Euphoria premiered its third and final season on HBO on Sunday night, April 12, five years after its second season ended and four years after anyone stopped asking when it would come back. [1] Eight episodes will air weekly on Sundays at 9 PM ET through May 31. The premiere also screened at the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival campgrounds at 11:59 PM, the first time a television series has been projected at the iconic music event. [2]

The show that returns is not the show that left. Season 3 jumps five years forward. Rue, played by Zendaya, is in Mexico, working off her debt to the drug dealer Laurie through means the trailer suggests are neither legal nor safe. Cassie, played by Sydney Sweeney, has married Nate Jacobs, played by Jacob Elordi, and the two are living in a suburb that looks like a punishment. Jules, played by Hunter Schafer, is in art school. Maddy, played by Alexa Demie, works at a Hollywood talent agency. Lexi, played by Maude Apatow, is an assistant to a showrunner played by Sharon Stone. [1]

The new cast includes Rosalia, Natasha Lyonne, Danielle Deadwyler, Trisha Paytas, and Marshawn Lynch. The absences are louder. Barbie Ferreira left the series in 2022. Storm Reid confirmed she would not return. Austin Abrams and Javon Walton are gone. Angus Cloud, who played Fezco, died in July 2023 at age 25. [1] Creator Sam Levinson has dedicated the season to Cloud.

The show was shot on new Kodak motion picture film stock in 35mm and 65mm — the first narrative television series to shoot a significant volume of 65mm film. Levinson and cinematographer Marcell Rev collaborated directly with Kodak to commercialize the stock. [1] The visual ambition is deliberate: this is a season that wants to look different from the one that preceded it.

Whether it can feel different is the question. Euphoria debuted in 2019 as a provocation. By 2022, it was a cultural event. By 2024, it was a rumor. The cast members who waited — Zendaya won Oscars, Sweeney became a tabloid fixture, Elordi starred in Saltburn — are returning to a show whose audience aged alongside them. The teenagers who watched Season 1 are now the adults Season 3 is about.

HBO screened the premiere at Coachella because the Venn diagram of Euphoria viewers and festival attendees is a circle. [2] The cross-promotion was shrewd and honest about what the show has become: less a drama than a generational marker, less a story than a mood.

Eight episodes. One final season. The kids of East Highland are not kids anymore.

-- CAMILLE BEAUMONT, Los Angeles