Euphoria Season 3: Where All The Main Characters End Up After The Time Jump

Stop reading right away if you haven't watched the season 3 premiere of "Euphoria" — spoilers ahead! This article also contains discussions of addiction.

Sam Levinson's controversial but undeniably buzzy HBO series "Euphoria" is back for its third season — so where did its cast of characters land after the five-year time jump? Let me walk you through it.

First things first. Since its inception, "Euphoria" has centered around Zendaya's Rue Bennett, whom we first meet as she returns to school after a stay at a rehabilitation facility for a drug addiction that developed after her father's tragic death. Rue finds herself drawn back into the fray with her old friends — on-again off-again couple Nate Jacobs and Maddy Perez (Jacob Elordi and Alexa Demie) and sisters Cassie and Lexi Howard (Sydney Sweeney and Maude Apatow — and drawn towards new student Jules Vaughn (Hunter Schafer). While the show's first two seasons take place while the characters are in high school (ostensibly, since they never seem to attend any classes at what I've taken to calling Euphoria High), season 3 introduces a five-year time jump, putting everyone in their early 20s.

You might think a lot has changed in those unseen five years, but honestly? Everything has stayed more or less the same, with some small and surprising developments here and there. Here's everything you need to know about where five of the main characters on "Euphoria" land at the beginning of season 3.

Throughout "Euphoria," we've watched as Rue tries to keep her personal life above water despite her all-consuming addiction to hard drugs. Unfortunately, her good heart and best intentions can only take her so far. Rue's frequent relapses do, understandably, tend to seriously damage her relationships. (For context, Storm Reid, who played Rue's younger sister Gia on the first two seasons of "Euphoria," isn't returning for season 3, and Nika King, who plays Rue and Gia's mom Leslie, is only set to make a small appearance; outside of friends, it looks like Rue is largely on her own.) So, where is Rue in season 3 of "Euphoria"

She's a drug mule. Yes, you read that right. During season 2 of the series, Rue runs afoul of Laurie (Martha Kelly), an unusually soft-spoken drug kingpin who gives Rue a suitcase full of drugs that Leslie throws out in an attempt to help Rue get sober. Though Laurie's threat to Rue seems half-baked later in that season, when she escapes Laurie's clutches with seemingly no problem, Laurie resurfaces in season 3, finds Rue at the smoke shop where she works, and delivers some unwelcome information. According to Laurie, Rue owes her $43 million based on interest and inflation.

That's how Rue and her season 2 buddy Faye, played by Chloe Cherry, end up swallowing bags of drugs and smuggling them across the border. This monotony is ultimately broken by Rue's chance meeting with Alamo (Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje), a rival kingpin who might offer Rue an unlikely salvation. Still, this is a pretty bleak place for Rue to be at the start of season 3, and only time will tell if things get better ... or worse.

Nate and Cassie are, somehow, still together in season 3 of "Euphoria" — not only that, but they're getting married soon and living in a vast mansion. When we first see them, Cassie is, in her words, "creating content" with the help of their housekeeper, but what that means in practice is that Cassie is dressed in a pornographic dog costume gnawing on a chew toy for a niche online audience. Even though Nate insists that she makes them both look like a "joke," Cassie insists that she can make a decent living off of content like this and wants to build up her followers ... something that becomes all-too-relevant later in the episode when Nate insists that they don't need to spend $50,000 on wedding flowers. Cassie insists that she can pay for it if Nate can't, which only makes him angrier about her attempts to embark on this career — and he flies off the handle when she suggests OnlyFans.

So what about Nate? He took over his father Cal's (the late Eric Dane) real-estate business, but as Rue's narration notes, starting new building projects in Southern California can be extremely difficult. As we see Nate wander through a construction site that's not even slightly underway, we get the distinct sense that he might be underwater both professionally and financially, so that can't be great news for this couple. Also, important to note: he's enticing investors for his own venture, Sun Settlers, which he describes as the "premier end-of-life transition facility in California." No way his attempts to get investors on board will backfire at any point!

When we last saw Lexi Howard, the only person who seems to stay out of trouble on "Euphoria," she was staging a massively ambitious and frankly unhinged school play about herself, her popular sister Cassie, and all of their friends. So where's Lexi now? Thankfully, she's fine.

In voiceover, Rue tells us that she crashes on Lexi's couch from time to time, even though it always comes with a lecture from Lexi about planning for her future. (Tragically, in a scene the two share in the premiere, Rue tells Lexi that Lexi should call Angus Cloud's Fezco, who's in prison, because he misses her. Cloud passed away at the age of 25 in 2023, before season 3 of "Euphoria" started filming.)

So where's Lexi? She's working in Hollywood on a nighttime soap opera for Patty Lance, "an industry legend" played by Sharon Stone. "Lexi felt right at home. She was surrounded by smart, creative people who cared about the world." She's also seen giving a "good note" to Patty, indicating that, unsurprisingly, Lexi is pretty good at her job.

As Rue's voiceover tells us, "Maddy worked in management representing influencers and a few actors." She also tells us that the job seems more glamorous than it actually is, given that Maddy usually just answers the phone for her high-flying boss who has a treadmill desk. She gets to walk red carpets, rub elbows with clients like a young star named Dylan Reid, and when she gets home each night, there's nothing to show for it — meaning that her boss gets the 10% commission for most of Maddy's work while the young professional goes home empty-handed.

Anyone who's even remotely familiar with "Euphoria" knows that Maddy, of all people, can find a way to rise above and take control of this situation. Often armed with killer fashion and long, sharp nails, Maddy is an unfailingly confident, exceptionally smart, and enterprising woman who understands her own power. Now we just have to see where her instincts take her in season 3.

We can't talk about "Euphoria" and not talk about Jules, but here's one problem: Hunter Schafer's Jules does not appear in the season 3 premiere of "Euphoria." Instead, we hear secondhand from Lexi that she's working as a "sugar baby" in arrangements with older men. (Lexi heard it from Maddy, pivotally.)

Schafer is definitely set to show up in season 3 of "Euphoria," but we'll have to wait and see whether or not the "sugar baby" rumors are true. As far as Jules's past journey goes, she and Rue were involved in an on-again, off-again romance in high school, and beyond that, Jules sought out sexual attention from older men ... including Cal Jacobs. After Nate, who also has his own dalliance with Jules when the two start chatting online under anonymous usernames, discovers a tape that Cal made of his night with Jules, he's horrified to learn about his father's proclivities, putting Jules at the center of it all. Still, she's one of the most emotionally mature characters on the show despite the turmoil that frequently surrounds her, and I'll be interested to see what Schafer, a preternaturally talented actress, does throughout the rest of the season.

Euphoria airs new episodes on Sundays at 9 p.m. EST on HBO and HBO Max.