Warning: Spoilers ahead. Do not proceed unless you have watched the Season 3 finale of Euphoria. ”
Now, Game of Thrones and Stranger Things, there’s a new badass finale in town.
Euphoria Season 3 ended the way it started: cheesy, bland, and wasting an all-star cast with a ridiculous script.
In the 93-minute finale of the Sam Levinson drama, which aired on Sunday, Zendaya’s character Rue dies midway through the episode. It’s gruesome and anticlimactic.
She also does not participate in the gang war between drug lord Laurie (Martha Kelly) and Alamo (Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje) in season three.
Lou steals pills from the Alamo and overdoses on fentanyl. Her mentor, Ali (Colman Domingo), is distraught when he finds her unresponsive on the couch.
Ali later takes revenge. He showed up at Alamo’s strip club wearing an old military uniform, armed with a gun, and shot Alamo dead.
This takes up most of the finale’s running time, and it also includes some unnecessary action by Laurie and her gang of rednecks, with Laurie being arrested by the Drug Enforcement Administration and the police (rather than being arrested, Laurie puts a noose around her neck and throws herself off a building).
So even if you enjoyed the questionable portion of season 3 that focused on Cassie’s OnlyFans career, you can barely even fathom it. Cassie (Sidney Sweeney) has surprisingly little screen time.
The finale spends more time zooming in on Kitty (Anna Van Patten)’s derriere than it does with original “Euphoria” characters like Jules (Hunter Schaefer). That sounds like an exaggeration. it’s not.
The show ends with Cassie (Sidney Sweeney) seemingly living in her and Nate’s tacky mansion with Maddie (Alexa Demme) and her sister Lexi (Maude Apatow).
As far as everyone getting a “happy ending,” it seems like these three women live together in a weird big house with yellow decor.
Nate (Jacob Elordi) doesn’t even get a funeral. Cassie lied to Lexi about what happened to Nate. Lexi believes that she has mysteriously disappeared and that she may one day reappear.
It’s telling that Zendaya and Jacob Elordi were the standout stars of seasons 1 and 2 and shined so brightly that the show made them two of the biggest global superstars today, and they barely made it to the finale. He only appears in photos and she only appears for about 20 minutes.
This all says it all about how Season 3 turned out to be a completely different (and much worse) show.
For Levinson, it was just an excuse to create a pastiche of Tarantino with the prose depth of a college freshman.
Season 3 of the HBO drama has understandably been panned by critics and fans alike.
“Euphoria” started in 2019 as a story filled with sex and drugs about high school students. Sure, it was wild and unrealistic at times, but the first two seasons were character-driven.
There’s a reason “Euphoria” catapulted Elordi, Sweeney, and Zendaya to stardom. They all got to show off their acting chops with nuanced characters.
However, all of that was dispelled in season 3.
After a five-year time jump, the third installment is now a cartoonish gangster drama.
Previously complex characters have been reduced to one-dimensional roles, existing only as a means to stage the spectacle of an absurd plot. It mostly involves the camera brutalizing Elordi or staring at Sweeney.
Nate is thrown into a ridiculous torture porn story that wasted the use of an Oscar-nominated actor. Season 3 turned him into an out-of-character buffoon, then canceled him in the penultimate episode — without touching on any previously interesting character threads — wasting perhaps one of the greatest villains in TV history.
Meanwhile, Cassie has turned into a money-hungry bimbo. She’s never been a smart character, but this season exaggerated that trait incredibly. Her controversial OnlyFans plot was just an excuse to trot out Sweeney in fetish costumes.
Lou, with only a half-hearted interest in the Bible, gets sucked into boring gang politics and then dies a tragic death.
As for Lexi and Jules, they were relegated to the sidelines.
The latter didn’t even get a plot. She spent the entire season painting in her apartment. Yawn.
Season 3 tried hard to be edgy, but after the third or fourth gory scene with the literal crap, Cassie’s fetish stuff, and Nate’s dismemberment, everything got boring.
There’s nothing more boring than a show that tries to be “provocative” without saying anything.
The only thing that makes me happy is that this ordeal is finally over.
HBO has not officially confirmed that this episode is the final episode of the series, but we believe it is listed as a “season finale.”
However, Zendaya and Sweeney, along with slain Elordi, have become some of the most in-demand actors in the world, so it’s highly unlikely that the show will return for a fourth season.
Levinson told Variety in April that there are “no plans” for a fourth season. Zendaya also appeared on The Drew Barrymore Show that same month and said she considered Season 3 to be “done.”
Let’s hope we can all pour out what made Euphoria a better show in the past and bury season 3 in a shallow grave in the desert.
