{"id":370163,"date":"2026-04-08T21:53:09","date_gmt":"2026-04-08T21:53:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/370163\/"},"modified":"2026-04-08T21:53:09","modified_gmt":"2026-04-08T21:53:09","slug":"euphoria-season-3-review-generation-defining-show-paints-a-clear-eyed-unflattering-portrait-of-modern-america","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/370163\/","title":{"rendered":"Euphoria season 3 review \u2013 Generation-defining show paints a clear-eyed, unflattering portrait of modern America"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\u201cIt\u2019s cowboys and Indians, civilised man against the savage,\u201d snarls a gun-toting kingpin in the third and final series of HBO Max\u2019s Euphoria<\/a>. As the strains of the score begin to twang \u2013 like the music of Ennio Morricone shimmering over America\u2019s southwest \u2013 it becomes clear that Sam Levinson<\/a>\u2019s groundbreaking show, back after a four-year hiatus<\/a>, is now a western. The western is, after all, the most American of all genres, and Euphoria, set in a tortured frontier, amid the gold rush of the attention economy, is a clear-eyed, unflattering portrait of modern America: the good, the bad, and the ugly.<\/p>\n

A lot has happened since high school. Rue (Zendaya<\/a>) has become a drug mule, doing deadly runs across the Mexican border, until a new but equally lethal opportunity presents itself. Nate (Jacob Elordi<\/a>) and Cassie (Sydney Sweeney<\/a>) are engaged, living away from East Highland, each grasping for something more than their domestic seclusion. Maddy (Alexa Demie) is working as a talent management assistant, her acrylic nails clacking incessantly against the screen of her phone, while Jules (Hunter Schafer) has drifted out of art school and is now living as a sugar baby in a Los Angeles penthouse. Superficially, they are all doing OK. \u201cI\u2019m California sober,\u201d Rue confesses, with a wry chuckle. \u201cI avoid things that could destroy my life.\u201d And yet Euphoria has always been a show about self-destruction, and the one thing these characters can\u2019t avoid is themselves.<\/p>\n

But it\u2019s not just the characters who have been on a journey. Offscreen, the four years since the last season have seen some of the show\u2019s stars \u2013 Elordi, Sweeney and Zendaya \u2013 turn into three of Hollywood\u2019s hottest young talents. Levinson, too, has had a rough ride: his sophomore show, The Idol, was critically reviled<\/a>, attracting all the accusations of leering misogyny that Euphoria had (just about) avoided. Additionally, there has been personnel management to deal with: the tragic deaths of actors Angus Cloud, who played Fez (who appears in this series as an offscreen presence), and Eric Dane (returning here as Nate\u2019s father, Cal), have laced the show with a note of sorrow. Actor Barbie Ferreira, who played Kat, and British composer Labrinth have declined to return to the series. All this made Euphoria\u2019s return far from inevitable. Yet it has also become an important show \u2013 both blockbuster event TV and a Rosetta stone for understanding Generation Z \u2013 and audiences have been clamouring for a concluding chapter.<\/p>\n

\"SydneySydney Sweeney returns as Cassie in season 3 of \u2018Euphoria\u2019 (HBO)<\/p>\n

Levinson delivers. It is testament to how well-rounded the world of Euphoria is that these new episodes (the three made available to press, at least) feel true to their characters and an accurate continuation of the saga. Levinson\u2019s spectacular misfire on The Idol shouldn\u2019t detract from his ability to construct tense, witty and morally knotty plots. Against those scripts, his actors (who reports suggest had been lukewarm on a return to the show) appear to be having great fun. Zendaya has developed into a bona fide star, capable of carrying the dramatic weight of the show, but Sweeney, too, proves that pin-up fame is not incompatible with genuine acting chops. In fact, it\u2019s a really good, deep cast with scarcely a bum performance: Demie is a standout as combustible Maddy (\u201cI\u2019m not a victim, I won\u2019t be a HR nightmare, and I believe in capitalism,\u201d she announces in a job interview), as is Martha Kelly playing the chillingly monotone dealer, Laurie. There is a clear sense that both the writing and the acting really understand the characters and their twisting, often self-defeating, motivations. <\/p>\n

At its purest level, Euphoria posits a world where everyone is beautiful, but also dreadful. It is an aesthetically maximalist vision of an America that has been corrupted by capitalism, turning it into a rageful, inebriated, lonely society. \u201cDo you ever feel like your life could be bigger?\u201d Cassie asks her maid, who is photographing her dressed as an \u201cadult baby\u201d. \u201cAmerica my dream,\u201d the maid responds, simply. And yet everyone is unhappy, they all feel like losers, living life in and by margins. Maddie makes a few cents off the dollars of the OnlyFans girls she promotes; Cassie feels pushed into soulless suburbia. \u201cWhat you see on television directly impacts the way we see one another,\u201d warns Patty Lance (Sharon Stone), head writer of the soap opera where Cassie\u2019s sister, Lexi (Maude Apatow), works. And what we see, in Euphoria, is the mask of beauty slipping.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not porn,\u201d Cassie informs Nate, when she starts publishing intimate photographs. \u201cIt\u2019s erotica.\u201d Levinson\u2019s critics would say he has a pornographer\u2019s sensibility, favouring striking images and sensational, TikTok-worthy clips over quiet emotional resonance. Yet the show makes its own critique of this glamourless sexualisation. Rue \u2013 who rarely encounters a bad decision she doesn\u2019t want to make \u2013 has more autonomy than Cassie, who is trapped inside the \u201cMadonna-whore complex\u201d (here her options are tradwife or OnlyFans model). And Levinson\u2019s lurid tastes (not dissimilar to those of Ryan Murphy, another auteur of new American TV) also take him down grotesque pathways. Women retch while swallowing balls of drugs, a chicken is summarily decapitated, a pot belly pig defecates towards the camera at point blank range. This is brassy, unsubtle filmmaking that captures the moment we\u2019re living in, where attention has been commoditised and only extremes of content \u2013 the naughtiest! the sexiest! the grossest! \u2013 get eyeballs.<\/p>\n

Euphoria is a generation-defining show. Not just for Zoomers, who might find this graduation into real life uncomfortably bourgeois, but for our present moment. A vapid show about vapidity, a materialist show about materialism: Euphoria owns its contradictions, and, in this final season, shows it\u2019s mastered them.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Your support helps us to tell the story From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":370164,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[156,111,139,69,437],"class_list":["post-370163","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tv","tag-entertainment","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-tv"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/370163","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=370163"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/370163\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/370164"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=370163"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=370163"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=370163"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}