Euphoria Season 3 TV Review: Zendaya and an all-star cast reunite for a very different new season of the HBO drama

Plot: Five years after high school, Rue and her friends are all in very different places with new challenges that could change their lives forever.

Review: It has only been four years since the last season of Euphoria aired on HBO, but the entire cast has blown up since then to the highest levels of fame. Zendaya has appeared in the Marvel Cinematic Universe and Denis Villeneuve’s Dune franchise. Jacob Elordi was nominated for an Academy Award, Hunter Schafer became a household name, and Sydney Sweeney’s been selling her bathwater while becoming the world’s biggest celebrity crush. In that same time frame, Sam Levinson co-created the maligned series The Idol alongside The Weeknd. While the world has been clamoring to return to the California setting to see where these characters would head next. With half a decade of aging working against them, Levinson and his team instead pivoted to a major time jump that not only changes the setting of Euphoria for its third season but also completely alters the series’ tone. The result is a third season that is entertaining to watch but feels virtually nothing like the show the world became obsessed with.

The first episode of the new season opens with Rue (Zendaya) somewhere in Chihuahua, Mexico, as she tries to smuggle drugs across the border into the United States. As she literally drives over a fence and then swallows lubed-up baggies of powder, the shift is apparent: Euphoria was only kept in check by the high school setting. Granted, Euphoria was always a boundary-pushing series about the extremes of addiction, sex, and family dysfunction, but in losing the teenage element of the story, the new season just feels like any other crime drama. At the end of season two, Rue owed Laurie (Martha Kelly) about ten thousand dollars, which, with interest, now stands over forty-three million. That inescapable amount of money has forced Rue and Faye (Chloe Cherry) to live with Martha as slave labor as they mule the drugs for the queenpin. As she does her work, Rue also visits Lexi (Maude Apatow), who works for a Hollywood producer (Sharon Stone), one of many characters who have moved on but not necessarily away from their bad habits.

Nate (Jacob Elordi) is engaged to Cassie (Sydney Sweeney), now a burgeoning influencer who posts sexual content online. They live in a mansion as Nate has taken over the business from his father, Cal (the late Eric Dane). While we don’t see Fezco (the late Angus Cloud), he is alive in the series but serving prison time due to the events of the season two finale. We also have not yet seen Jules (Hunter Schafer), but we do meet Ali (Colman Domingo), who tries to mentor Rue during her darkest days. This season opens with a focus on Rue, Maddy, Nate, and Cassie, showing everyone with a shiny outer visage hiding torment beneath. The only character who is open about their imbalance so far is Rue, but the other characters are on the verge of exploding. But, because they are all experiencing their own journeys in parallel with limited intersection, at least so far, this season feels disconnected and not in a good way.

The excess of this third season is palpable, but it does introduce a fascinating new character, strip club mogul Alamo (Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje). While Martha Kelly’s Laurie was an unexpected villain when she debuted in the second season, there is no doubt that Alamo is going to be a major antagonist. When Rue wanders into a party being thrown by Alamo, the tension is at its peak this series has had, with a final sequence in the premiere episode that leaves the first chapter of this season on a bizarre note. It also signals that this is no longer the Euphoria it used to be. Granted, it would be impossible to have these actors pushing thirty years old and playing convincing high schoolers, but the removal of any age restrictions seems to have tamed the subject matter rather than set it free. Jacob Elordi’s Nate feels more like his father than ever before, while Sydney Sweeney’s Cassie just feels like a subdued version of herself as she plays a tradwife prisoner in her own home.

Sam Levinson, who wrote all eight episodes of this season and directed the premiere, captured something in the first season of Euphoria that gave the world an uncomfortable glimpse into teenagers that no one wanted to believe could have been remotely based in reality. The meshing of the ensemble cast into a powder keg of hormones and lustful excess made this series a guilty pleasure, but one with a high level of quality beneath the seedy, glossy outer layer. This new season just feels dirty. While Elordi, Sweeney, and Apatow spend the opening of the third season on the brink, Zendaya is once again the showstopper. Rue is the most interesting character in this series, and Zendaya is one of the most versatile actors working today. Of all the stars, Zendaya looks the least changed over the last five years, yet embodies half a decade of emotional and mental scars in her portrayal of Rue. The connection between Rue and her sister, played by returning Storm Reid, offers some sense of balance; it also accentuates the knife-edge on which she exists.

While the first season was something of a game-changer, the second season dropped off in quality for me, and the third is yet another drop. HBO has said it would love to continue the series past this third run, but this season feels like the last. Fans of the cast will thirst for the series to continue past this season, as the soapy, sexy elements are absolutely entertaining, but they also feel very uneven and somewhat hollow compared to what came before. HBO did not share episodes in advance for this review, so I can only base my opinion on the premiere chapter. While the beginning scenes and the closing sequence are indelibly thrilling, the overall sense I got from this premiere is that the excitement of Euphoria being back on the air will sustain the first few episodes, but I worry that the subsequent chapters will not keep it going. The star power is enough to get us to tune in, but that brightness diminishes quickly as the story devolves and further gets away from what made the first season so powerful.

Euphoria premiered on HBO on April 12th.