Euphoria Season 3 has been in the headlines ever since it’s debut, and oftentimes not for the right reasons. Ever since it’s release, fans have debated the storylines each character is leading, and specially the inclusions of a lot of adult storylines Perhaps the most controversial of these is Sydney Sweeney’s Cassie Howard.
Cassie is a completely different person now from what we remember. She’s money-hungry, interested in adult work, and obsessed with social media. In one particularly grotesque moment, Sweeney’s character is dressed as a baby, with a pacifier, pigtails, and her legs spread wide, in what was framed as ageplay content.
In the premiere, Cassie is eager to have her dream wedding, and when Nate puts his foot down on the budget, she decides to fund it herself through OnlyFans content. The episode shows her in lingerie with canine accessories, behaving provocatively like a dog, complete with tail-wagging and drinking from a bowl. That scene alone sent Twitter spiraling.
A later episode added another layer: a full fantasy sequence where Cassie grows to enormous proportions and destroys parts of Los Angeles, in a sequence clearly inspired by Attack of the 50 Foot Woman and Godzilla. Sweeney herself called it the coolest thing she had ever done, and production reportedly spent a full year building miniature sets for the moment. But audiences largely disagreed with that enthusiasm. Social media users responded with accusations of a humiliation ritual.
Euphoria Season 3 is alro bringing criticism for Sam Levinson
The criticism of creator Sam Levinson has been sharp. Viewers questioned what had happened to the show, and how he completely changed it with Euphoria Season 3. Others pointed to a more fundamental problem: the complete sidelining of Rue Bennett’s addiction arc, which was the show’s original emotional engine. Some also talked about Petra Collins’ influence on the show and how without her the show had become sleazy.
The season earned a 42% critics’ score on Rotten Tomatoes, the worst the show has ever received and critics and viewers alike pointed to Levinson’s apparent loss of grip on the characters who made the series matter in the first place. In its earlier seasons, Cassie’s suffering carried a kind of painful logic: she was a girl raised by an absent addict father and an alcoholic mother, seeking love and validation in the worst places. That psychological texture gave her humiliations weight but season 3 stripped that nuance away and replaced it with something far less defensible.
Hopefully we’ll see some redemption for Cassie Howard in the later episodes of Euphoria Season 3.
Euphoria Season 3 isnow streaming on HBO Max.
Edited by Nibir Konwar