There are some TV villains who slowly decline from the villainous era and become something far less inferior than who they were at their prime and Nate Jacobs in Euphoria Season 3 is both. After spending two seasons turning emotional terrorism into his personality trait, the third season sees him in a completely different light. Finally it feels like the universe seems exhausted with him too and every episode lately has carried the energy of Nate suffering more and more. At this point, the show has fully commited to make Nate the official punching bag of Euphoria. Not because viewers are petty, but mostly because narratively, he’s earned it.
We have all spent two seasons hating Nate. He manipulates Jules, terrorises Maddy, and completely wrecks Cassie. He physically assaulted people, blackmailed people and somehow still walked around with that terrifying quarterback confidence. Watching him evade consequences became exhausting and the show kept flirting with accountability before pulling away at the last second.
Nate’s arc in Euphoria Season 3
Recent episodes of Euphoria Season 3 have shown Nate spiraling financially, emotionally, and physically, in a marriage with Cassie where the affection imbalance is crazy. You feel sorry for him, and as episodes pass by, his state only deteriorates further and further.
This season we see him being a provider for Cassie’s big desires, in a big mansion and 50k worth of flowers and a lavish wedding he cannot afford. Cassie also seems less affectionate with him, probably because he’s no longer the person he was in high school and just as they get married and you think things got better, even worse things happen.
Nate owes millions of dollars to people, with a failing business. When the loan sharks arrive, after facing his repeated ignorance, they beat him black and blue and red, and cut off his toe. A night after that, Cassie leaves him.
The funniest part is that Euphoria accidentally made Nate too effective as a villain. He became the gravitational center of everyone’s trauma. Entire storylines bent around his issues, his violence, his daddy problems, his identity crisis. At a certain point, the show risked glorifying him simply because he dominated so much emotional space. That’s why turning him into Euphoria Season 3’s resident chew toy actually fixes a bigger problem: It redistributes power.
Maddy becomes sharper, Cassie is on her way to success, Jules regains emotional agency and even Rue’s story feels less trapped inside Nate’s orbit. Euphoria works best when its female characters exist outside the blast radius of Nate Jacobs’ nonsense. There’s also something darkly hilarious about watching the most terrifying guy in school slowly become the universe’s stress ball. Every new disaster landing on his doorstep carries the exact energy of karma clocking in for overtime. Debt problems, public humiliation and emotional collapse.
It will certianly be interesting to see what turn his arc takes as Euphoria Season 3 gets closer to it’s finale, and if he will see some redemption or he will continue being the punching bag.
Euphoria Season 3 is streaming on HBO Max.
Edited by Nibir Konwar