Euphoria returns Sunday on HBO Max, eight episodes, weekly releases. [1] As this paper covered in yesterday's edition, the show's four-year absence is the longest hiatus of any currently running prestige drama, and the 157-million-view trailer suggests the audience still exists.

The third season features a five-year time jump — Rue, Cassie, and the rest of the East Highland cohort now in their early-to-mid twenties. The show has always been accused of glamorizing adolescent chaos. The jump is the structural acknowledgment that the characters, like the audience, have had to grow up. Sharon Stone and Rosalia join the cast alongside returning leads Zendaya, Sydney Sweeney, and Hunter Schafer. [2]

The connection the assignment desk flagged is not accidental. Hungary holds its parliamentary election this week, with polls showing Péter Magyar's Tisza party leading Viktor Orbán's Fidesz by several points in what would be the country's first genuine competitive election in over a decade. Hungary's young voters — those who were 17 in 2022 when Euphoria was inescapable — are now 21 and casting ballots. The show and the election share the same demographic: young people who grew up under conditions they did not choose, making consequential decisions about what comes next. One of those decisions happens on screen Sunday. The other happens at the ballot box this week.

-- CAMILLE BEAUMONT, Los Angeles