The Tamesis
There’s a scene at the beginning of Season 3 of Sam Levinson’s new show that will leave you breathless Euphoria Sydney Sweeney’s sickly cute Cassie and Alexa Demie’s razor-sharp Maddy are reunited here. Cassie is now a bored California housewife-to-be who dabbles in OnlyFans to earn extra money for her fancy wedding, while Maddie is an up-and-coming talent agent with a knack for spotting clients who will make her a killing. Cassie told Maddie that if more people knew her, she would become great. Maddie replies that Cassie is probably just a big fish in a small pond for now. Cassie grinned. “But what if I was a big fish in a big pond?”
Broadly speaking, that’s the HBO giant’s ambition for its next installment. In a five-year time jump from last season (that’s four years ago, if you can believe it), our beloved heroes, antiheroes, and villains are now freed from the constraints of high school.
They’re scattered across the West Coast: Zendaya’s Rue is on the southern border of the United States, working with Chloe Cherry’s Fay on a drug-smuggling trip into and out of Mexico to pay off a debt to the terrifying kingpin Laurie (Martha Kelly). Meanwhile, Jules, played by Hunter Schafer, is a painter who moonlights as a sugar baby. Jacob Elordi plays Nate, an enthusiastic young developer engaged to Cassie; Maude Apatow plays Lexi, the Hollywood assistant to a prolific producer (Sharon Stone).
This is a much broader, sprawling story told on a huge canvas, and in a way, it makes perfect sense that Levinson would choose to go in this direction. Euphoria It’s become a culture-shifting phenomenon since its debut in 2019 and remains one of the most-watched shows on its network – so why not expand its world and show us where these compelling characters end up?
Then, there are the logistics issues: Euphoria A third season was renewed in 2022, with production set to begin the following year, but that schedule was disrupted by a variety of factors, including WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes and significant rewrites. It was shelved for a while and seemed at risk of being abandoned entirely. But then Levinson seemed to have nailed down a storyline that the studio agreed on (after multiple false starts) and successfully reunited this all-star, hot-shot cast. Given the huge success of that season, how could he pass up the chance to play another season? As time passes and his actors are now in their twenties, what else can he do but get them out of high school?
