Fans waited for years to finally get to watch Euphoria Season 3; but as the show premiered, the general consensus was that it has completely become a different sho now and no longer recignises the way it made it’s debut in the first season. The show landed a 42% critics’ score on Rotten Tomatoes and has received several negative reviews with fans struggling to connect what’s on screen now with the show that had everyone obsessed back in 2019. But the decline of Euphoria has less to do with Sam Levinson and more to do with another woman, who’s absence has made the show completely different and deteriorating.
The gap between what Euphoria was and what it is now is genuinely jarring. Season 3 takes place after a time skip and the centrepiece controversy involves Cassie, who tries to fund her dream wedding by starting an OnlyFans, a storyline that sees her in a dog costume, dressed as a baby, and crawling on a leash in the premiere episode. On the other hand, Jules is a sugar baby, Maddy is rumoured to become a madame and Rue now works at a strip club. The show feels nothing like it used to, and the third season of Euphoria feels like a hollow shell of its former self because something essential is genuinely gone.
Petra Collins’ Euphoria Season 1 vs Sam Levinson’s Euphoria Season 3
Before Euphoria ever aired, Sam Levinson reached out to the agency representing Canadian photographer Petra Collins, explaining that he had written the show after being “inspired” by her photographs, and wanted her to direct it. She did the casting, she shaped the visual identity which is very much evident if you look at her other work. then, at the last minute, HBO dropped her for being “too young.” The show went ahead anyway, wearing everything she had built: the glitter tears, the use of vibrant coloured gels, the dreamlike atmosphere, all of it mirrored work found directly in Collins’ art.
The show took her world and handed it to someone else and Collins herself eventually said she had to change her own style because it had become so associated with Euphoria. The originator had to escape comparison with the copy, and many fans are still unaware of her work on the show.
What Euphoria season 3 makes undeniable is that Levinson never actually understood what made the show work. Stripped of the original sensitivity and perspective, what remains feels hollow. At its most exhausting, the show reduces its women to bodies before it allows them to be people.
Collins’ work, by contrast, allowed young women to be simultaneously passionate and tender, constructing images that were always on the side of their subjects. That quality, that specific kind of care behind the camera, is a point of view, and you can’t steal a point of view: Euphoria Season 3 is the receipts.
Euphoria Season 3 is now streaming.
Edited by Nibir Konwar