Why HBO's Euphoria Needs To End After Season 3

Put your leopard-print catsuit away if you haven't seen "Kitty Likes to Dance," the fourth episode of "Euphoria" Season 3. Spoilers ahead!

We're halfway through the third season of "Euphoria," and this show needs to end. Honestly, I wouldn't mind if it simply never aired again, but realistically, Season 3 of "Euphoria" must be the show's swan song, because it's a scattershot exercise in futility that has nothing novel or interesting left to say.

I know that sounds hyperbolic, but honestly, if you've been watching "Euphoria" Season 3, you might be nodding your head right about now. Sam Levinson's series, which first premiered on HBO in 2019, has been plagued by apparent controversies and long delays — Season 2 aired back in 2022 — and necessitated a significant time jump for the Season 3 premiere. There, we catch up with star Zendaya's former teenage drug addict Rue Bennett as she's working as a drug mule for Martha Kelly's kingpin Laurie and check in on her high school friends too, like Sydney Sweeney's Cassie Howard, Jacob Elordi's Nate Jacobs, Alexa Demie's Maddy Perez, Hunter Schafer's Jules Vaughn, and Maude Apatow's Lexi Howard, just to name a few. So, how are the kids doing? They're not all right, but more importantly, they're not fun to watch anymore.

Right from the start, "Euphoria" has been an ambitious series that strives to say a lot without always succeeding. In the past, its attempts to make statements about addiction, toxic masculinity, and Gen Z culture were sometimes misguided, but at least relatively entertaining; in Season 3, though, it has nothing of note to say anymore. From the way Levinson gleefully torments his female characters to the show's tangled web of convoluted plotlines, here's why "Euphoria" needs to end after Season 3.

Thanks to its distinctive visual style, strong cast, and ability to grab its audience's attention and hold on tight with lurid and risqué storylines, the first two seasons of "Euphoria" were at least relatively interesting to watch. I can't say the same of Season 3; even when it veers towards interesting, it just becomes exasperating and, frankly, utterly embarrassing. I mentioned that Rue begins the season as a drug mule but neglected to specify that we're treated to a lengthy scene of her swallowing bags of drugs to smuggle across the U.S./Mexico border, gagging all the while. Elsewhere, the show's other female leads face constant humiliations (save for Maude Apatow, whose Lexi basically just exists and occasionally scolds her friends).

Meanwhile, Sydney Sweeney's Cassie Howard has never exactly been dignified or, honestly, anywhere approaching stable. Nevertheless, her quest to become an OnlyFans star — under Maddy's tutelage, reuniting the former best friends despite a schism over Cassie's pursuit of Maddy's ex-boyfriend Nate — isn't empowering or enjoyable to witness. It's ... sad to watch Cassie pop a pacifier in her mouth and spread her legs like a baby, complete with a diaper. (If you want to see a similar storyline done well, "Margo's Got Money Troubles" on Apple TV is absolutely worth watching instead.) 

Elsewhere, Maddy's self-actualization in Season 3 centers around making Cassie into a successful adult entertainer, and Jules is a sugar baby and aspiring artist who lets her wealthy benefactor Ellis ("True Blood" veteran Sam Trammell) cover her in cling wrap like a leftover sandwich. However, the show does not explore the intricacies or oddities of that relationship beyond that. Ultimately, Sam Levinson is just doing too much at all times, and it's simply creating a huge mess.

Besides the weekly humiliation rituals that Sam Levinson puts his characters through, "Euphoria" Season 3, Episode 4, "Kitty Likes to Dance," reveals another one of the showrunner's bad habits: He's throwing way too many over-the-top storylines at the wall and not even bothering to wait around and see what sticks. Instead, everything just happens all at once, and anything meant to be shocking or titillating lands with a thud because you're trying to keep track of a billion ridiculous things. 

Case in point: Nate owes a "million-ish" dollars to a dangerous guy who cut off his pinky toes? That's happening. Also, Jules gets a huge opportunity from Lexi: the chance to create a painting that'll be featured in a soap opera on which Lexi works as an assistant to Patty Duke (Sharon Stone). But rather than doing what she's asked, Jules defiantly crafts a painting full of human genitalia that can't be shown on network TV, and when she's instructed to change it, she defaces the painting instead.

There's no given reason why Jules does this. She just does. That's kind of the thesis statement of "Euphoria" Season 3: There's no reason why someone is doing something, but they do it anyway. Without any attempt to ground these characters at all, everything feels pointless and ... silly, even. It's just bluster and shock value without narrative purpose.

In William Shakespeare's "Macbeth," the title character, during one of his soliloquies, utters the immortal line, "It is a tale old by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing." That's where we are with "Euphoria" halfway through its third season; it leans completely into the sound and fury with nothing to show for it underneath the surface.