After a nearly four-year hiatus and tons of behind-the-scenes drama, Sam Levinson’s hit HBO series returns. Was it worth the wait?
“A lot of people ask what I’ve been up to since high school,” Rue says at the start of Euphoria’s Season 3 premiere. “Honestly, nothing good.” Funny enough, that opening says a lot about the series. Sam Levinson, who’s written and directed the bulk of the HBO series, doesn’t deal in subtleties. Since the Season 2 finale of Euphoria aired in 2022, stans of the show have all been wondering how Levinson and Co. would handle the time jump. And instead of making you wait, Levinson got right to it with Rue (played wonderfully by Zendaya) cruising through the desert while blasting Christopher Cross’s “Ride Like the Wind.” It’s an instance that shows how Levinson bluntly builds the iconic, vibes-laden series. It’s also a perfect example of the good and ill of Euphoria.
The upside of Levinson’s heavy hand is the excuse it gives him to indulge in expansive shots. Do we know why we had to see Rue ditch a SUV on top of a border fence? Will it come up in a bigger way down the line? Who the hell knows? But the shot of a Jeep Cherokee teetering on top of the fence with Rue walking off into the desert? Well, that just looks dope, right? There are a lot of moments like that. There’s no debate about whether or not Levinson can put some beautiful images on screen. The problem derives from the story driving them. That’s where things begin to fall apart.
For example, many wondered if Laurie, the teacher-turned-drug dealer to whom Rue still owed tens of thousands of dollars after using the suitcase full of drugs she was supposed to sell, would be seeking vengeance after Rue escaped her drug den in the latter half of Season 2. Well, that got cleared up fairly quickly in this episode, as we learned the whole reason Rue was in Laurie’s car hopping a border fence was because she’s become a drug mule. And, yes, we are walked through the entirety of that disgusting process — from the KY used to help slide the fat balloons full of dope down her throat, to the sheer terror of having to deal with border patrol with a belly full of said dope. (For those wondering, Laurie caught up with Rue almost four years after their initial contact, and the price Rue owed went from $10,000 to almost $44 million. Yes, $44 million. Rue couldn’t even afford the amount Laurie would settle for, so here we are.)
This thrusts Rue right back into the role of narrator, unreliable or otherwise, as Rue bounces from smuggling fentanyl across the border to popping in on the lives of the Euphoria cast members who are still around, from Lexi, who’s working as an assistant on a TV soap, to Maddy, who’s trying her hand at talent management. We even hear a rumor that Jules is a sugar baby.
(Rue and Faye forcing those balloons down their throats was one of the nastiest things I’ve seen on this show; yes, I remember how much full-frontal male nudity was in the second episode of Season 1. I said what I said.)
Subscribe for the biggest stories in the business of sports and entertainment, daily.
Popping up on her former classmates allows Rue to wax poetic about toying with Christianity while getting informed about the rest of the squad. We find Lexi super hesitant to call Fezco while he’s doing a 30-year bid. It’s interesting to see how she is played here; it’s not far from her high school aesthetic, just more amplified. Her boss is played by Sharon Stone, who harps on the election and has what appears to be a writing staff devoid of men (and heavy on the finger snaps). It’s hard to tell what Levinson is saying here. Does he hate the super woke left? Is it just a commentary on writer’s rooms swinging all the way to one side? Who’s to say. Those thoughts are dashed immediately when Sydney Sweeney’s Cassie pops up on screen, clad in what appears to be “Sexy Dog Costume (Risqué)” from an old Party City catalog, being photographed by her maid near a large poolside area. From the audible barks during this performance to “(How Much Is That) Doggie in the Window” to being on all fours lapping up water … yikes. As we get to know more about Cassie’s story, she’s essentially bored. She’s set to marry Nate Jacobs soon, but doesn’t have much of a life, so in an effort to go viral on TikTok, her maid is stuck filming her bite Nate’s sneakers while crawling on the floor with a stupid pair of dog ears on. It’s ridiculous. But this is also the same Cassie who we met in a state of distress because boys at her school were sharing her private photos. That may feel twisted, but this future isn’t far-fetched. It’s truly just sad.
“I’m just creating content,” Cassie tells Nate when he gets home. Nate has a point, but that point is mostly, “don’t embarrass me while I’m trying to make money.” Now, monetization through TikTok influence is very real; we’re just not sure scarfing down watermelon in your backyard with a tail is the actual move. Neither does Cassie, though, as she’s been doing the research, and soon we find out that what she really wants to do is start an OnlyFans account. Nate’s taken over his father’s real estate business, and business isn’t booming. Cassie could be onto something, but Nate is more like his father than he would care to admit. He’s hiding something and using his control over Cassie to keep it hidden.
Throughout all of this, Rue is looking to make a change in her life, mostly inspired by time spent with a religious family before making her way back to California at the top of this episode. What Rue sees as some form of “divine intervention” — aka linking up with another underworld figure only known as Alamo, who has his hands in a little bit of everything — ushers in the start of the next phase of her life. As Rue imagines a life of ecstasy working alongside Alamo, one of the women at the party ODs on the drugs Rue brought to Alamo’s house.
And that’s when it happens. That’s when Euphoria hooks you. Sure, none of it actually makes sense, but because you’ve spent the better part of an hour getting reacquainted with this series that hasn’t been on television since the spring of 2022, you get locked in. In my last piece about Euphoria, I wrote, “Sam Levinson finally created the perfect show for himself.” That may sound like a shot, but it’s not. Levinson has finally given himself the proper sandbox within which to explore. The first two seasons, hate them or love them, were more style over substance, but Levinson actually took time to develop beats within characters like Rue, Cassie, or Nate that, when given time to marinate, became explosive. This episode also highlights one of the reasons viewers love continuing stories and cinematic universes: Instead of having to say goodbye to a character, you can just say “see you in a bit” and pick up with their insane lives a few years later.
Not every one of those lives will have to atone for causing the death of a stripper, but this is the hand Rue has been dealt. (Or that she dealt to herself?) It’s the hand that Levinson has been playing the entire time. For all the talk of tone shifts in this new season, mostly due to these adults we met as high schoolers now being in the real world, the actual content of the show is the exact same. It’s lies and miscommunication and delusions of grandeur and pure mess. It’s a wall of sights — breasts and city lights and refreshing pools and money, mountains of money. And, as much as their reality is heightened, we know that underneath, the sinister underbelly of this nation is running each of these characters through the grinder, even if they don’t know it yet.
At the end of this episode, as Rue is celebrating not getting her head blown off by Alamo, there’s a wide shot of her, Alamo, and Alamo’s main henchmen (one of them played by Marshawn Lynch). In a show that often goes for the “a picture is worth a thousand words” approach, I smiled when I saw it. Maybe I’m the problem. Maybe there isn’t enough mess on TV right now. Maybe I’m the biggest Euphoria fan. Whatever the case may be, that moment felt like the start of something. Fun, frightening, or frantic: pick one. The stage has been set ever since Rue talked about staying sober for the rest of the school year back in the Season 2 finale. The question was always: then what?
That answer, for good or bad, is in Levinson’s hands. If you’re OK with that, including dead strippers, fent balloons, and cringe OF content, then welcome to Euphoria.
Read More:
Beyond the Fairway: Tommy Fleetwood on Netflix Stardom, Winning the FedExCup, and Rocking the Tour’s Top Fits
The Non-Fiction Hitmaker: Patrick Radden Keefe on “London Falling” and the Business of Hollywood Adaptations
EXCLUSIVE: Jesser Taps Former Adidas GM Eric Wise to Power Bucketsquad Growth
Oliver Darcy: How Legacy Media Lost Its Grip on the Future
Book Excerpt: David Grutman’s Prince Play Is Bigger Than Tennis
