{"id":530587,"date":"2026-04-14T16:41:09","date_gmt":"2026-04-14T16:41:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/530587\/"},"modified":"2026-04-14T16:41:09","modified_gmt":"2026-04-14T16:41:09","slug":"zendaya-and-sydney-sweeney-cant-make-euphoria-watchable","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/530587\/","title":{"rendered":"Zendaya and Sydney Sweeney can’t make Euphoria watchable"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\n Photo via HBO<\/p>\n

\u201cYou\u2019ve been a bad, bad dog\u201d, Nate (Jacob Elordi) half-heartedly sneers down to Cassie (Sydney Sweeney). \u201cWoof woof\u201d, she responds.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Four years since the last season, Sam Levinson\u2019s teen drama Euphoria is back. But no one is a teen, or even pretending to be one, anymore. So how do you force a show defined by adolescence into adulthood? It\u2019s a well-trodden problem, almost impossible to do well. Euphoria\u2019s season three has lost not only its setting, but its sense of purpose.<\/p>\n

Nate has taken over his dad\u2019s construction company, he lives in a California McMansion, he drives a Cybertruck, and he\u2019s hoping to build a cliffside retirement village. He\u2019s also engaged to Cassie, a loveless and silent relationship born of poor decisions in high school \u2013 but there\u2019s nothing a lavish wedding can\u2019t fix. The issue (and the reason for the \u201cwoof woof\u201d) is that Nate doesn\u2019t want to splash out $50k for flowers, and Cassie, well, she hasn\u2019t \u201cwaited [her] whole life for a ghetto wedding\u201d. If she has to pay for her own flowers, that\u2019s what she\u2019ll do. And if her only means of making money is taking pictures for OnlyFans dressed as a dog or a baby, that\u2019s what she\u2019ll do.<\/p>\n

But Nate and Cassie\u2019s suburban nightmare isn\u2019t the sole focus of Euphoria\u2019s new season; these scenes of domestic hell act as a relief for the Breaking Bad \/ Grand Theft Auto mashup that has become Rue\u2019s (Zendaya) life. Since leaving high school, Rue, the troubled teenage addict, has been taking more drugs than ever. It seems she\u2019s no longer simply ingesting them but rather smuggling them across the Mexican-American border in balloons the size of golf balls inside her stomach. She\u2019s also toying with the idea of finding God, or becoming a pimp.<\/p>\n

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These characters have long since left the high school that bound their lives together, and it seems that the show is struggling to find anything to replace this. There are glimpses of Maddie (Alexa Demie) and Lexi (Maude Apatow) working in Hollywood, and apparently, Jules (Hunter Schafer) has become a sugar baby. But there are no more house parties or hallway run-ins, leaving the show feel at best highly disjointed, each character siloed into a storyline more ridiculous than the last.<\/p>\n

Some of that disjointedness reflects what\u2019s happened off-screen. Since the release of the last season many of the actors who got their start in this show have reached dizzying heights of fame, lauded with awards, contracts, and controversies. There\u2019s also been real life tragedy. Eric Dane, who played Nate\u2019s violent father, filmed his last scenes shortly before he died of motor neurone disease. Angus Cloud, who played the earnest drug dealer Fezco, passed away from an accidental overdose in 2023 \u2013 his story, which was one of the best in season two, is brushed away with a mention that Fezco is in prison.<\/p>\n

Euphoria\u2019s depiction of drugs, sex and abuse for its underage audience has always been controversial. But the first two seasons pulled it off. In the most extreme and cinematic ways, it spoke to the loneliness and claustrophobia of adolescence. The teenagers made terrible decisions, but there was always the hope of redemption \u2013 a better life after high school.<\/p>\n

Much of the craft that sustained that balance has either dulled or disappeared. The dream-like aesthetic, the rhinestones in suburbia, have been swapped out for something harsher: striplighting, sand and fentanyl dens. Labrinth, who acrimoniously departed the project, previously provided the score which acted as the beating heart of the show. He has been replaced by Hans Zimmer, a titan in the industry, but this orchestral score is more suited to a space epic than youthful ennui.<\/p>\n

The performances, too, feel diminished. Zendaya remains compulsively watchable, capable of holding attention even when the material falters. But that\u2019s not a triumph of writing; it\u2019s a testament to her presence. (I recently spent three minutes watching her advertise athleisure dressed as a triangle and was just as engrossed.) Sweeney and Elordi, meanwhile, seem drained of the volatility that once made their performances compelling, stranded in scenes that mistake degradation for depth.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Levinson has brought this cast, now at the height of their fame, back for what feels more like a humiliation ritual than a victory lap. These actors have graduated from Euphoria High, and the thing with school reunions is no one wants them.<\/p>\n

[Further reading: Gwendoline Riley is haunted by herself<\/a>]<\/p>\n

Content from our partners<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Photo via HBO \u201cYou\u2019ve been a bad, bad dog\u201d, Nate (Jacob Elordi) half-heartedly sneers down to Cassie (Sydney…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":530588,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[6491,96,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-530587","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-celebrities","8":"tag-celebrities","9":"tag-entertainment","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/530587","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=530587"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/530587\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/530588"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=530587"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=530587"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=530587"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}