Euphoria Season 3 Review: Zendaya's Hit HBO Series Has Lost Itself

In the four years since an episode of "Euphoria" has aired on HBO, the majority of its cast has become movie stars, its mercurial and controversial showrunner has laid the biggest egg of his career, and the series saw two of its actors and a key producer pass away. Against all odds, the show is back with its long awaited third season. But is that really a good thing?

Loosely based on the Israeli drama of the same name, the first season of "Euphoria" was a unique and disruptive blast of energy into the 2019 television landscape. A sprawling ensemble piece about a group of teenagers and their families in the suburbs of LA, it transformed the framework of the teen soap opera into a delivery system for exploring the acceleration of modern youth culture. Centered around protagonist Rue Bennett (Zendaya) and her struggles with drug addiction, Sam Levinson leveraged a diverse cast, lively needle drops, and the aesthetic "inspiration" of artist Petra Collins' photography to synthesize something that felt vital and compelling.

But the second season took a regrettable turn, with Levinson going the auteur route, directing every episode himself and leading the show down an indulgent road that traded a lot of its introspection and nuance for something more exploitative and chaotic. It made for great live tweeting, but it had more in common with a prolonged car crash we all couldn't stop rubbernecking. By the finale, it felt like ending the series before it got any worse might have been a necessary mercy killing. 

However, "Euphoria" has survived, with this new act of the show presenting yet another evolution. The first three episodes made available to the press ahead of Sunday's premiere paint a curious picture, one of a show still trying to figure out what it's supposed to be.

In the first episode of Season 3, Alamo (a new character played by Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje) says that the beauty of America is that anyone can reinvent themselves. If the episode's opening sequence is any indication, Sam Levinson seems to want to be Vince Gilligan, experimenting with a more patient, deliberate tone that lets the images carry more of the load than the words. It's a fascinating set piece, immediately calling to mind Gilligan's work on "Pluribus" to drop us without context into Rue's new normal. But in rather quick succession, it gives way to something a lot less interesting.

We won't spoil much about where any of the main players have ended up five years on beyond what can be gleamed from the trailers, not solely to prevent ruining anything for folks who want to go in blind, but because those revelations are about all the show really has to offer. Intentional or not, the general tenor of the new season seems to be the energy of scrolling through a Facebook feed late at night to see what your old classmates are up to ... except that one of your old friends has gotten themselves trapped into a Tarantino-like crime thriller, while the rest are either treading water or have devolved into depressing parodies of themselves.

Rue's arc feels like the only one that's a believable extension of what we've seen of her in prior seasons, the grown-up version of the dramatic entanglements her substance abuse issues got her caught up in but extrapolated to a more neo-noir space than a teenage soap opera could really contain. Unfortunately, Nate (Jacob Elordi) and Cassie (Sydney Sweeney) feel like dumber, less interesting versions of themselves, with their subplot going down a path that makes their oft-maligned romance from the last season seem like a Wong Kar-Wai film by comparison. 

We imagine the rest of the episodes might give Jules (Hunter Schafer) more to do, but there's little thus far for anyone else that suggests Levinson has anything real to say about them. (Given the way the remaining cast is utilized, perhaps all the backstage drama saved us from some potentially regrettable scenes for former players like Barbie Ferreira and Algee Smith.) But the characters themselves aren't the whole picture.

Sam Levinson has said in interviews that this season is about exploring a larger canvas as a metaphor for moving from the insular, self-centered world of adolescence into the challenges of adulthood. The stakes are higher because parents aren't around as guardrails. Cinematographer Marcell Rév still produces startling, rapturous images, now with a wider aspect ratio and more distinctly Western iconography to make the universe of "Euphoria" feel bigger and more immersive. Hans Zimmer has taken over the music reigns from Labyrinth and given the soundscapes a more epic and cinematic signature — but Labyrinth's distinctive experimentation is sorely missed, once as integral to the show's voice as Levinson's writing. 

Things feel more outsized, to be sure. But there's been such a flattening of the characterization that placing these lesser simulacrums of figures we've grown to love into these new environs only serves to accentuate how much texture and nuance the writing has lost season after season. Sadly, one of the only core elements of the show that hasn't changed is the one that could most freely be excised: Levinson's lecherous, exploitative eye and his tendency to construct narratives for the sole purpose of building an opportunity to luxuriate on the bodies of his stars. At times, the show feels like a Mad Libs filled in to maximize puerile imagery above all else, and within the creative aims of the new episodes, is all the poorer for it. 

Season 3 of "Euphoria" is at its best as a pulpy, cartoonish approximation of the way early adulthood is an endless maze of coveting the seemingly enviable lives of your peers, unable to see through the strained charades they perform. The shame-driven facades would crumble under the lightest scrutiny if everyone wasn't already so concerned with keeping up their own self-deceptions. But where the show used to seem too mature and provocative for a soap opera about teenagers, it now feels much too childish for a crime drama about adults. Time will tell if Levinson is able to strike a better balance with the remaining episodes, but from what we've seen so far, it doesn't feel particularly likely.

"Euphoria" Season 3 premieres on HBO on April 12, with one episode dropping every Sunday.