The Rise & Fall of Euphoria

Five years ago, it felt like Euphoria was defining the culture, the makeup when viral, the fashion was everywhere, and every single person on that show somehow became an a-list actor immediately after one season. Yet, in 2026, the sentiment around this show could not be any more different. What did I just watch? This finale really puts the bottom in lobotomy. In the span of just three seasons and just a few years, this went from one of the most talked about culturally defining shows of the past decade to kind of becoming a shell of itself. Something riddled with criticism and controversy, and it feels like every time an episode of it came out this season, there was another thing piece about how weird it was or how Sam and Levinson did something crazy, which compelled me to think about the rise and fall of Euphoria. How did this show get so big so quickly, and more so, what about this season was so different from the first two? Well, that was exactly the question we set out to solve here today. We were talking about all things Euphoria season three. I have many, many thoughts. Some of what you're going to agree with, some of which we will not. So with that, welcome back, Nikki and I, I'm your host, Nikki Redden, and I could not be more excited to talk to you. I've been waiting to do this one. I definitely always knew I wanted to do an episode on Euphoria. It's just like one of those things. It's so, it's a piece of the culture, like even when the, you know, they announced the third season and whatnot, like I knew whether it was amazing and fantastic and everybody loved it or it was awful and terrible. Everybody hated it. Like it was, it just has this cultural pull. Like I cannot tell you the last time I feel like we had a show that was so deeply a conversation piece in the way that Euphoria has been. And also why it, it fell off is I think super, super interesting. You know, then it's such an interesting thing that has happened with TV shows these days. You know, like friends was eight seasons and Euphoria is three seasons. There's almost this curse of success that kind of has been happening with film and TV where it seems like the most even stranger things is like five seasons and they're like eight episode seasons. You know, that would have two seasons of friends would have been more than all of that show combined. Right. It is just this very interesting thing that has started to happen where actors have a lot more options now, which in many ways I think is a good thing. You know, it encourages like fair labor and allows them to build like a business and a career for themselves. But it is also this weird thing where it just feels like, wow, we cannot have a good show that was like any modest amount of time anymore. You know what I mean? And Euphoria is the ultimate example of that. It is like the Icarus that flew too close to the sun and caught on fire. So I really want to talk about why. But before that, hey, don't forget to subscribe to the show on Spotify, Apple Music, wherever you get your podcasts, you can listen to us in the car at the gym on your car ride to work. You know, just get some more good interesting things in your life at maybe sometimes it aren't the most fun. So let's talk about how I think Euphoria lost its magic. I think one of the big reasons the season was so disappointing was how we really lost the magic of Euphoria visuals. The makeup looks or iconic. The fashion felt so in line with each character and the lighting felt euphoric. Like the name of the show, there was such a unique visual world around this. Like you could walk by some random girl in the street and be like, oh, wow, she's doing Euphoria makeup today. You cannot say that same thing about this season at all. It does not have like a trademark aestheticism to it. And that was really the magic behind the petra Collins of it all, which makes it so aggravating for what Sam Levinson did to her. For those of you who don't know, the lore is one petra Collins is just like a very famous photographer. She does all of Olivia Rodrigo's visuals. She's done a lot of stuff with Billy Eilish. She is shot Zendaya, Alexa Demi and like a lot of the people in this show even prior to its existence. So in 2019, when this show was in development, Petra alleged that Sam reached out to her directly saying that he wanted to make a show inspired around her photography. Like that was the mood board essentially. So she came on and they worked together for five months, doing things like developing the visuals, talking about casting ideas for different actors and actresses, world building and shaping the aesthetics of the show. And they worked on this for five months all the way until right before production was about to start. Sam Levinson says, actually, I think you're too young to direct the show. And I'm going to end up directing it myself and let's her go. Which is so fucking crazy. Like just higher the creative person that you reached out to directly saying that their entire aesthetic was like what this show was about. There is this thing I saw on Instagram recently. It was like, it said, if you're going to put me on the mood board, put me on the call sheet. Like, it is insane. The way he just essentially like stole that from her more or less is what it sounds like to me. You know, obviously, I don't know exactly what happened, but that is so shady. And that situation was very shocking to me. And I think a big reason why season three didn't have any of that was because petro Collins is no longer involved, right? I think season one and two of you for you were very much like two halves of the same hole. You really knew where the story was going and whatnot. And then after all of that, you know, it lost the plot and it lost the world and its identity. And that's because the person who was steering the ship was never the person who built that identity in the first place. And it is this thing that happens all the time in productions where there is some young, really talented person who is so excited and so eager and wants to work on the thing. And then the older person with connections in the industry finds a way to like, youink it from underneath them. But let's talk about season three and why it was actually so different. Hot take, I actually really enjoyed the season of Euphoria. I think it was very interesting television. I don't think it was better than the first two. But I was engaged, I was interested. It is very much so, you know, a shell of itself in many ways as I'm about to get into. But and I'm going to be very critical of it, especially because it's not just about is the show entertaining and not it's in comparison to what it what is it's so it's noticeably worse in every single way. The writing is worse. The visuals are worse. I think in some instances the acting is a lot worse. And when I talk about why that is. But honestly, like my overarching view of the season is I enjoyed it. Like I felt it was super entertaining. Those were just like the mid few episodes were particularly interesting. And then once a lot of things were happening with like the neat arc is when I stopped being interested. But now we get into my critiques, which there are many. Number one, why was every plot line this season about sex work? Cassie is doing only fans. Maddie is managing people who do only fans. Nate is married to somebody who does only fans. Rue is working at a strip club and Jules is now a sugar baby. And it was uncomfortable. Like it was weird. There were scenes where Sydney Sweeney is like dressed as a baby showing feet. I don't need to see that. Okay, it's weird. And it's I think a weird Sam Levinson like fantasy fulfillment thing. And there is this weird dynamic between the two of them where it is like hypersexualized to an extent that's like this. This has nothing to do with the storytelling. Like this is a weird fantasy play. And what made Euphoria so good in the first place was the character dynamics and how there were always just this slow building tension between everyone. Keeping secrets from each other. The Cassian Native at all. Rue hiding things from Jules. It was the people who made the show interesting. And this show felt the least about the people and the dynamics between them than the show has ever been. And I think that there was this weird thing like I think plot lines about sex work could have been very interesting. But the execution was bad, right? Like in season one, Barbie fear is character was so interesting to me. This girl who is kind of bullied and she's plus size and she never felt beautiful in her friend group. So she turns to doing something like only fans because it is the first time she ever felt desirable. She's actually doing it because she just wants to feel beautiful. Like that is such a strong motive and a relatable experience that the viewer can identify themself with. And there's a reason to that storyline, right? Like it actually makes sense. Whereas this was just like, okay, time skip. And now everybody's doing sex work. What? It was weird. And I just really wish that this season had been more focused on, you know, the people and the relationships between them. Like season two was so interesting, right? Because of that. It felt like this ticking time bomb. We knew like Cassian Native was going to happen but not win. And then once it did happen, it's like, when is Maddie going to find out it about it all? And then there was the Rue storyline with, you know what I mean? Like she's always messing with people. Like this, this, this, we just lost that entire like emotional stake that I feel like the show always had. And it's writing. And it just made it feel a bit more emotionally flat than some of the peaks of the other seasons did. But I want to go through each character storyline one at a time and kind of talk about what I think was either good or bad about each of them. We're gonna start with Ryu. And let me say, Zendaya is hands down the movie star of our generation. Like that girl can act. Oh my God, the range of emotion that she displays as a Ryu is insane. Like sometimes you are so angry and frustrated at her, but then she breaks down crying in her mother's arms and you empathize with her so deeply and you feel so bad for her. Like it's not her fault, but then you see her in this like crazy drugged-out psychosis where just because she's causing all the problems and then you're like, well I can't feel bad for you when you're causing all these problems. But then there's just, the acting is so perfect. It's so flawless. Like I feel like every 10 minutes you can be so in love with Ryu or just so deeply furious at Ryu. And that is such a hard thing to do and to embody in a character like that where they are so up and down all the time and like never learn from their lessons. You're almost like pulling your hair out, watching them. Like it's just flawless. And I think one of the genius parts of Euphoria as a show is that you constantly go back and forth between loving and hating each character at different moments in time, right? Like even when they are making decisions or at their worst or being crazy, you kind of understand why. They do a lot to sort of show the trauma they have experienced that made them that way. So while you disagree with their actions, you almost feel this like sympathy for why they felt the need to do it in the first place. And that is what really Zendaya was so good at with Ryu and I think what makes Ryu such an interesting character. You know, like there's so many times that you see her in a bad situation and you feel bad for her, but also like, she kind of got herself there, you know what I mean? Ultimately and until the end when she meets her demise, which I will, I have a section of this I'm gonna talk about the end like the way the show ended. So I'll save it for then. So next we get to Jules. The Jules storyline felt like such wasted potential this season and there was just zero exploration of her character at all. Like she is literally the reason Ryu ended up in debt to Lori and then had to go to Alamo because Jules threw the suitcase of drugs way in season two. And we just never really see her experience any guilt or emotion about that. I feel like her storyline even as like the sugar baby with the plastic surgeon could have been so interesting. Like this idea of being fetishized by an older man who literally cuts people open for a living to transform them into something else. How would that make you feel as a trans woman? Like being fetishized in that way. Does that make it uncomfortable? Is there this weird sense of comfort where you feel seen because you know that there's just no judgment there? Like I don't know either way. I'm not trying to tell her the character how to feel but I just felt like the idea. There was just so much more to explore with her story and I felt like Jules was just like in three scenes. She wasn't even like I felt like a character driving the narrative or plot in any way is another thing. Like the relationship between Ryu and Jules was very much a plot driver of the first two seasons. Like Ryu would do many things for her or try to avoid this or that or what happened with Nate's dad was with Jules, right? And like in season three Jules is like not attached to driving the story at all. She's just there in the show, not actually a primary piece of the plot at any point in time. And then we get to Nate. Nate Jacobs was the biggest disappointment of this season for me. Like he used to be crazy and now he is just like this neutered version of himself. There was this fire and ferociousness in Nate that made it feel like he could pop with rage at any moment in time in the first two seasons. And that was just completely gone from his character this season. Like the fire just disappeared and the Nate Jacobs of season one or two would have never gotten beaten up many times as the way he did in this season. And like if someone did that to him in season one, he would have literally have murdered them. Like actual murder. That's how crazy he was. And that's what made the relationship between him and Cassie in that storyline so interesting because you saw how they like matched each other's crazy, the anger, this obsession with vanity and how people perceive them. You kind of understood how those two people ended up together because they are both equally insane. But in this season, it felt like they were entirely different people and there was just like no chemistry or anything. Like it's just, it's crazy. Like if you watch season two and then watch season three, it is like Nate Jacobs is a completely different person and the way they wrote him was just bad. It was so bad and frustrating, which brings us to Cassie. Cassie's character arc I think is meant to show the failure of the American dream that you are sold this lie, that if you get a beautiful husband, the nice house, a stunning wedding, that you're gonna have such a happy and fulfilled life. But Cassie's life is like this endless void of unfulfillment. Even before we find about all the things with Nate being a liar, she's like obsessed with social media and validation and this endless pursuit of vanity. And I freaking love the scene after the wedding where Nate is like on the verge of death and Cassie got punched in the face one time but she's just sitting there crying on the floor about her nose and not helping him at all. Like that is so how Cassie thinks, right? Like it is so like programmed to this obsession with vanity in her and that it creates this like unability to be satisfied, right? Because her satisfaction and happiness in life is not coming from herself, it's coming from the way other people think or feel or speak about her which makes her constantly chase this never-ending goal line. And I do feel like that's kind of like what, why there wasn't interesting things to me about her like kind of like getting into like this only fans of it all. I do see why for a girl like Cassie that becomes this desirable thing, you know? Like once she needs money, she enjoys like that sort of validation a little bit. And that's like I do feel like there was some natural progression there. But the execution of it was so uncomfortable and like intentionally uncomfortable not tastefully uncomfortable, you know? Like again, like I think there's so many interesting things that you can do to talk about sex work and whatnot. Like that is such interesting material but the way it was done and like the whole scene of like Cassie getting big for some reason like why? Why did we spend $500,000 a production budget or on that? It had nothing to do with the story, right? There's just these like weird idea fetishes, things that feel very Sam Levinson to me that I like that were just took up so much space in the season that I wish would have been directed to like actual interesting character development. There were so many loose ends, there were so many things that lacked conclusion or exposition in some points. And it's because there was so much time and budget spent on this stupid stuff that like we didn't actually need to see and then that brings us to Maddie. Alexa Demi needs to be in every movie ever made every show. I am obsessed with her. I was already obsessed with her this season. Oh my god. I was like mad every time the camera would pan away. She needs to be the lead in something. She is the most confident person I have ever seen in my life. She oozes competence and authority. Like the way she walks with such ferocity but we'll speak with like such poise and eloquence. Like she is Maddie and Maddie is Alexa. She is this girl who came from nothing but was constantly surrounded by people who had everything and made it her life's mission to prove that she could be as good as everyone else and at times even better than they are. And like that, I just felt like Maddie and Alexa is like my favorite character of the whole show. Truly, like I see her so deeply and how there is this like so such this like rough exterior but masking some really deep insecurity. Something I found so interesting was that she lived in a basement this season but was constantly wearing designer clothes. And it's never even really talked about or mentioned that much, but I found it was so interesting that like to someone like Maddie it is more important to be perceived as this like bad bitch and smart and authoritative than it was to like have air conditioning or a washer dryer in the unit. Like that is so Maddie. And I love those that little detail. Again, it's like not even really a part of the plot but it speaks to who she is as a person. What her drive and aspirations are. Like even when she got fired from her job and you see the rage in her face but she looks at her and she goes, thank you for the opportunity. Like I love that. And I don't know, I feel like I relate to Maddie in some ways. You know? Like this moving year from a random suburb in Virginia and like seeing, there's so much nepotism in the closet. It's like so much. And even sometimes things just friends who were born here have like, damn man, you took me 22 years to get to the place where you just like spawned, you know what I mean? And how that can create this sort of resentment in you. And not anger, it's just like, you know what I mean? I don't know, maybe I'm not articulating it well, but I really felt that within Maddie of like this drive and hunger in her comes from having to prove to herself that she can be as good as the people who got to start a little bit ahead of her in life. And now I really want to talk about the last episode, the ending and then overall thoughts that I have about the show. I really did not like the finale of this show at all. I actually thought the midpoint of the season was really fantastic, but it just fell off in episode seven and eight. Like there were so many plot holes in loose ends that made no sense. Maddie and Cassie storyline has like barely any conclusion. She's kind of just in the exact same place she started at the beginning of it, just without Nate. The guy who betrayed Alamo made no sense to me at all. He literally has zero motive. There's like no discussion of he like didn't like grow. He did, there's no moments with him and Maddie's character. There's like literally no reason at all. He also just like recently, like the episode before drove to Mexico and smuggled in drugs for his boss. Like why would you commit a massive crime before just killing him? Like wouldn't she just kill him for, like you know what I mean? Like wouldn't she just kill him first? Like it just made no sense. It was literally just like they had to find a way for this weird standoff to happen. It was just terrible writing. Terrible writing. I felt like the last episode of the show was just written so terribly. The biggest part being Roo's death was so anti-climactic. I was livid actually. Like Coleman's main goal was such an incredible actor, but I was like his character should have cried. The fact like that's what like his daughter, you know what I mean? Like on his couch while he was sleeping, how would you even be able to like have your morning coffee on that couch ever again? Watch a little movie and like you would destroy your life. It would like you thought she had just gone to you and just like it was like hey, like I'm gonna be here and I'm gonna be safe. And he even saw those pills and chose not to throw them away. And like we don't get this like introspective moment of remorse, we get the rage for sure when he like goes into that place with a shotgun and blah, blah, blah. But like there's no exploring how that made him feel is like a failure is like a sponsor, you know, for an narcotics anonymous. Like he, I don't know, I was and I don't mean this by Coleman's being those acting. I think he is incredible. Like one of the best. But the writing of it was so wrong to me. I felt like the rude death scene with Fez was weird. I felt like this whole like trying to keep Fez alive. Like Angus, like acting like Angus clouds character was alive was weird to me. His death was very, very tragic and very, very public. And we all know that and Zendaya pretending to be like, "Oh, I hate that." It's like on the phone. And maybe it was just me. He didn't feel so much like, "Wow, this is amazing." Like we're honoring and remembering this. It just felt like randomly inserted into the plot for no reason at all. But I don't know. Again, you know, I didn't know this person and I know that the cast has spoken immensely about how loved he was and how close everybody was with him. So if Zendaya felt, you know, like that was right for her and the character and whatever, that's great. But I don't know, the whole death sequence thing was just so confusing to me. And I feel like it just lacked punch, you know what I mean? Like it lacked sort of Zendaya, like, ruse, sorry, having consequences. Like, you know that, and that was a consequence, definitely, of like what her working with Alamo and blah, blah, blah. But like it didn't feel like she went through enough of a transformation. The whole like randomly, I'm gonna be into Jesus aspect of it was like funny. Again, like in the middle of the season, I loved it. I thought it was very funny. But at the end, I'm like, no, like I want her to not just have like a spiritual awakening. I want her to have like a emotional like, I understand what I've done wrong to people awakening, that just felt not present at all. I also felt like Jewels should have had a bigger reaction to what happened to her. Like, Jewels should have realized that she's kind of responsible in some ways or the very least like, tormented that girl a bit and let her on and loved the attention from her and knew that she loved her but didn't really care. Like there wasn't any of that. And I would have loved just some more of like, Jewels breaking down and Jewels realizing that, you know, she chose a life of comfort over a life of love. And now the person who loved her is gone and she'll never get to choose that. You know, like that is such a heart-wrenching thing for a person to go through and traumatic. And the year was just no emotion. Again, like it was just flat. That's how I feel like this. Like I feel like the spectrum of emotions of this show should have been like this and the season they were very, like this, you know what I mean? And yeah, I don't know. I think that that is how I feel about it. I think that this was a hard show to write, okay? Like two of the cast members have died. There's a lot of drama with the director. Multiple people have left the show because of the director. The person who did the entirety of the soundtrack left the show because of the director, which was also one of the biggest anchoring points like of the euphoria aesthetic. And I forgot to mention the beginning, like the labyrinth of it all. And I'm not sure I could have salvaged it better myself, you know what I mean? It's tough. And I think doing a time skip was just necessary because it's like how do you fill in all these holes of all these people leaving and blah, blah, blah. But again, at points, it made it feel a bit shallow, feel a bit lacking in real consequence. That created a lot of loopholes and just loose threads to plot that were hard to ignore. Like I was just like, okay, like. But I'm dying to know what you guys thought of this season. Again, like I think it was a really, it was an enjoyable watch. It was good TV. I loved having my little show every single week. Like I've really, I've been struggling for shows, guys. Please give me recommendations in the comments. Oh my God. I have to watch obsession in back rooms this week. I've had like 30 of my friends have texted me about them. So I expect a video about obsession and back rooms coming. But yeah, I love you all so much. Don't forget to subscribe to the channel if you haven't yet. Check the follows on Spotify. You know all the things I love you and I'll see you next week. Bye.