{"id":594012,"date":"2026-04-08T19:18:12","date_gmt":"2026-04-08T19:18:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/594012\/"},"modified":"2026-04-08T19:18:12","modified_gmt":"2026-04-08T19:18:12","slug":"zendayas-hbo-friends-grow-old-boring","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/594012\/","title":{"rendered":"Zendaya’s HBO Friends Grow Old & Boring"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the very first scene of \u201cEuphoria\u201d Season 3<\/a>, Rue is spinning her wheels. Stuck in the desert somewhere just south of the American border, Zendaya\u2019s<\/a> desperate, unreasonably chipper addict is trying to get a duffel bag filled with who knows what from Chihuahua back to California, but her off-road route is filled with impediments. First, her truck tire falls in a hole. With a little help, she gets moving again, but escaping one trap only leads to another more perilous snare.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s as if Rue\u2019s entire life is made up of two modes: frustrating inertia or paralyzing anxiety. Worse yet, both states still manage to sneak up on her. How could something that started off so silly suddenly turn harrowingly lethal?<\/p>\n

\"LONDON,<\/a> \"BUFFY<\/a> <\/p>\n

Her (re)introductory predicament \u2014 which culminates with Rue literally teetering between life and death \u2014 isn\u2019t exactly a subtle metaphor, but \u201cEuphoria<\/a>\u201d isn\u2019t exactly a subtle series<\/a>. Rue has been trapped in a nightmarish cycle since the moment we met her, seven years ago, as a drug-addicted 16-year-old returning home from a rehab center she\u2019ll soon revisit, if not soon enough. Now, at 22, Rue is still stuck. Any hope for a safety net is gone (her mother kicked her out of the house to protect Rue\u2019s younger sister), and the freedom promised in adulthood may be nothing more than a mirage.<\/p>\n

But she wants it. She really does. Rue, after escaping unscathed one more time, is so desperate to live the life she wants rather than the one imposed upon her that she welcomes God into her heart. She may not understand faith, the Bible, or how to interpret ancient texts for modern times, but damn it, she\u2019s going to try. Because by Season 3, something has to change, and if she can\u2019t change her circumstances, she can at least change her approach to them. She can change. She will change. Or she\u2019s going to die trying.<\/p>\n

Damn, now that\u2019s drama, amirite? While Rue\u2019s position is fixed, season after season, her struggle to break free makes her compelling. Sure, she\u2019s spinning her wheels, but that\u2019s the point: As soon as you\u2019re in a hole, it\u2019s so very hard to get enough traction to dig yourself back out, and even if you do, it\u2019s so very easy to fall back in. That\u2019s the life of an addict, at least in the story \u201cEuphoria\u2019s\u201d telling.<\/p>\n

Or it\u2019s part of the story it\u2019s telling. Throughout the buzzy initial run, Sam Levinson<\/a>\u2018s HBO series<\/a> has been hailed for Rue\u2019s honest reckoning with addiction, as well as Zendaya<\/a>\u2018s potent, pliable performance<\/a> of her highs and lows. Those elements remain strong in the long-delayed Season 3, but the rest of the story is maddeningly inert across the first three episodes (out of eight total). Most characters aren\u2019t changing, nor are their motivations to change clear to them or novel to us. The result is a start to the supposedly final season<\/a> that grows old instead of up, while evoking a once-unthinkable question: How could \u201cEuphoria\u201d become boring?<\/p>\n

Part of the tedium should\u2019ve been anticipated. The series didn\u2019t earn its provocative reputation solely for what fans witnessed across the first two seasons; it\u2019s also from where and when those proddings took place. Whether or not viewers agreed on Levinson\u2019s vision of a modern high school \u2014 although I hope Ashtray (Javon \u201cWanna\u201d Walton), with his face tats and killing sprees, is unfamiliar to most of us \u2014 they could recognize these were kids who were just trying to graduate. Taking those characters out of the classroom and thrusting them into the real world removes key context that helped make \u201cEuphoria\u201d so frightening: relatability.<\/p>\n

Now<\/a>, Nate (Jacob Elordi<\/a>) is just a nepo baby who inherits his father\u2019s real-estate business and \u2014 in what feels like a comment on Gen-Z American lethargy \u2014\u00a0isn\u2019t very good at building anything. He and his fianc\u00e9e, Cassie (Sydney Sweeney<\/a>), sure look the part of a happy, prosperous couple \u2014 they live in a big house, eat dinners by candlelight, and host cook-outs for friends and colleagues \u2014 but a quick peek behind the curtain exposes a rotting foundation. He\u2019s crippled with debt, she can only make spaghetti, and they\u2019re lying to everyone they know.<\/p>\n

\"SydneySydney Sweeney in \u2018Euphoria\u2019Courtesy of Patrick Wymore \/ HBO<\/p>\n

They\u2019re just another couple play-acting the American dream, which we\u2019ve seen many times before. Considering how Elordi and Sweeney\u2019s careers took off in between seasons, it\u2019s especially disappointing to see their talents squandered on repetitive, obvious character arcs. Nate is exactly who he\u2019s always been: a sociopathic jackass (although a more believable one so far this season). Cassie might have regressed since graduating, which could be interesting if her vacuity stirs things up as it has in the past. Not yet, though. Early on, she\u2019s just posting naked pictures online, hoping to get famous via OnlyFans in the second prestige TV show<\/a> this spring to broach the topic<\/a> (and the only one to render immediate, simplistic judgement).<\/p>\n

Each actor gets a few moments to crank up the melodrama, but what\u2019s happening behind their red, bulging eyes is so one-dimensional it reads like they\u2019re merely mugging for the memes. Nate and Cassie are all buttoned up without anything to hide \u2014\u00a0at least, anything scrutable enough to drive interest in whatever comes next.<\/p>\n

Lexi (Maude Apatow) remains a supporting presence at best. Sure, her play lit some exciting fires, but Levinson\u2019s disinterest in the group\u2019s goody-two-shoes is evident in her Season 3 glow-up: She\u2019s a writer\u2019s (Sharon Stone) assistant, which puts her in Maddy\u2019s (Alexa Demie) orbit. Nate\u2019s ex-girlfriend is now an assistant to a talent manager whose inherent hustle lends her an intriguing edge, until she regresses in Episode 3. Jules (Hunter Schafer) doesn\u2019t develop so much as she moves \u2014 into a deluxe apartment in the sky, all the better to symbolize the hope she embodies for Rue\u2019s escape.<\/p>\n

Even if the first three episodes are just table-setting \u2014 which they very well may be, given how Episode 3 ends \u2014 a good story shouldn\u2019t take so long to get going. When \u201cEuphoria\u201d Season 3 isn\u2019t playing up its Wild West theme with whip-cracking sound effects, old-timey title cards, and super-wide aspect ratios (Levinson shot on 35mm and 65mm film stock, \u201cproviding an expanded image [that] mirrors the characters\u2019 journeys out of high school into the wider, wilder world,\u201d per HBO<\/a>), it\u2019s wallowing in misery<\/a>. Sequences aren\u2019t edited within an inch of their life and instead get room to breathe \u2014 maybe too much room. The pace is less frenetic, which emphasizes the tedium and makes the nauseating moments (shit and piss, from animals and humans, are recurring motifs) feel even more contrived than in past seasons. (But hey, at least the desert looks pretty.)<\/p>\n

Maybe the pain is the point: Maybe a whole generation of teens entering adulthood feels like they have nowhere to go in a country with declining career opportunities and decaying morals. Maybe we\u2019re all just spinning our wheels, hoping something, anything, catches hold and keeps the world as we know it from collapsing further into itself. \u201cEuphoria\u201d always skewed<\/a> nihilistic<\/a>, so none of these ideas are out of place in what may be its last season. But Levinson\u2019s series was never this spiritually hollow, and it was always more active, insistent, and ambitious.<\/p>\n

Why not go down swinging? That\u2019s what Rue would do, and that\u2019s the only reason to hope \u201cEuphoria\u201d will find the meaning it seeks before its own time runs out.<\/p>\n

Grade: C-<\/p>\n

\u201cEuphoria\u201d Season 3 premieres Sunday, April 12 at 9 p.m. ET on HBO. New episodes will be released weekly.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In the very first scene of \u201cEuphoria\u201d Season 3, Rue is spinning her wheels. Stuck in the desert…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":594013,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[64,63,134,134393,9054,229,134395,30000,427,121310],"class_list":{"0":"post-594012","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tv","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-entertainment","11":"tag-euphoria","12":"tag-hbo","13":"tag-reviews","14":"tag-sam-levinson","15":"tag-sydney-sweeney","16":"tag-tv","17":"tag-zendaya"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/594012","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=594012"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/594012\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/594013"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=594012"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=594012"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=594012"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}