Why HBO’s Euphoria Wants To Finish After Season 3

Put your leopard-print catsuit away if you have not seen “Kitty Likes to Dance,” the fourth episode of “Euphoria” Season 3. Spoilers forward!

We’re midway by means of the third season of “Euphoria,” and this present wants to finish. Actually, I would not thoughts if it merely by no means aired once more, however realistically, Season 3 of “Euphoria” have to be the present’s swan track, as a result of it is a scattershot train in futility that has nothing novel or attention-grabbing left to say.

I do know that sounds hyperbolic, however actually, when you’ve been watching “Euphoria” Season 3, you could be nodding your head proper about now. Sam Levinson’s sequence, which first premiered on HBO in 2019, has been suffering from obvious controversies and lengthy delays — Season 2 aired again in 2022 — and necessitated a big time bounce for the Season 3 premiere. There, we meet up with star Zendaya’s former teenage drug addict Rue Bennett as she’s working as a drug mule for Martha Kelly’s kingpin Laurie and verify in on her highschool mates too, like Sydney Sweeney’s Cassie Howard, Jacob Elordi’s Nate Jacobs, Alexa Demie’s Maddy Perez, Hunter Schafer’s Jules Vaughn, and Maude Apatow’s Lexi Howard, simply to call just a few. So, how are the children doing? They’re not all proper, however extra importantly, they don’t seem to be enjoyable to look at anymore.

Proper from the beginning, “Euphoria” has been an bold sequence that strives to say rather a lot with out all the time succeeding. Up to now, its makes an attempt to make statements about habit, poisonous masculinity, and Gen Z tradition have been typically misguided, however a minimum of comparatively entertaining; in Season 3, although, it has nothing of word to say anymore. From the best way Levinson gleefully torments his feminine characters to the present’s tangled net of convoluted plotlines, this is why “Euphoria” wants to finish after Season 3.

Due to its distinctive visible type, robust forged, and skill to seize its viewers’s consideration and maintain on tight with lurid and risqué storylines, the primary two seasons of “Euphoria” have been a minimum of comparatively attention-grabbing to look at. I am unable to say the identical of Season 3; even when it veers in direction of attention-grabbing, it simply turns into exasperating and, frankly, totally embarrassing. I discussed that Rue begins the season as a drug mule however uncared for to specify that we’re handled to a prolonged scene of her swallowing luggage of medicine to smuggle throughout the U.S./Mexico border, gagging all of the whereas. Elsewhere, the present’s different feminine leads face fixed humiliations (save for Maude Apatow, whose Lexi mainly simply exists and sometimes scolds her mates).

In the meantime, Sydney Sweeney’s Cassie Howard has by no means precisely been dignified or, actually, wherever approaching secure. However, her quest to turn out to be an OnlyFans star — below Maddy’s tutelage, reuniting the previous finest mates regardless of a schism over Cassie’s pursuit of Maddy’s ex-boyfriend Nate — is not empowering or pleasurable to witness. It is … unhappy to look at Cassie pop a pacifier in her mouth and unfold her legs like a child, full with a diaper. (If you wish to see an analogous storyline performed effectively, “Margo’s Acquired Cash Troubles” on Apple TV is totally value watching as an alternative.) 

Elsewhere, Maddy’s self-actualization in Season 3 facilities round making Cassie right into a profitable grownup entertainer, and Jules is a sugar child and aspiring artist who lets her rich benefactor Ellis (“True Blood” veteran Sam Trammell) cowl her in cling wrap like a leftover sandwich. Nonetheless, the present doesn’t discover the intricacies or oddities of that relationship past that. Finally, Sam Levinson is simply doing an excessive amount of always, and it is merely creating an enormous mess.

Moreover the weekly humiliation rituals that Sam Levinson places his characters by means of, “Euphoria” Season 3, Episode 4, “Kitty Likes to Dance,” reveals one other one of many showrunner’s unhealthy habits: He is throwing approach too many over-the-top storylines on the wall and never even bothering to attend round and see what sticks. As a substitute, the whole lot simply occurs , and something meant to be surprising or titillating lands with a thud since you’re attempting to maintain observe of a billion ridiculous issues. 

Working example: Nate owes a “million-ish” {dollars} to a harmful man who reduce off his pinky toes? That is occurring. Additionally, Jules will get an enormous alternative from Lexi: the prospect to create a portray that’ll be featured in a cleaning soap opera on which Lexi works as an assistant to Patty Duke (Sharon Stone). However moderately than doing what she’s requested, Jules defiantly crafts a portray stuffed with human genitalia that may’t be proven on community TV, and when she’s instructed to alter it, she defaces the portray as an alternative.

There is no given purpose why Jules does this. She simply does. That is type of the thesis assertion of “Euphoria” Season 3: There is no purpose why somebody is doing one thing, however they do it anyway. With none try and floor these characters in any respect, the whole lot feels pointless and … foolish, even. It is simply bluster and shock worth with out narrative goal.

In William Shakespeare’s “Macbeth,” the title character, throughout one in all his soliloquies, utters the immortal line, “It’s a story outdated by an fool, stuffed with sound and fury, signifying nothing.” That is the place we’re with “Euphoria” midway by means of its third season; it leans utterly into the sound and fury with nothing to indicate for it beneath the floor.