Euphoria is a strange series – I know that’s an obvious thing to state now that it has reached Season 3, but as rumors swirl regarding the necessity of a potential Season 4, one has to look back at the HBO standard of quality. You think of prestige series like The Wire, The Sopranos, Game of Thrones, and Succession. In many ways, Euphoria reaches those heights – especially artistically and through its incredible performances – but since Season 1, Sam Levinson’s writing style for this HBO Series has been addled with quick dopamine hits, titillation, and scenes designed solely to provoke the viewer with just enough sensationalism to stimulate social media discussion.
Yet, frankly, it is good, which again makes it a strange series with significant downsides. Take Season 3, Episode 5, for example. Sydney Sweeney – who, alongside creator Sam Levinson, is acutely aware of her status as a Gen Z icon and modern-day sex symbol – decides to push her character, Cassie, to the next level. By depicting her as a sex worker and splurging on a sequence of highly sexually charged scenes, the show marks her trajectory as a successful OnlyFans influencer.
There’s no way of describing it sensibly, but even a frequent “brain-rot gooner” would find their brain exhausted by what is displayed; one has to wonder why Sweeney herself wants to subject herself to that market.
It feels like Levinson is doubling down on the controversial themes of The Idol rather than staying true to the grounded (albeit stylized) addiction drama Euphoria started as.
The Season 3 Time Jump and the Redemption Deficit
The Euphoria Season 3 time jump shifted the narrative, which, for all intents and purposes, was necessary – assuming a third season was even needed. Arguably, it’s a flip of a coin: find a way to keep the characters as they were by introducing newer ones in the same environment, or let them grow up and continue the original characters’ stories. I was mildly surprised in Episode 1 when we saw Rue crossing the U.S.-Mexico border in an illegal and comical manner, and I genuinely started to believe HBO had lost its head. But through Levinson’s creativity, Season 3 has made itself into something. What that “something” is has yet to be fully realized, but, expectedly, some episodes have been well-crafted.
Here lies the problem: what is the endgame if Season 4 is commissioned? It seems that in the world of Euphoria, the central character arcs lack any pure redeeming qualities – and if they do possess them, they are soon undone by the universe’s rules. Without Fezco (Rest In Peace, Angus Cloud), Levinson appears to have lost the moral anchor and the primary source of empathy in the show. Take Nate, for example: at the end of Season 2, he dealt with his abusive father and made slight amends with Jules after exploiting her. That felt like a solid conclusion for a character who had zero respect for women in the premiere and suffered from complex, toxic “daddy issues.” Season 3, however, placed the character in a far worse position; he is now frequently losing toes and fingers after attempting to take on the “husband-provider” role for Cassie, ultimately bankrupting his father’s business in the process.
Then you have Rue. I would love for her to have a happy ending, but it was clear in the first two seasons that Zendaya’s character had no clear path to ending her relationship with drugs. In Season 3, she ends up as a drug mule compromised by the DEA, and her new boss, Alamo Brown, does not trust her. During distracted car journeys, she listens to the Bible on audiobook, but we have to ask: what’s the play here? Is Levinson hinting at a redemption arc via a “born-again Christian” story after painfully putting the audience through two relapses? Maddy also cites Jesus to Rue before meeting Alamo Brown, only to strike a deal to take a couple of his strippers for her OnlyFans venture in a revenue-share agreement. It feels like Levinson’s playbook is to continually pull the rug out from under the audience.
Does Season 4 Need to Exist?
If the central premise of Euphoria is that “humans are fucked up and always will be,” then the series has made its point – but that means there is no endgame. A fourth season would simply continue the same trajectory: more sensationalism, more titillation, and more quick dopamine hits. Of course, the performances would remain fantastic, but that is merely a plaster over a narrative problem. Character development can only stretch so far if there is no motive to change the core of their existence. Eventually, the audience gets tired. As much as I’d love to see another Emmy-winning performance from Zendaya, I’m happy to see her talents utilized elsewhere, as The Drama proved they could be.
Season 3, for the most part, has relied on Sydney Sweeney to generate controversial headlines. Despite the novelty and outrageousness of seeing a sexualized “Godzilla-like” Cassie terrorizing the men of the city in the name of televised art, I’m not sure what shocking plays the series has left. Euphoria seems to understand that attention spans have shortened drastically since its debut and has formulated a way to keep viewers engaged, but the Euphoria formula and its shock-value storytelling are losing momentum. If Euphoria Season 4 weren’t on the cards, we would be absolutely fine. HBO used to be where stories went to become immortal. With Season 3, it feels like where a story goes to be exploited until there’s nothing left. If it does happen, it could quickly become a series viewers want to forget.
