The Expanding Mule

On Sunday night, the third season of Sam Levinson’s Euphoria premiered on HBO. Four years after the conclusion of season two, three of the show’s leads—Jacob Elordi, Sydney Sweeney, and Zendaya—are major movie stars. Barbie Ferreira wasn’t happy with how her character was treated last season and quit the show only to disappear for years; by chance, Daniel Goldhaber’s long-delayed Faces of Death meta-remake starring Ferreira finally opened in theaters days before Euphoria returned. Maude Apatow and Alexa Demie return as well, but, like Ferreira, they have yet to break beyond the limits of Levinson’s universe. Demie, a major diva according to the blinds, hasn’t been seen much, while Apatow directed her first feature last year (134 minutes—she’s certainly an Apatow) and has also been trashed in gossip columns. How fitting that both of them work in Hollywood in this new season Euphoria, a new, free terrain that barely resembles the previous seasons but is far more interesting and entertaining.

A few years after the gang (presumably) graduated from Euphoria High School, Rue (Zendaya) is forced to become a drug mule in order to pay her astronomical debts to the monotone and very scary suburban drug queen Laurie (Martha Kelly). Rue, along with Faye (Chloe Cherry), swallow dozens of baggies of fentanyl and barely make it over the border in time to shit (contra the contemporary fascination with all thing scatological, Levinson cuts just as Rue is ready to pop in the bathroom). Back in Southern California, Cassie (Sydney Sweeney) is busy “making content” for her OnlyFans (Multiple ask her, “Isn’t that a porn site?” to which she says, “You know, that’s a common misconception—I used to think the same thing”). Nate, busy with the construction business he inherited from his imprisoned father (the late Eric Dane, who shows up later in the season in his final role), is appalled when he walks in on Cassie and their housekeeper filming softcore doggy fetish videos, food bowl and all.

Hannah J. Davies of The Guardian said Euphoria season was “absolutely not worth the wait,” slamming the first three episodes as “a grubby, humourless work of torture porn that’s obsessed with and repulsed by sex work.” She goes on: “The way the show handles her cam girl ambitions, in particular, feels bafflingly dated (‘You wanna sell your body for floral arrangements?!’), while storylines around sugar babies and kink feel simultaneously voyeuristic and judgy.” In fact, it’s Davies’ aggressively “sex positive” attitude which has fallen out of fashion, along with her typically Millennial mix of frivolity and immaturity—“judgy”? It’s impossible to take these people seriously.

That line about “selling your body for floral arrangements” comes during an elaborate dinner scene where, for no apparent reason, Nate and Cassie eat at home surrounded by 50+ candles. The mis-en-scène of Euphoria season three is so outrageous and artificial, it recalls Fassbinder’s Querelle and the second season of True Detective. Levinson has exploded his own show, keeping its characters but reorienting and disorienting them to spectacular results, delivering something closer to Brecht or The Living Theater than anything else on television right now. On top of that, Euphoria has become an albatross for its stars, who barely promoted the new season and are clearly ready to move on. A new season of Euphoria would’ve made more sense in 2023—you know, a year after the previous season ended. Since 2022, an entire generation entered and graduated from high school. This is no longer a zeitgeist show.

But Levinson, determined to “evolve or die,” deconstructed Euphoria and turned it into a fever dream, both a parody of and an answer to the rest of the series. If one thread runs through the show, it’s drugs, and with season three, Levinson has delivered a strung-out nightmare that, just based on the first episode, could plausibly be played as “all a dream.” There’s no reason for Euphoria to continue: its stars are A-listers, Levinson moved on to The Idol (however briefly), and the graphic and extreme sexuality of its first two seasons are, contra-Davies, passé and of little interest to people who are in high school and college right now. Euphoria is a key Millennial artifact, and Levinson (41), like Lena Dunham (39), has been roundly criticized by Baby Boomers and his own generation for daring to take a risk, something Millennials really can’t stand. Euphoria, in all its graphic sexuality, violence, and casual cruelty, captured the fundamentally dark and hedonistic values espoused by Millennials in the 2010s; with a mirror held to their faces, people like Davies couldn’t cope with the world they helped create.

I look forward to this new and probably final season of Euphoria precisely because it resembles nothing on television now. It’s a survey of itself, a show about a show, something far more experimental and strange than anyone expected.

—Follow Nicky Otis Smith on Twitter: @NARCFILM