What are critics saying about the new season of ‘Euphoria’?
What are critics saying about the new season of ‘Euphoria’?
From the looks of things, the tumultuous production of the show’s third season has had an unfortunate effect on its quality.
It’s finally here. After a four-year wait, Season 3 of “Euhporia” is set to premiere on HBO Max on Sunday, April 12. There has been speculation that Season 3 will be the show’s last, but at the very least, fans will be excited to find out what has become of their favorite characters after high school.
“Euphoria” Season 3 will feature a time jump, picking up with characters like Rue, Jules, Nate, Cassie, and the rest of the gang five years after the events of the show’s second season. They may be full-fledged adults now, but that doesn’t mean they’ve left their problems in the past.
Many key cast members are returning for Season 3 of “Euphoria,” including Zendaya, Jacob Elordi, Hunter Schafer, and Sydney Sweeney. But of course, not everyone is returning; Barbie Ferreira, who played Kat in the first two seasons of the show, is not returning for Season 3. Algee Smith’s Chris McKay has also been written out of the series, and Angus McCloud passed away tragically in 2023 at the age of 25.
Production of the third season was hampered by delays and behind-the-scenes issues. Did those delays cause any issues with the show’s quality in Season 3? So far, Season 3 has mustered a score of just 43% on Rotten Tomatoes, and 59 on Metacritic, indicating “Mixed or Average” reviews. Find out what critics are saying about Season 3 of “Euphoria” below.
Watch the trailer for Season 3 of ‘Euphoria’
What are critics saying about Season 3 of ‘Euphoria’?
Ben Travers | IndieWire
Throughout the buzzy initial run, Sam Levinson‘s HBO series has been hailed for Rue’s honest reckoning with addiction, as well as Zendaya‘s potent, pliable performance of her highs and lows. Those elements remain strong in the long-delayed Season 3, but the rest of the story is maddeningly inert across the first three episodes (out of eight total). Most characters aren’t changing, nor are their motivations to change clear to them or novel to us. The result is a start to the supposedly final season that grows old instead of up, while evoking a once-unthinkable question: How could “Euphoria” become boring?
Meghan O’Keefe | Decider
Levinson’s smartest decision this season was letting his characters grow up. Just because Rue, Jules, and company aren’t in high school anymore, doesn’t mean they don’t keep up with each other on social media or in the real world. In fact, some of the meatiest moments spring out of bittersweet reunions: Jules and Rue flirting with nostalgia for their shimmering, yet toxic, first love; Maddy and Cassie pretending to bury the hatchet for their own ulterior motives. The moments that bring the main crew together are all the more laden with drama because it does feel more special than a random Wednesday in the girls’ bathroom.
Belen Edwards | Mashable
Some form of reinvention is necessary. Euphoria’s Season 2 finale aired four years ago. After that hiatus, it would be ridiculous to return to high school as if nothing had changed, especially since, during that time away, cast members like Zendaya, Jacob Elordi, and Sydney Sweeney blossomed into megawatt movie stars through decidedly non-high school roles. On the other hand, the path Levinson chooses for Euphoria Season 3 opens the show up to its worst impulses, marring its technical splendor and strong performances with exploitative storylines that feel primed for internet outrage.
Taylor Gates | Collider
Nearly every scene in Euphoria Season 3 features a woman being humiliated, exploited, or degraded in some way, and watching these new episodes quickly becomes an exhausting exercise of endurance. There’s nothing wrong with making your audience squirm, but the series is so indulgent in being repulsive that these moments lose whatever impact they might have if they were deployed more deliberately. It gets to a point where the show’s violence and nudity don’t feel groundbreaking and bold — they feel like the oldest, laziest trick in the book. Certain scenes involving graphic animal cruelty and disgusting bathroom humor stoop to the lowest common denominator, becoming a punishing experience to sit through with no point or purpose besides seeing how far the envelope can be pushed. There’s a fake-deep, juvenile edginess to the whole thing that earns more eyerolls than jaw-drops.
Daniel Fienberg | The Hollywood Reporter
Without the familiar thematic underpinning of American youth gone sour, Levinson turns his eyes to a broader and probably even more familiar critique of contemporary American capitalism. Mining Western genre archetypes aggressively — Hans Zimmer’s score is mighty Morricone-esque, while Ford-ian framings abound — the third season of Euphoria reflects on the state of Manifest Destiny and the promises of wealth still offered by the wide open expanses of the American West. Characters on Euphoria are selling drugs (and therefore death), sex (and therefore death) and death (and therefore somehow real estate) — but mostly they’re all selling their bodies and souls as part of the promise of an American Dream that is no longer available without a cost, an idea Levinson seems to have just discovered.
Alison Herman | Variety
After all that angst, the first three episodes of Season 3 (out of an eventual eight) do feel like “Euphoria”: bombastic, stylish and able to offset grandiosity with sly, cutting humor. What they don’t feel like is tethered to the grounding ballast that kept the first two seasons on the rails even at their most over-the-top. “Euphoria,” the first teen-centric show in the history of its prestigious network, has always been the R-rated version of a high-school drama, but a high-school drama nonetheless. Characters conformed to certain archetypes: Rue’s friend Lexi (Maude Apatow) was the shy, perceptive nerd; bully Nate (Jacob Elordi) was the rich jock who abused his abundant privilege with glee. Crucially, the show’s histrionic extravagance had a purpose in illustrating the life-or-death stakes of youthful emotion. It was absurd to juxtapose Lexi’s tell-all school play with a deadly drug raid, as the Season 2 finale did. It was also effective. In Season 3, “Euphoria” retains the crime elements without the strategic contrast.
Brian Tallerico | RogerEbert.com
To start the third season, “Euphoria” seems to be saying that being in your twenties in the ‘20s exists on the surface of humanity, chasing highs through meaningless elements like drugs, sex, and online virality. If these characters were shallow, broken creatures when they were teenagers at the start of the show, this season seems to be building to the idea that we can’t just mature out of those habits because our birth certificate implies we should. To that end, the hollow chaos may be the point. Only time will tell if Levinson and company can turn what is essentially just the setup for the season into a payoff that feels deeper and more focused. Or if it will be content to reflect the uncertainty of its characters through storytelling that can feel maddeningly uncertain itself.
Lyvie Scott | TV Guide
The creative monolith that is Levinson has likewise fallen spectacularly from grace, marred by one quiet controversy after the next. For Euphoria fans, he became their proverbial straw man: When Season 2 was bad, it was entirely his fault; when it was good, it couldn’t possibly be his doing. Nearly every actress who appeared in the show admitted to pushing back against his dogged obsession with nudity. If the barrage of exposés didn’t kill Euphoria’s prospects, his failed side quests — from the egregious Malcolm & Marie to The Idol, the final boss of the male gaze — should have. But the series persevered, Maddy’s ominous warning looking more and more like a spell from Levinson’s pen to HBO’s ears. Season 2 of Euphoria was just the beginning — of the show’s downward spiral, possibly, but Season 3 is determined to rise from the ashes… somehow. It’s not easy conjuring up a new thought about this latest chapter of Euphoria, but I will say this: The show is a Western now, but that’s actually not as ridiculous as it sounds.
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