I Hated Euphoria Season 3: Here's Why (Character Breakdown)

Added: 2026-06-05

[00:00:00]HBO just confirmed that Euphoria season 3 is the final season of Euphoria. And honestly, thank God. Hi, my name is Paulie. I like to talk about my interests on the internet. If you don't know me, hi. It's good to meet you. Glad you could make it. Today, we're going to be talking about Euphoria. Euphoria season 1 is one of my favorite pieces of media ever. I love almost everything about it. It's just such a beautiful story about addiction, love, friendship, and growing up set under this like neon glow. It has beautiful costumes, makeup, cinematography, and more. Everything from the score, the script, the acting, the themes, the tone, the ambiance, everything just made this show special.

[00:00:44]I remember it was summer of 2020 when I watched it first and it literally changed my brain chemistry.

[00:00:52]Yikes. I have such a love for these characters, their struggles, their upbringings, and their interconnected relationships. This year, I rewatched season 1 and attempted to rewatch season 2 to get ready for season 3 coming out this summer, and I couldn't finish season 2. It was just so bad, way worse than I remembered. Now that I finished the entire show, I'm just curious as to how did this happen? And how did one of my favorite pieces of media go from this really great story about like addiction and all these different themes and now it's just this mindless shockfilled provocative piece of garbage. This video will contain spoilers for Euphoria season 3. The main problem of this show undoubtedly is Sam Levenson, but we'll talk about him later. First, I want to talk about, in my opinion, the worst scene in the entire show. Ru's death.

[00:01:47]When I realized what was happening, I was so angry. Not because of what was happening, but because of how we got here. It genuinely makes me so mad thinking about it even now. If you haven't seen the show, Ru overdoses on pills laced with fentinol. And these pills were given to her by Alamo, her drug boss. And she was told by Alamo that these pills contain Percoet. She takes them and overdoses and dies. Alamo kills Ru because he learned from Maddie that Ru was possibly working with the DEA, so he took her out. Not only is this scene not earned, but it's just a blatant copout. Sam Levenson said in an interview that he was originally planning to end the show differently and that in the year of 2023, he was writing this third season when Angus Cloud unfortunately passed away from a fentinel overdose. And this changed the course of his writing for the third season. And that's why he decided to end Ru's story the way that it did end sort of to reference that and pay his respects to Angus. But I find it actually very disrespectful. In season one, the serious and scary scenes were balanced out by these sexual provocative scenes, and somehow it worked. But this season, they try to do the same thing, but the tone just not land. And these tone problems in season 3 are made disappointingly clear by Ru's death scene. There are so many things wrong with Ru's death scene. I could go on.

[00:03:23]And I can make a whole video about why I'm upset with it, but mostly it just comes down to how it's not earned.

[00:03:29]Season 3 isn't about Ru's addiction.

[00:03:33]It's this weird cowboy modern western show about like strippers and drug deals and shootouts and faith. And R's addiction is rarely mentioned.

[00:03:46]Seriously, in the entire season, it's mentioned maybe three or four times in off-hand comments.

[00:03:53]She goes and hangs out with Lexi and Lexi says, "Oh, you're talking crazy cuz you're using drugs." But it's like Ru is just in this really insane situation in the show. She has this boring conversation with her mom that doesn't really hold an emot any emotional weight. She has weird reconnecting with Jules scenes that also don't really hold that much emotional weight. And R talks about wanting to start a family and go live on this farm and live this idealistic life. And it's like it's not building up towards her passing away in any meaningful way because all of her other scenes just include her in these dangerous heists where she's getting shot at and almost hit with a hammer and like almost murdered multiple times. So, it's like, how are we supposed to take her death seriously when she's near death in these fantastical, whimsical situations every other episode? If you want to continue a story about Ru's addiction, do it. But season 3 is not a story about Ru's addiction. So ending the season with Ru overdosing on fentinol is honestly a slap in the face.

[00:05:00]It's cheap and it just sucks. Ru didn't die because she was a drug addict. She died because Alamo tricked her. Take as a hypothetical, what if Maddie had wronged Alamo? Maybe Maddie had stolen from him or cheated on him or something and Alamo gets his revenge by lacing pills with fentinol and giving them to Maddie. If Maddie took them and overdosed, that wouldn't be a story about addiction. Sure, it would touch on the fact that sometimes pills are laced with fentinol and you never know when that might happen, but it doesn't make it a story about addiction. It just means that Alamo killed her. I don't want to have to talk about this show for longer than I have to. So, let's do some rapid fire criticisms. Maddie, one of the coolest, most interesting characters, really dumb down to make uncharacteristic mistakes, work for someone that she really shouldn't, and let things slip that she I don't think she would let slip. She acts very out of character, all for plot convenience.

[00:06:01]Nate, one of the worst character assassinations of recent memory. In a recent interview, Jacob Allorti said, quote, "Usually, I would like to obsess over what I was doing and understand what was happening and have the time to go through every element and construct it and put it together. And I had no time to get ready for it. And I didn't have scripts in any kind of full sense.

[00:06:23]I sort of just had creative conversations with Sam. So, I had no choice. I was coming off a plane somewhere. And later, I had a small amount of time to fit in a lot of work.

[00:06:31]And so, I hit a point where I could only go day by day. I could only do what I was handed to me that day and then try to invent something based off of what I knew of the character, based on what I see on the set live in front of me. And watching the show, it's obvious that Sam Levenson didn't know what was going on with Nate's character and didn't write anything. He had no motivations, no agency, nothing of anything at all. We just watched this character who went from being a complete psychopath, beating people up, making Maddie play Russian roulette to now he's just getting beat up. He's just a nothing blob. He screams, he cries, he begs for money, and then at the end he dies.

[00:07:11]There's nothing for us to care about here. I don't understand why we should care about this debt that he's in with these people we don't care about from this character who just has never existed before. The Nate from this season is not the Nate from any of the past seasons. So, I don't understand why are we supposed to care. He spends the whole season owing money to someone we don't care about for reasons we don't care about only to die in a way that I don't care about. So, so so weird. And also, all of the consequences for this season had nothing to do with anything that ever happened in any season before.

[00:07:48]Just a completely different character this season. It absolutely made no sense to me. Cassie, it seems like Sydney Sweeney was okay with this seasonlong humiliation ritual. In season 1, she's a sweet girl who makes sexual mistakes and it's sad and it's interesting, but now she's just another character who things happen to so that Sam Levenson can try to say something deep. I understand what Sam Levenson is going for, trying to say something about Only Fans. But from an incompetent male writer like him, it just falls flat. You can't criticize the way that the world objectifies women while simultaneously objectifying women.

[00:08:29]That's like a drug dealer making an anti-drug PSA or an abuser trying to tell women how they can escape their abuser. It's like it doesn't work. It just rings hollow. We're all aware of the shocking amount of graphic nudity in Euphoria. It's nothing new. It's one of the attractors of the show. But honestly, coming from someone like Sam Levenson, it just doesn't work anymore.

[00:08:57]And the more we think about how these high schoolers were objectified in season 1, it just makes something like this in season 3 just not work at all. I don't want to speak too much on this topic because I don't really know Sam Levenson that well, and I don't really know his intentions. But this type of story that pokes fun at the objectification of women is better left to be written by people who are objectified, not someone like Sam Levenson. Take a movie like The Substance. It's a very brilliant modern classic about sort of like aging and beauty and stuff. And it that's some that's a story that pokes fun at people and makes criticisms of people, but it's actually valid because the writer and director is a woman. And so she has this perspective that lets her actually make interesting points and interesting statements. But Sam Levenson just sits back and says, "Oh, isn't it so stupid the way that guys just jerk off to women doing random things and Sydney Sweeney just goes along with it and she pushes her tits through a window and there's a guy jerking off and she's a giant and it's just like what are you trying to say? You're just saying that it's crazy and ridiculous. And it is kind of crazy and ridiculous, but like it you're not saying anything. That's the thing is that is that nothing's being said.

[00:10:17]Cassie's story line is provocative, shocking, and empty just like the rest of the season. Someone said that we got more shots of Kitty's BBL than we did of Jules. And honestly, I agree with them.

[00:10:28]Jules is another character sidelined by Levenson's incompetence. She has a sugar daddy now and goes to art school. Gone are the days where we delve into the themes of trans identity. Gone are the commentary on emotional availability and trauma and personal relationships.

[00:10:49]One of the most interesting characters stripped back into nothing. In season 1, Jules is scared to be close to Ru because Jules lost her mother to addiction and that's why she was scared to be friends with Ru. That's why she made so many mistakes and she couldn't open up to Ru. It was just this whole thing and like I feel like it worked for the character and it was interesting to watch and the Jules special episode remains the best episode of the show and you know why it was good was because it was co-written by Hunter Schaefer. Jules has always been one of my favorite characters played expertly by Hunter Schaefer but her character has changed to an unrecognizable point in season 3.

[00:11:28]Her character just ceased to exist.

[00:11:32]Lexi, the thinly veiled Sam Levenson self-insert character. Lexi is seen surrounding herself with people who share none of her values so that she can say, "This is stupid. You guys are so stupid. Look how dumb you are." Yes, Sam. This is so wacky. This is You're just so intelligent to be able to point it out how ridiculous this show is. Oh, look at Cassie's pretending to be a dog on Only Fans and Maddie is making money off of it and Ru is a drug addict. Oh, you guys are all terrible people. You know what, Sam? Let's all bow at your intelligence because you are truly one of the great writers of our generation.

[00:12:11]Lexi is another character that has no agency, nothing to do so that Sam can write whatever he wants. Labyrinth. The labyrinth thing has been guessed into oblivion, into the end of time at this point, and I don't really care to comment on it that much. I like Han Zimmer, but you can obviously tell that something is different. I am not a fan of the fact that he was just booted from the show. Obviously, there was some interpersonal conflict, which seems to be a running theme with Sam Levenson and the creatives and actors that he works with. And you can really tell that Labyrinth isn't in the show anymore. You really miss it. It feels like Han Zimmer is sort of like trying to copy stuff from the past, which is fine to try and keep it consistent, but it's like you can't use those high organs and stuff like that and be like, "Oh, it's Euphoria." Because Euphoria music equals labyrinth. That's just it. I do think that Alamo and Bishop and the rest of his crew and Lori and the other drug people, Nazis, were a fine part of the show. I think Alamo was played very well and fun to have on screen, but he also ended up being kind of one-dimensional where it's like he's just this misogynistic pimp and his backstory is that his mom lied to him and so he was never going to let another [ __ ] play him. And I guess that services the plot fine, but it's like there's interesting places you could go with that that aren't gone. and it ends up with his character being very one-dimensional.

[00:13:59]But I do think that the actor did a really great job, but I don't think that the plot went anywhere character driven.

[00:14:08]And in a show like Euphoria, it's pretty much only characters. It didn't service anyone at all. Ru ended up getting killed by Alamo, but not in a way that struck any chord. Maddie ended up getting pimped out by Alamo, but then Alamo just ended up dying. And so we're left wondering what Cassie also had like Alamo got Nate out of this weird situation, but Nate was already dead and then Cassie ended up just fine. And so it's like not a satisfying conclusion for any character in my opinion. It's finally time to talk about Sam Levenson.

[00:14:48]And I don't want to talk about this guy too much because he honestly pisses me the off. There have just been so many behind the scenes drama and allegations against this guy that have just made him seem like a really shitty person.

[00:15:04]There's Petra Collins where if you don't know her during season 1 of Euphoria when Sam Levenson was writing it, he approached her and told her that he was writing a show based on her visual aesthetic. He brought her on. She moved to Los Angeles, spent months working on the show, thinking that she was going to have a part in it, only for her expectations to come crashing down, and she ended up getting fired. Then there's Barbie Ferrer. Cat's character was just let down so badly in season 2 and they did beef a little bit. It's a lot of speculation. It's a lot of he said she said, but I honestly believe that Barbie Ferrer is definitely in the right here because her character was just just left to to rot at the very end of season 2.

[00:15:55]It was just depressing. It honestly seemed like Sam Levenson just wrote about how he disliked Barbie Ferrer and had her act out these scenes where she seemed like a [ __ ] and she's like, "Um, yeah, dude. It seems like you're writing me to be a bitch." And he's like, "Yeah, you are a bitch." And then they beefed about it and then uh she got fired.

[00:16:17]Wait, I like this lighting. It's like more dramatic. I don't know what happened there, so we're just going to go with it. The idol was a flop. It seemed like more of the same just shock factor for the sake of shock factor. And I don't want to harp on it too much, but it just seems like Sam Levenson is a guy who his ego was inflated so much he didn't want anyone to criticize him at all. I think a good comparison might be someone like Kanye West who yes has talent undeniably but surrounds himself with yesmen so that every idea he proposes is just given a thumbs up and he thinks he's the biggest genius in the [ __ ] world. And it seems like the same thing happened with Sam Levenson where he made something or helped contribute to something that succeeded and was wellreceived and thought I don't need anyone to tell me what to do or think or say and just thinks that he knows best. You can really tell that no sort of writer room was involved in the making of this season at all. No one says it better than this Reddit comment right here. This show just goes to show why you need a writer's room. So many of these plot lines would have been laughed off in a pitch. Pure unadulterated ego.

[00:17:35]In conclusion, Sam Levenson, not a fan of you. I hope that you don't really get to direct anything else ever again, but unfortunately this show is very popular and this season ended up being very popular. Not for the reasons that it deserved. Rest in peace, Rue Bennett. I am annoyed that I've had to talk about this show for this long. In my head cannon, season 1 was a miniseries.

[00:18:00]Season 2 and three never happened.

[00:18:03]That's what I have to say about that.

[00:18:04]Thank god I can stop talking about this because god damn. Bye.