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This month, the season 3 premiere of Euphoria finally debuts on HBO and HBO Max after a too-long five-year hiatus.
If you still haven’t caught up on the provocative, highly memeable show, you’ve still got time to binge all sixteen of its provocative episodes.
For the uninformed, the HBO show follows the teenagers at East Highland High School in California, as they navigate sex, drugs, alcohol, friendship, cheating, betrayal and not much else.
The show stars Zendaya, Sydney Sweeney, Jacob Elordi and Hunter Schafer.
Watch With Us explains why you have to check out this controversial pop culture phenomenon before it concludes this spring.
The Plotlines Are Absurd, Obscene — and Addictive
The central narrative of Euphoria is driven by Rue (Zendaya), a teenage drug addict who’s been struggling with addiction since the death of her father from cancer. Season 1 kicks off with Rue’s recent release from rehab, and she makes it clear to the audience, as our omniscient narrator, that she has no plans of staying clean. While Rue dips her toes back into opiate abuse, she becomes head-over-heels infatuated with new student Jules (Schafer), a trans girl who frequents one-night stands with older men — including the father (Eric Dane) of East Highland’s football star, Nate Jacobs (Elordi).
Nate and Maddie Perez (Alexa Demie) are in an emotionally abusive relationship, while Maddie’s best friend, the highly sexual and emotional Cassie Howard (Sydney Sweeney), pursues a relationship with college freshman Chris McKay (Algee Smith). Their other friend, Kat Hernandez (Barbie Ferreira), decides to embrace body positivity and her sexuality by becoming a camgirl. Various plot threads in season 1 of Euphoria involve: micro-penises, sexual blackmail, domestic abuse, pedophilia, fentanyl abuse, public masturbation, kidney infections and murder, and that isn’t even the half of it. Criticisms against Euphoria have concerned such explicitly gratuitous narratives, but one thing will always be true: the people want to watch them.
‘Euphoria’ Launched the Careers of 2026’s Leading Stars
Hunter Schafer and Zendaya in Euphoria special episode 1. Eddy Chen / ©HBO / Courtesy Everett Collection
Euphoria served as the jumping-off point for much of its core cast. While Zendaya was probably the biggest name of the high school characters at the time, she has since been matched by Elordi, Sweeney and Schafer. From his imposing, genuinely terrifying performance as Nate Jacobs, Elordi was cast in Deep Water opposite Ana De Armas and Ben Affleck, indie film The Sweet East and eventually as Elvis Presley in Sofia Coppola‘s Priscilla. While post-Priscilla Elordi made his mark in Saltburn, Oh, Canada and On Swift Horses, it was on the set of Priscilla that Elordi was recommended to Guillermo del Toro to take on his Academy Award-nominated performance as Frankenstein’s Monster.
Sweeney, too, has had quite a buzzy post-Euphoria career (and not always for the best reasons), starring in movies like The Housemaid, Immaculate, Madame Web and Anyone But You. Meanwhile, Schafer has become a major face for transgender representation in Hollywood, appearing in The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes, Cuckoo and Kinds of Kindness. It’s undeniable that whatever you think of the quality of Euphoria, it served as a crucial breeding ground for top young Hollywood talent doing some of their best work. And while well-known, Zendaya further proved her acting prowess beyond her Disney Channel years — for her performance as Rue, she clinched two Primetime Emmys and a Golden Globe.
The Filmmaking Is Highly Stylized and Ambitious
Say what you will about Euphoria show runner, creator and writer Sam Levinson‘s screenwriting abilities, the man knows how to keep things unique with the camera and editing. The series employs numerous creative gimmicks: fourth wall-breaking sequences, animated sequences, dance numbers, dream sequences and more. Ultimately, the creatives behind the show go out of their way to make Euphoria hyper-stylized in just about every filmmaking aspect, from the directing and costume design to the sets and editing. The show is meant to evoke the emotional reality of the characters’ inner perspectives, which doesn’t necessarily reflect objective reality.
While the first season was shot on an Arri Alexa 65 digital camera, the second season and the two specials were shot on 35mm Kodak film stock, giving the visual quality a nostalgic texture. To communicate the emotional states of the characters, lighting is very intentionally deployed, with blues and purples conjuring a frantic atmosphere, and greens and yellows evoking distress. Energetic camera movements create a kinetic fluidity to the show through frequent whip pans and tracking shots. And, of course, the costume design is one of the most memorable aspects of the filmmaking, with highly meticulous outfits catered to the personalities of each character — in particular, Maddie’s detailed and eccentric makeup designs are to die for.
Stream Euphoria now on HBO Max.
