This month, the season 3 premiere of Euphoria finally debuts on HBO and HBO Max after a too-long five-year hiatus.
In case you still haven’t caught up on the provocative, highly memeable show, you’ve still got time to binge all sixteen of its provocative episodes.
For the uninformed, the HBO show follows the teenagers at East Highland High School in California, as they navigate sex, drugs, alcohol, friendship, cheating, betrayal and never much else.
The show stars Zendaya, Sydney Sweeney, Jacob Elordi and Hunter Schafer.
Watch With Us explains why you’ve gotten to envision out this controversial popular culture phenomenon before it concludes this spring.
The Plotlines Are Absurd, Obscene — and Addictive
The central narrative of Euphoria is driven by Rue (Zendaya), a teenage drug addict who’s been fighting addiction because the death of her father from cancer. Season 1 kicks off with Rue’s recent release from rehab, and he or she makes it clear to the audience, as our omniscient narrator, that she has no plans of staying clean. While Rue dips her toes back into opiate abuse, she becomes head-over-heels infatuated with latest student Jules (Schafer), a trans girl who frequents one-night stands with older men — including the daddy (Eric Dane) of East Highland’s football star, Nate Jacobs (Elordi).
Nate and Maddie Perez (Alexa Demie) are in an emotionally abusive relationship, while Maddie’s best friend, the highly sexual and emotional Cassie Howard (Sydney Sweeney), pursues a relationship with college freshman Chris McKay (Algee Smith). Their other friend, Kat Hernandez (Barbie Ferreira), decides to embrace body positivity and her sexuality by becoming a camgirl. Various plot threads in season 1 of Euphoria involve: micro-penises, sexual blackmail, domestic abuse, pedophilia, fentanyl abuse, public masturbation, kidney infections and murder, and that isn’t even the half of it. Criticisms against Euphoria have concerned such explicitly gratuitous narratives, but one thing will all the time be true: the people want to observe them.
‘Euphoria’ Launched the Careers of 2026’s Leading Stars
Hunter Schafer and Zendaya in Euphoria special episode 1. Eddy Chen / ©HBO / Courtesy Everett Collection
Euphoria served because the jumping-off point for much of its core solid. While Zendaya was probably the most important name of the highschool characters on the time, she has since been matched by Elordi, Sweeney and Schafer. From his imposing, genuinely terrifying performance as Nate Jacobs, Elordi was solid in Deep Water opposite Ana De Armas and Ben Affleck, indie film The Sweet East and eventually as Elvis Presley in Sofia Coppola‘s Priscilla. While post-Priscilla Elordi made his mark in Saltburn, Oh, Canada and On Swift Horses, it was on the set of Priscilla that Elordi was beneficial to Guillermo del Toro to tackle his Academy Award-nominated performance as Frankenstein’s Monster.
Sweeney, too, has had quite a buzzy post-Euphoria profession (and never all the time for one of the best reasons), starring in movies like The Housemaid, Immaculate, Madame Web and Anyone But You. Meanwhile, Schafer has develop into a significant face for transgender representation in Hollywood, appearing in The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes, Cuckoo and Sorts of Kindness. It’s undeniable that whatever you think that of the standard of Euphoria, it served as a vital breeding ground for top young Hollywood talent doing a little of their best work. And while well-known, Zendaya further proved her acting prowess beyond her Disney Channel years — for her performance as Rue, she clinched two Primetime Emmys and a Golden Globe.
The Filmmaking Is Highly Stylized and Ambitious
Say what you’ll about Euphoria show runner, creator and author Sam Levinson‘s screenwriting abilities, the person knows easy methods to keep things unique with the camera and editing. The series employs quite a few creative gimmicks: fourth wall-breaking sequences, animated sequences, dance numbers, dream sequences and more. Ultimately, the creatives behind the show exit of their option to make Euphoria hyper-stylized in nearly every filmmaking aspect, from the directing and costume design to the sets and editing. The show is supposed to evoke the emotional reality of the characters’ inner perspectives, which doesn’t necessarily reflect objective reality.
While the primary season was shot on an Arri Alexa 65 digital camera, the second season and the 2 specials were shot on 35mm Kodak film stock, giving the visual quality a nostalgic texture. To speak the emotional states of the characters, lighting may be very intentionally deployed, with blues and purples conjuring a frantic atmosphere, and greens and yellows evoking distress. Energetic camera movements create a kinetic fluidity to the show through frequent whip pans and tracking shots. And, after all, the costume design is one of the memorable facets of the filmmaking, with highly meticulous outfits catered to the personalities of every character — specifically, Maddie’s detailed and eccentric makeup designs are to die for.