living swanky in the ‘burbs, with Nate looking as self-repressed as ever and Cassie trying her hand at Only Fans-style modelling, a profession that Maddy oddly seems to support.
Jules is in art school, while also dabbling in sugar baby activities on the side. Lexi is working in TV under the guidance of a new character played by Sharon Stone. Rue seems to be caught between two warring drug lords while filling her stomach with plastic bags of drugs to sneak over the Mexican border, casting doubts over her commitment to sobriety.
Season three sees Rue still trying to pay off her debt to drug lord Laurie. (Supplied: HBO)
Eric Dane is set to appear in some capacity as Cal Jacobs, marking one of the final performances from the actor, who died in February this year.
Oscar-nominee Colman Domingo will also reprise his role as Rue’s one-time sponsor/mentor.
Javon “Wanna” Walton, who played Ashtray, and Storm Reid, who played Rue’s younger sister Gia, will not be returning for the new season. Instead, season three is positively stuffed with features and guests, from musician RosalÃa and social media star Trisha Paytas to horror director Eli Roth.
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Is season three the last season of Euphoria?
It’s looking more and more likely.
“We’ve talked about it, I don’t think anything is over until it’s over, but it’s been discussed that this is the end,” HBO head of drama Francesca Orsi told Deadline.
Appearing on The Drew Barrymore Show to promote The Drama, Zendaya also confirmed that she thought season three was the end.
Neither HBO nor Levinson have made any official announcement on the future of the show.
When does Euphoria season three come out?
Euphoria season three will premiere on Monday, April 13, on HBO Max in Australia.