HBO released the third season of "Euphoria" after four years of waiting.
On April 12, 2026, the third season of the cult series Euphoria was released on HBO and the HBO Max streaming service. Fans of the show have been waiting for the return of their favorite characters for more than four years — since the release of the second season in January 2022. What happened to the characters over the past five years, how critics evaluate the new season and whether the story will end there — in the Izvestia material.
What is the Euphoria series about?
Euphoria is an American HBO drama series created by Sam Levinson based on the Israeli original of the same name. The first season was released in June 2019 and immediately caused a wave of controversy: the show told without embellishment about the lives of American teenagers — drug addiction, mental disorders and violence.
The series instantly became a cultural phenomenon for Generation Z and launched the careers of several future Hollywood stars: Sidney Sweeney (Cassie), Jacob Elordi (Nate) and Colman Domingo (Ali). Zendaya has won the Emmy Award for Best Actress in a Drama Series twice, in 2020 and 2022, becoming the youngest winner in this category in the history of the award. The second season, released in January 2022, attracted a record audience for HBO.
The show features a unique visual aesthetic: neon colors, makeup art, almost cinematic image quality, and camera solutions that are commonly referred to as "cinema about cinema." This is what made Euphoria not just a television series, but also a supplier of trends in fashion and the beauty industry for several years to come.
Four years of silence: why is it taking so long
Fans have been waiting for the third season since February 2022 — and during that time, the project has gone through everything: strikes, rewritten scripts, and irreparable losses. The first serious test was the Hollywood strikes of 2023: the Screenwriters Guild and the Screen and Television Actors Guild simultaneously halted work on most American projects for several months. Euphoria was no exception.
"It took us the most time to figure out how to pay tribute to those we lost," Levinson said.
In July 2023, Angus Cloud, who played the charming character Fezko in the first two seasons, died of an accidental drug overdose. He was 25 years old. His death, according to Levinson, profoundly changed the tone of the new season.
"The grief of Angus' death has had a big impact on the entire season. He was a man I loved very much. And for whom I fought very hard. Look, I've struggled with addiction myself. I'm good at this. That's why you're always kind of ready, but losing Angus really shocked and angered me for many reasons," he confessed in an interview with Rolling Stone.
At the same time, in November 2023, Kevin Turen, the show's executive producer, died of a heart attack. In February 2026, two months before the premiere, Eric Dane, who played the role of Cal Jacobs, the father of the main antagonist, died of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). He was 53 years old. The actor found out about the diagnosis shortly before filming began, but Levinson adapted the process to his condition and shot all the scenes with him in one day. "I told him: no matter what form you appear on the set, we will cope with everything," the director told Variety.
Production of the third season eventually started in January 2025. According to Newsweek, HBO announced the premiere date only in December 2025, through a photo of Zendaya posted on social media.
What happened to the characters of "Euphoria" in five years
The third season opens with a five-year time jump: former high school students are now young people trying to cope with adulthood. And, apparently, without much success.
Rue Bennett (Zendaya) has turned into a drug dealer, described by Time as being made in the aesthetics of a western western with music by Hans Zimmer. Nate Jacobs (Jacob Elordi) has inherited his arrested father's construction business and is about to marry Cassie. Cassie Howard (Sidney Sweeney) makes her living OnlyFans. Maddy Perez (Alexa Demi) has become a talent manager, Lexi Howard (Maude Apatow) works in television, Jules (Hunter Schafer) She became a person who lives at the expense of a wealthy partner.
At the presentation of HBO Max in December 2025, Levinson, according to Variety, explained that the five-year time gap was not chosen by chance: that's how long it would take the characters to graduate from college and be truly on their own. According to him, the team immediately ruled out returning to the walls of the school and set about building a new, much wider world for the heroes.
If the first two seasons of Euphoria were a story about how high school destroys people, then the third is a story about what happens when the same people enter adulthood without receiving help.
"Beautifully shot, but something broke": what the critics write
The first reviews appeared on April 13, and the picture turned out to be ambiguous. Critics are generally united on two things: visually, the season is flawless, and Zendaya still holds everything on her shoulders. There is a wide range of opinions on other parameters.
The season received mixed reviews on the Rotten Tomatoes aggregator: some reviewers recognize the show's technical achievements as exceptional, while others believe that the creators' ambitions outstrip the quality of the story. On Metacritic, reviewers note that the new season "lacks the passion and energy that it had before" — despite the impressive picture.
The Time columnist, who received three episodes for pre-premiere viewing, writes that over the past five years in the plot, the characters have not matured and have not acquired the depth that the viewer has the right to expect from people with similar experiences. According to her, the creator of the series in the new scenes is too fond of quoting gangster films to the detriment of psychological credibility.
One of the most critical was the review by The Irish Times: the publication's journalists said that Zendaya, Elordi and Sweeney had outgrown their characters in real life — and this was being read from the screen. Where the show previously combined provocation with artistic value, in the third season only provocation and gloss remained.
Nevertheless, almost all reviewers unanimously single out Zendaya. Actually, it is around her that the season itself is built.: As IBTimes wrote, the actress "shines." The technological side is also highly appreciated: according to an official HBO press release, the third season became the first narrative television series in history, much of which was shot on 65 mm film, the same as that used to create a full-fledged movie.
"Closing is near": is this the last season
Neither HBO nor the creators of the series have officially declared Euphoria a completed franchise. However, indirect signals are more than enough.
Levinson stated that he has no plans for a fourth season. Zendaya on April 2, on the Drew Barrymore show, according to Variety, suggested that the third season would be the last, and made it clear that the story was coming to an end. HBO has not officially confirmed the closure of the series, but both main authors of the project actually perceive the final episode as a point in the history of Euphoria.
The fact that this is the finale is also helped by the personal drama surrounding the project. The first episode opens and ends with funeral screensavers with the names of three people without whom the season would not have been like this: Angus Cloud, Eric Dayne and Kevin Ture. At the premiere at the TCL Chinese Theatre in Los Angeles, Levinson, according to Deadline, dedicated the season to the memory of those who were lost, and noted that it is death that gives meaning to life — this idea can be considered key to the whole new "Euphoria".
On March 24, Medialogia presented on its website a Russian series rating consisting of the 100 most popular projects of the past year. The South Korean thriller "The Squid Game" took the first place with 42,861 points, the second place was taken by the American science fiction series "Stranger Things" (26,572 points), and the third place was taken by the Russian detective "Sled" (20,361 points).
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