TV Reviews

‘Euphoria’ Season 3 Review: What’s Left to Do for the Teens of East Highland High but to Rue the Day [C+]

Tyler Doster April 8, 2026

It’s been several years since we’ve checked in with the characters of Euphoria, at the time a series about high school students embroiled in situations much larger than them. Season two ended with Rue (Emmy winner Zendaya) and the others at her high school- watching an autofictional play written by Lexi (Maude Apatow) that scorched the lives of everyone she was close with, putting her sister and friends’ business out for the entire school to see. It’s been four years since that episode, and now it’s time to return to the characters, whose lives have branched outward since high school as they find themselves caught up in the throes of life in their 20s.

After a bizarre, Tarantino-esque opening with Rue attempting to escape Mexico over the border wall in her Jeep (kind of have to see it to believe it), our heroine is tracked down by Laurie (Martha Kelly), who forces her to pay off the debt she owes her after her mom tossed all the drugs in the suitcase last season. Rue needs to come up with money to the tune of $100K, so becoming a drug mule for Laurie only makes sense – she even brings Faye (Chloe Cherry) along for the ride, swallowing bags of fentanyl to move them across the border. Rue has enough fentanyl in her stomach to overdose ten times over, but the scarier hypothetical is what Laurie will do if Rue doesn’t pay her back. During a job that finds Rue at a competitor’s house, dancing with his girls, she meets Alamo (Adewale Akinnouye-Agbaje, Oz) and his sidekick muscle (played by Darrell Britt-Gibson), who quickly take to Rue and demands her position with Laurie be terminated so she can work for him. One of his girls has been killed by an overdose due to Laurie’s drugs, so she admits defeat and allows Rue to work for him. She begins working as a manager at a strip club, mostly in charge of holding drugs until a customer requests it, but it’s good for her in ways she hasn’t been able to identify before. It’s a routine, and it keeps her busy.

Cassie (Emmy nominee Sydney Sweeney) and Nate (Oscar nominee Jacob Elordi) have been together since high school, and their relationship is just as boring now as it was then. Nate has taken over his father’s company and some sizable debts he brought upon himself, so friends and family that have invested into him are starting to question where their money went. Cassie is obsessed with having the perfect wedding, and without even having knowledge of her fiancé’s sizable money troubles, decides she wants to pitch in to get the $50K floral arrangements of her dreams. Enter Cassie’s OnlyFans era, getting into puppy play, dressing up as a baby, and showing more of herself than we’ve ever seen before, everything filmed by her loving housekeeper. Cassie has never had shame about the way she wants to live, embarrassingly so, but this is low even for her. Nate is, as expected, completely against this, ashamed of the possibility that someone they know might see it; Cassie doesn’t understand his frustration, never able to look past herself. As their wedding day nears, Eric Dane returns as Nate’s dad Cal, disgraced and on the sex offenders register after getting caught with a 17-year-old two months shy of his 18th birthday. It’s a bittersweet sequence as Dane, who brutally suffered from ALS and passed away just last month, as he is weakened both physically and emotionally, giving his all in what would be his final performance.

Lexi is now working as a writer’s assistant in Hollywood, and while doesn’t get much screen time in the first three episodes provided for reviewing the season, working under boss Sharon Stone looks to bear fruit for her burgeoning career.

What worked about the cast in previous seasons is that, due to their shared high school experience, the characters were in close proximity to one another. It made sense to see them at school together, but there were outside parties happening where they would run into one another as well. The characters feel disjointed this season, Euphoria now feeling like an examination of life after high school for someone who peaked while they were there, but they mostly don’t interact with each other. Maddie (Alexa Demie) is now managing influencers, her storyline feeling the furthest away from everyone. Maddie has always been a character on the outskirts of the narrative, but this season allows her more screentime showcasing her newfound career and passion. This is a perfect career for Maddie, and Demie is hilarious as always as the coolest girl in town, who now has more depth to her this season compared to the previous two. Maddie might have been the cool girl in high school, but even then it was obvious she was a big fish in a little pond. Jules (Hunter Schafer) now lives in the city, everything paid for by her sugar daddy, including a luxe 40-inch wig the queens on Drag Race would gag over. Unfortunately, Schafer (and her new hobby as a painter) isn’t present much in the first couple of episodes, her story more slowly unfurled. What works the best in Euphoria is that, even in the silliest situations, the characters feel real. The performances are there because the characters feel lived-in, which is the biggest strength of the series. Sometimes what’s going on doesn’t make sense, but the performances are still there, along with a visual language that feels specific to the HBO series.

The wait for the third season, which is written and directed entirely by show creator Sam Levinson, doesn’t feel particularly worth it, the show feeling stagnant, even as a time jump propels the characters out of the comfort that high school provided. Waiting four years for a drama is, unfortunately, closer to a norm than it’s ever been, and this one doesn’t have the legs to stand on to justify its existence. The characters move through life awkwardly, losing any semblance of realism the show once had as the situations become more heightened as the season drags on, complete with the violence the show’s name has become synonymous with. The actors feel like they’re all on a different show, Zendaya still giving her all to a character that’s losing steam and becoming less fascinating. Sydney Sweeney and Emmy winner (and two-time Oscar nominee) Colman Domingo, who plays Ali (Rue’s longtime friend and sponsor), give their best attempts at salvaging characters that have been thrown to the side by the narrative, Domingo’s biggest contribution in the first few episodes being a conversation with Rue that devolves into both of them saying “butt sex” multiple times at the diner he seems to never leave.

Euphoria hasn’t always been great, but it’s been better than this. The show once lauded for its performances has lost steam in the years since its sophomore season, and there isn’t much left to mine out of these characters. Zendaya is still giving one the finest performances on television, but it might be time to call it quits. There isn’t much that makes sense on the show anymore, and for that reason alone, this will hopefully be the show’s last outing. If the first two seasons brought a manic energy comparable to the effects of drugs, the third is the hangover that follows, hopefully bringing a long rest to a series that used to be better.

Grade: C+

Euphoria season three returns April 12 on HBO and available to stream on HBO Max.

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Tyler Doster

Tyler is the TV Awards Editor for AwardsWatch and from Tuscaloosa, Alabama. He’s been obsessed with movies and the oscars since he was about 14. He enjoys reading, but even more, talking about Amy Adams more and will, at any given moment, bring up her Oscar snub for Arrival. The only thing he spends more time on than watching TV is sitting on Twitter. If you ever want to discuss the movie Carol at length, he’s your guy. You can find Tyler at @wordswithtyler