Warning: Spoilers ahead! Do not proceed unless you’ve watched the Season 3 finale of Euphoria.”
Move over, “Game of Thrones” and “Stranger Things,” there’s a new worst finale in town.
“Euphoria” Season 3 ended the way it began: tawdry, tasteless, and squandering its all-star cast with ludicrous writing.
In the Sam Levinson drama’s supersized, 93-minute long finale that aired Sunday, Rue (played by Zendaya) dies halfway through the episode. It’s grim and anticlimactic.
She doesn’t even go out in the gang war between Season 3 drug kingpins Laurie (Martha Kelly) and Alamo (Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje)
Rue swipes pills from Alamo, and overdoses on fentanyl. Her distraught mentor, Ali (Colman Domingo) finds her unresponsive on his couch.
Ali later gets revenge. He puts on his old military uniform, shows up at Alamo’s strip club with a gun, and fatally shoots Alamo.
This takes up the majority of the finale’s screen time – along with some unnecessary action from Laurie and her redneck gang, who get apprehended by the DEA and cops (Laurie ties a noose around her neck and throws herself off a building, rather than get arrested).
So, even if you were enjoying Season 3’s dubious focus on Cassie’s OnlyFans career, you barely even get that. Cassie’s (Sydney Sweeney) screen time is surprisingly minimal.
The finale spends more time zooming in on Kitty’s (Anna Van Patten)’s derriere than it spends on some original “Euphoria” characters, like Jules (Hunter Schafer). That sounds like an exaggeration; it’s not.
The show ends with Cassie (Sydney Sweeney) seemingly now living in her and Nate’s tacky mansion with Maddy (Alexa Demie) and her sister Lexi (Maude Apatow).
To the extend that anybody gets a “happy ending,” it seems to be these three women living together in a weird large house with yellow decor.
Nate (Jacob Elordi) doesn’t even get a funeral. Cassie lied to Lexi about what happened to Nate. Lexi thinks he mysteriously vanished, and may turn up someday.
It’s telling that Zendaya and Jacob Elordi were the standout stars of Seasons 1 and 2, shining so brightly that the show helped them become two of the biggest global superstars today, and they’re barely in the finale. He only appears via a photo, and she’s only in about twenty minutes of it.
That says everything about what Season 3 turned into: a completely different (and much worse) show.
It’s been merely an excuse for Levinson to do a Tarantino pastiche, with all the writing depth of a stoned college freshman.
Season 3 of the HBO drama has been rightfully blasted by critics and fans.
“Euphoria” began in 2019, as a sex and drug filled story about high schoolers. Sure, it was wild and unrealistic at times, but the first two seasons were character-driven.
There was a reason “Euphoria” catapulted Elordi, Sweeney, and Zendaya into stardom. They all got to show off their acting chops with nuanced characters.
Season 3, however, erased all of that.
After a five-year time jump, the third installment became a cartoonish, wannabe gangster drama.
Formerly complex characters got reduced to one-dimensional roles, existing only as vehicles for absurd plot spectacle – mostly involving brutalizing Elordi, or the camera leering at Sweeney.
Nate got 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, and axed him in the penultimate episode —without addressing any of his formerly interesting character threads — arguably squandering one of TV’s best villains.
Meanwhile, Cassie turned into a money-hungry bimbo. She was never the smartest character, but this season exaggerated that quality to a degree that made her unbelievable. Her controversial OnlyFans plot was little more than an excuse to trot Sweeney out in fetish outfits.
Rue got bogged down in tedious gangster politics, with a half-assed interest in the Bible, before her bleak death.
As for Lexi and Jules, they were pushed to the sidelines.
The latter didn’t even get a plot. She spent the entire season painting in an apartment. Yawn.
Season 3 tried so hard to be edgy, but after the third or fourth gross-out scene involving literal crap, Cassie’s fetish content or cutting off Nate’s body parts, it all got boring.
There’s nothing more tedious than a show that tries to be “provocative” without having anything to say.
The only thing to feel euphoric about is that this ordeal is finally over.
HBO has not officially confirmed that this episode is the series finale, thought it’s listed as “season finale.”
The show is highly unlikely to return for a Season 4, however, as Zendaya and Sweeney are now among the world’s most in-demand actors, along with Elordi, who was killed off.
Levinson told Varietyin April that he has “no plans” for a Season 4. Zendaya also appeared on “The Drew Barrymore Show” that same month to say that she thinks Season 3 is the end and that it has “closure.”
May we all pour one out for the better show that “Euphoria” used to be, and bury Season 3 in a shallow grave in the desert.
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