WHAT WENT WRONG FOR 'EUPHORIA'? HOW THE ONCE-HIT SHOW HAS FALLEN FROM GRACE
- Melissa Fleur Afshar
- 6 days ago
- 4 min read
Newsweek Exclusive Feature
Between scathing reviews and off-screen cast tensions, “Euphoria” season three has largely flopped. Here’s why.
How does a series go from having an 80 percent rating on Rotten Tomatoes to just 43 percent? That is what Euphoria's showrunner, Sam Levinson, will be asking after the long-awaited third season of the HBO series dropped and flopped earlier this week.
While die-hard fans were ecstatic to see their favorite, highly problematic characters back on screen after four years, when it came to the verdict of casual viewers and professional critics, the new episodes drew a storm of backlash, one that many feel reveals how far the once‑revolutionary series has drifted from its cultural high point.
"This is the exact kind of reaction [showrunners] need to keep the show in public conversation," Tracy Lamourie, a celebrity publicist and strategist, told Newsweek. "Whether people are thrilled or enraged, when they’re this engaged, from an entertainment and visibility standpoint, the show’s working."
But, as critics and viewers made clear almost immediately, staying visible is not the same as staying in good favor or staying relevant long-term. Once hailed as a subversive reinvention of the teen drama, Euphoria now finds itself accused of being dated and hollow.
'Euphoria'’s Former Legacy
When the series debuted in 2019, the HBO drama felt like a breath of fresh air.
A hyper‑stylized, high‑stakes update on the groundbreaking 2000s series Skins, Euphoria translated teen-focused topics like sex, drugs, mental health, parent drama and consent into an audiovisual fever dream.
Its aesthetic birthed makeup trends, inspired countless TikTok fan edits, and launched its relatively unknown young cast into the
Hollywood stratosphere. Zendaya, Jacob Elordi, Sydney Sweeney, Maude Apatow and Alexa Demie—though the latter keeps a low profile—have all made their way onto the A-list.
The Season Three Backlash
While seasons one and two were well received, season three has been met with a different reaction.
"The series has lost its zeitgeisty edge," the BBC wrote, while ScreenRant argued that the drama "outgrew itself." Time summed things up more tersely, dubbing the series "older, not wiser," while The Guardian was scathing, calling the season "grubby, desperate, absolutely not worth the wait" and, later, "bafflingly dated."
The Independent went further still, labeling Euphoria, "the most toxic show on television."
Shock Without Substance
In one widely circulated scene from season three, Sweeney’s Cassie—now bored, married and obsessed with wealth—wears a puppy costume while filming OnlyFans content. She argues with Elordi's Nate, insists she is "not a prostitute," then allows him to grab the leash around her neck and tell her: "You’ve been a bad, bad dog."
Cassie smiles, replying: "Woof, woof."
Clips of the exchange garnered millions of views online, alongside fierce criticism. A blunt question soon emerged, why have all of Euphoria’s leading ladies become some form of sex worker?
The Hollywood Reporter asked whether Euphoria remains provocative at all, or if it merely appears to be because its earlier seasons focused on young characters. The publication used the phrase "directorial leering" to describe Sweeney’s scenes, calling Cassie’s arc, "a rather cruel commentary on the way Sweeney has been fetishized by the entertainment industry."
That criticism slots neatly into a broader discomfort around Levinson's work, whose other title, HBO’s ill‑fated The Idol, was dogged by accusations of misogyny, excessive nudity and little narrative justification.
When Controversy Becomes the Strategy
Lamourie said that Euphoria's storylines, dubbed by The Telegraph as feeling like "the misogynistic fantasies of a creepy old man," are not accidental.
"It is misogyny but it's also marketing," Lamourie said. "From their marketing perspective, it doesn’t matter if the audience is comfortable; they only care if the audience is talking, whether they’re thrilled or enraged, is it a hashtag?
"Whether we like the content or not, it’s that engagement, that audience reaction that matters. It keeps the show relevant. Shows understand that, if they want to go viral, they don’t want to have everybody happy with them."
Outrage, Lamourie noted, moves faster than approval, especially online.
"If people are arguing, sharing, reacting strongly, that conversation drives virality," she said.
From that perspective, Euphoria may be succeeding exactly as designed, but what keeps a show visible also reshapes how it is reviewed and remembered.
Cultural Timing
Still, not everyone believes controversial writing and off-screen tensions—namely between Zendaya and Sweeney, whom she allegedly refuses to be photographed with, due to political clashes—alone explain the show’s decline.
Fabiana Meléndez Ruiz, a communications expert, told Newsweek that Euphoria’s fall is better understood as a collision between timing
and audience evolution.
"When it launched, Euphoria was speaking directly to an early Gen Z audience," she said. "It felt new in tone and presentation."
Since then, the cultural landscape has shifted, that audience has aged, and the show’s once-distinctive aesthetic has been replicated. Long gaps between seasons have also taken a toll. A show built on immediacy loses momentum when it cannot sustain presence, Meléndez Ruiz said. By the time season three arrived, much of the conversation had already moved on, as had the careers of its leads.
Whether season three's failings are the result of a deliberate provocation or a creative lapse of judgment, its reception suggests that Euphoria has stopped being in sync with the culture that secured its rise.
Newsweek reached out to Zendaya, Sweeney and Levinson for comment.
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