Euphoria had a sensational debut in 2019 when its hyper-explicit depiction of the supposedly debauched life of the 21st-century teenager created a moral panic among parents who were encouraged to fret their little cherubs were about to mutate into nihilistic party monsters.
The show was sleazy and exploitative but there was something deeper and darker going on too. It was visually stunning, its dreamlike palette of colours making suburban America look like a halogen Never-Never land. It also had a megawatt cast, led by the superstars-in-the-making Zendaya, Jacob Elordi, Sydney Sweeney and Hunter Schafer.
All four return for a third and final season, but you wonder if they might come to regret their loyalty to Euphoria creator Sam Levinson (adapting an Israeli drama of the same name). Where Euphoria previously blended the trashy and the surreal, now it is dumbed down to its skeeziest bare essentials. Following on from his disastrous 2023 Weeknd collaboration, The Idol, it’s as if Levinson set out to make the crassest, most morally hollowed-out series possible. Well done him – he has succeeded and then some.
Four years have elapsed since we last caught up with the gang in their final year at high school. Teen druggie Rue (Zendaya) has become a cocaine mule, sidelining in born-again Christianity and fighting a daily battle for sobriety. Meanwhile, Nate (Elordi) and Cassie (Sweeney) are preparing for their wedding, which Cassie hopes to pay for by launching an OnlyFans channel where she dresses as a dog and poses like a baby for tips.
A smarter series might have used this storyline to question the culture of commodification encouraged by OnlyFans – to ask whether it is as liberating as it claims or represents another intrusion into our daily lives by bloodsucking tech bros. But Euphoria is not that show. Levinson instead gets his jollies by putting Sweeney in a dog collar – in the process turning HBO itself into a sort of OnlyFans with better production values.
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Levinson has described the season as a tribute to the late Angus Cloud, the Irish-American actor who played amiable drug dealer Fezco and died of an overdose in 2023. That death is not referenced in the first episode: in the universe of the show Fezco is still alive and serving a 30-year jail sentence.
Euphoria – Season 3. Zendaya as Ruby “Rue” Bennett. Photograph: Home Box Office, Inc
Otherwise, it’s all cheap and nasty and while Euphoria has long had a creepy side, it was elevated by Rue’s desperate and moving struggle to stay clean. That Euphoria could be more than just exploitative nonsense is hinted at when she reunites with her sobriety sponsor, Ali (Colman Domingo), at a diner. There is also a cameo by Sharon Stone as a movie mega-producer to whom Lexi (Maude Apatow) has attached herself in a bid to break into Hollywood.
Euphoria’s jaded nihilism always had a best-before date. Tawdry and tedious, this underwhelming new run of episodes suggests it has finally passed. Zendaya and her fellow cast members have clearly moved on: their body language is of actors fulfilling a contractual obligation rather than reuniting with the drama that made them stars. It’s a damp squib conclusion to a series that has run out of things to say and has nothing else to offer beyond lowest-denominator shock value.
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Episode one of Euphoria season three is on HBO Max and Now, and airs on Sky Atlantic at 9pm on Monday.