There’s no more Euphoria in our future and the final season, especially the finale, has received some criticism. Sam Levinson’s Euphoria has officially come to an end. Season 3 was always presumed as the final season and it has now been made official by HBO. Zendaya’s Rue and her groups of friends won’t be returning ... Euphoria to officially end with season 3, finale receives mixed reactions
There’s no more Euphoria in our future and the final season, especially the finale, has received some criticism.
Sam Levinson’s Euphoria has officially come to an end. Season 3 was always presumed as the final season and it has now been made official by HBO. Zendaya’s Rue and her groups of friends won’t be returning to our screens.
We’ll be delving into some very spoiler-y stuff for the entire season and the finale now, so you might want to bookmark this page for later if you haven’t caught up yet.
This is your final warning.
Still here? Excellent!
After the shocking – and, frankly, very strange – death of Nate Jacobs (Jacob Elordi) in the penultimate episode, the finale certainly pulled no punches either with many characters dying in rather violent ways. Main character and the heart of the show, Rue, met her end just 45 minutes into the nearly 90-minute episode. Her death came by fentanyl overdose, an addiction Rue had been fighting against since season 1. Zendaya’s character hallucinated an emotional reunion with her mother as she passed away.
Angus Cloud, who played Fezco in the series, died of an accidental overdose in 2023 at the age of 25.
Creator Sam Levinson described Rue’s fate as “a way of honoring” the late actor and “saying a prayer for the future”. Rue is also reunited with Fez as she’s dying and the show included unused footage of Cloud to include him in the episode.
For Levinson, it seemed clear that Rue’s story had to end in tragedy after what happened with Cloud.
“But once [Cloud] passed away, I had to reconceive the script and I thought, you can’t tell a story about addiction today without the very real consequences. Most people don’t get a second chance. Fentanyl can just take you out in an instant. It wasn’t like when I was growing up; you could literally take pills off the street and you might have a bad trip or something, but you’d be fine. This is something that hits close to home for a lot of people in this country. So it felt like the responsible thing to do,” the creator said on the Popcast podcast.
While some fans found themselves sobbing at the finale, the episode received some criticism, too. Variety called the Euphoria finale “protracted” while Forbes was shocked at how Hunter Schafer’s character Jules was treated, but did call Colman Domingo, playing Rue’s sponsor Ali, “the saving grace” of the episode.
Fans also found Rue’s eventual death a disappointing ending for the character who had worked so hard to get sober.
“All this hope for Rue we had and for what? She dies,” one fan wrote, per Evoke’s reporting. “‘Her dying is such a terrible ending for a show that is meant to give hope for addicts!” another remarked. The ending certainly does imply that all that hard work for getting sober might just all be for nothing. Sure, it doesn’t take more than one mistake to overdose, but it is a heartbreaking ending that doesn’t leave a lot of room for optimism.
The entire season three of Euphoria has received some criticism, particularly the storyline of Sydney Sweeney being an OnlyFans creator this season. Sweeney’s Cassie was shown dressed as a baby for her content, something OnlyFans does not allow. Real-life OnlyFans models were not happy with Euphoria’s depiction of them, rightfully so.
“In the climate we’re in, that they dressed her up as a baby to make pornographic OnlyFans content was beyond troubling and again serves to perpetuate stereotypes that sex workers have no moral compass and that they will do anything for money,” OnlyFans creator Maitland Ward commented on the episode it happens in.
Overall, this season of Euphoria, which currently holds a critics’ score of 37% on Rotten Tomatoes, really missed the mark and the once-applauded show ended on a sour, tragic note.
