There\u2019s a moment in \u201cEuphoria\u201d Season 3 when Cassie (Sydney Sweeney) shrieks, \u201cWhat is happening right now?!\u201d and that sums it up, as a whole. You\u2019ll be saying the same thing as you watch every other scene.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The hit HBO show\u2019s long-awaited return is an off-the-rails roller coaster of insanity. Whether that\u2019s good or bad depends on if you want to see the biggest Gen-Z superstars \u2014 Zendaya<\/a>, Jacob Elordi and Sweeney \u2014 in ludicrous situations that feel like \u201cBreaking Bad\u201d meets \u201cLooney Tunes.\u201d<\/p>\n It delivers that in spades.\u00a0But if you want narrative coherence and character consistency, Season 3 leaves you wanting.\u00a0<\/p>\n Zendaya as Rue in \u201cEuphoria\u201d Season 3. HBO Max<\/p>\n Sydney Sweeney as Cassie in \u201cEuphoria\u201d Season 3. HBO Max<\/p>\n Premiering in 2019, when its stacked cast was less famous, the Sam Levinson series began as an edgy teen drama, following drug addict Rue (Zendaya) and her high school classmates, including psycho jock Nate (Elordi), insecure Cassie (Sweeney), queen bee Maddy (Alexa Demie), artsy trans girl Jules (Hunter Schafer) and writer Lexi (Maude Apatow).\u00a0<\/p>\n Season 2 aired in 2022. During its four-year hiatus, there have been tragic cast deaths: Angus Cloud<\/a>, who played the affable drug dealer Fezco, and Eric Dane<\/a>, who played Nate\u2019s dad, Cal, and is still appearing in Season 3.\u00a0<\/p>\n On screen, five years have passed since Season 2.<\/p>\n Season 3 finds the former teens now living adult lives, which \u201cEuphoria\u201d has taken to mean that \u201cnearly all of them are involved in sex work, crime, or work that\u2019s adjacent to both.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Eric Dane, Colman Domingo, Zendaya, Sam Levinson, Hunter Schafer, Jacob Elordi, Sydney Sweeney, Angus Cloud, Maude Apatow, Dominic Fike and Austin Abrams at HBO\u2019s \u201cEuphoria\u201d Season 2 photo call in LA in January 2022. Getty Images for HBO<\/p>\n Jacob Elordi as Nate in \u201cEuphoria\u201d Season 3. HBO Max<\/p>\n That\u2019s where Season 3 stumbles. In the first two seasons, the show\u2019s strength was how it dug into these characters\u2019 lives. The plot got wild, but it was anchored by human drama.\u00a0<\/p>\n Now, as we find them as adults, it would be more compelling to see them struggle because of their flaws. Instead, many of them struggle because random criminal henchmen are after them.\u00a0<\/p>\n That\u2019s lazy writing. It sacrifices depth for absurdity. For Zendaya, Elordi and Sweeney, \u201cEuphoria\u201d launched them into stardom, and now it brought them back for material that doesn\u2019t meet their talents.<\/p>\n Zendaya as Rue in \u201cEuphoria\u201d Season 3. HBO Max<\/p>\n Hunter Schafer as Jules in \u201cEuphoria.\u201d HBO Max<\/p>\n Take Rue, for example. In Season 3, she leers at strippers, and her drug-related antics have a cartoonish air. While there\u2019s an element of \u201cBig Lebowski\u201d-esque madcap fun to her plot, it takes away her nuance and doesn\u2019t use Zendaya\u2019s capacity to tap into her character\u2019s tragedy.<\/p>\n \u201cEuphoria\u201d does the same to Elordi, who returns as an Oscar-nominated actor<\/a>. But he\u2019s so hamstrung by Nate being written bizarrely out of character, it makes you wonder why they interrupted his movie career for this.\u00a0<\/p>\n In the first two seasons, Nate had anger issues and choked his girlfriend for publicly embarrassing him. In Season 3, when Cassie publicly embarrasses him, he barely gets angry and simpers after her. He unironically uses the phrase \u201cmake love\u201d (remember when typical Nate dialogue was \u201cF\u2013k her like the whore she is\u201d? The show apparently doesn\u2019t).\u00a0<\/p>\n Sure, people change, but he\u2019d need years of therapy for this personality transplant to make sense (and there\u2019s no indication that happened). Why bother revisiting Nate if he doesn\u2019t feel like Nate?<\/p>\n Jacob Elordi as Nate in \u201cEuphoria\u201d Season 3. HBO Max<\/p>\n Cassie is more in-character, but that doesn\u2019t leave her better off. In the first two seasons, she degraded herself for male attention. \u201cEuphoria\u201d had a handle on its broader themes, so it (mostly) didn\u2019t feel like the show itself was degrading her. That\u2019s not the case in Season 3, as she tries to have an OnlyFans<\/a> career with \u201cerotic\u201d photo shoots. If there\u2019s a loftier point to be made beyond the camera ogling her, it\u2019s nowhere to be seen.\u00a0<\/p>\n Aside from Rue, Nate and Cassie, some other elements of Season 3 work better.\u00a0<\/p>\n The new additions to the cast, such as Marshawn Lynch<\/a>, are woven in fairly well. The sad task of writing off Fez is handled appropriately. \u00a0<\/p>\n Alexa Demie as Maddy in \u201cEuphoria\u201d Season 3. HBO Max<\/p>\n Eric Dane as Cal in \u201cEuphoria\u201d Season 3. HBO Max<\/p>\n Cassie\u2019s mom (Alanna Ubach) remains a scene-stealing blast. It\u2019s bittersweet to see Dane\u2019s posthumous performance, but he delivers flair.\u00a0<\/p>\n Maddy\u2019s story is the most successful, in terms of feeling true to her character without sacrificing emotional resonance for shock value. It has the right mix of wild antics and pathos that still feels like \u201cEuphoria,\u201d while the rest of Season 3 feels more like Levinson\u2019s widely panned show \u201cThe Idol.\u201d<\/a> Jules and Lexi may also have plots more in line with Maddy\u2019s, but it\u2019s too soon to tell.\u00a0<\/p>\n Only three out of eight episodes were made available for review, so it\u2019s possible the second half of the season is better.\u00a0<\/p>\n The \u201cEuphoria\u201d Season 3 poster. HBO Max<\/p>\n Maybe out-of-character Nate will be revealed to have been part of another play Lexi wrote. Maybe all of this will be revealed to be a drug trip that Rue is having.<\/p>\n \u201cEuphoria\u201d Season 3 premieres Sunday, April 12, at 9 p.m. on HBO.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"There\u2019s a moment in \u201cEuphoria\u201d Season 3 when Cassie (Sydney Sweeney) shrieks, \u201cWhat is happening right now?!\u201d and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":190324,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[157,31849,6131,31437,9,11,10,29742,2556,1869,74061],"class_list":{"0":"post-190323","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-euphoria","10":"tag-hbo","11":"tag-jacob-elordi","12":"tag-new-york","13":"tag-new-york-headlines","14":"tag-new-york-news","15":"tag-sydney-sweeney","16":"tag-television","17":"tag-tv","18":"tag-zendaya"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/190323","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=190323"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/190323\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/190324"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=190323"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=190323"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=190323"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}