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The Origins of Euphoria
When Euphoria first premiered in June 2019, the series quickly became the subject of both praise and scrutiny for its depiction of 21st century young adulthood. On the one hand, the show’s frank portrait of addiction was seen by many as a disturbing yet honest reflection of creator Sam Levinson’s own experiences. On the other hand, the show’s tendency to exploit its teenage characters and delight in the debasement and mistreatment of them was a topic of conversation as soon as the pilot first aired.
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That pilot episode not only included a significant amount of scenes featuring teenagers engaging in substance use, but it also included a shocking intimate moment between then newcomer Hunter Schaffer and actor Eric Dane. That scene arguably set the stage for questions audiences would end up asking throughout the series’ entire run. How necessary was it to show all that? Is Levinson shining a light on the exploitation that young people and especially marginalized folks experience, or is the explicit nature of this content only re-exploiting them? Critics and audiences alike debated whether or not Euphoria exposes the truth about what it’s like to be Gen-Z today or if this heightened, exaggerated representation was really just Levinson’s bizarre and morally questionable fantasy.
Still, like all car crashes, audiences were unable to look away. Euphoria saw a rise in viewership after that buzzy first season and, despite multiple instances of backlash both on screen and behind the scenes, the sensationalism of the show and its actors only continued. After all, the public kept validating the show, thereby encouraging more and more shock value.
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If there is one thing Euphoria got right, however, it was its casting, starting with its lead. The most consistently praised element of the show across all seasons was the strength of Zendaya’s performance as Rue. At the time of the show’s premiere, Zendaya was a former Disney Channel actress seeking to make the difficult transition into mature roles. Euphoria certainly covered that in spades. Not only did Zendaya end up winning Emmy Awards for the first two seasons, but she is now a full-blown movie star, having appeared in the Spider-Man and Dune franchises as well as more daring artistic vehicles like Challengers and The Drama. It’s difficult to imagine if Zendaya would have been taken seriously by Hollywood executives as having both commercial and critical appeal were it not for the popular reception of her performance in Euphoria.
But Zendaya is not the only star to have emerged from this controversial show. Jacob Elordi, Hunter Schafer, and Sydney Sweeney have also enjoyed major career boosts. Elordi is now an Oscar nominee for last year’s Frankenstein and is even rumored to be on the shortlist for the next James Bond. Schafer has appeared in films directed by visionaries like Yorgos Lanthimos and David Lowery. And then there’s Sweeney, who has enjoyed mainstream success thanks to films like The Housemaid and Anyone but You (not to mention a seemingly endless string of controversies, but we’ll save that for another piece).
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The Final Season of Euphoria
It took four years to make the third season of Euphoria. While we will never know exactly why, there are various rumors, most of which involve Sam Levinson’s behavior. Following his critically panned collaboration with The Weeknd in The Idol, there were reported disagreements between Levinson and several members of the Euphoria cast. Actress Barbie Ferreira, who played fan favorite Kat Hernandez, exited the show after season two. There were also unsubstantiated theories about ludicrous season three plot lines he pitched that HBO rejected, one of which involved Rue becoming a private detective. Not to mention, there were also the unforeseen losses of actors Angus Cloud and Eric Dane.
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Needless to say, the pressure was on going into this final season, and it seemed that Levinson’s popularity was at an all time low. By the time the third season finally aired, nearly seven years after its first, it was less divisive among critics and more uniformly rejected. Beyond all the reported controversies, there was also the fact that these actors had now aged out of high school. In order to live up to that reality, Euphoria followed its main cast into adulthood and became an entirely different show, albeit with plenty of shock value still to come. Most of the final season’s sensationalist moments involved Sweeney’s character as she journeys into the controversial world of adult content creation. Let’s just say that if anyone wants to see a nuanced and humanistic portrait of that world, do yourself a favor and watch Margo’s Got Money Troubles instead.
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Without getting into details about how Euphoria actually ends, it’s safe to say that these beloved characters do not ever recover from their suffering. One could argue that these disturbing arcs were necessary in order for Levinson to make his point, but what is that point? Hopelessness? Depravity without redemption? Over the course of three seasons, the creatives behind Euphoria never assumed responsibility for the topical stories they were knowingly telling. They never did their tortured characters any justice. Instead, they just upped the ante with no real purpose… Unless that purpose was simply a perverse amusement at human suffering. If that’s the case, then I guess you could say Sam Levinson pulled it off.
HBO’s ‘Euphoria’ is Finally Out of Our Collective System, and We’re Ecstatic About It
Sam Levinson's HBO show Euphoria about addiction, substance use, and the many problems facing contemporary American youth has been a storm of controversies from the very beginning.
Now that the heavily delayed third and seemingly final season has finished airing, we can finally stop giving this gratuitous and often cruel show more attention than it deserves.
But praise be, folks! Euphoria is finally over, and to virtually no one's surprise, the ending was largely deemed unsatisfying to fans. What's remarkable about Euphoria's run is that despite all the criticism the show received from the very beginning, Levinson and his creative team never seemed interested in proving why their extreme material was justified. Instead, they lived up to the criticism by showing more and more violence and skin with less and less of a reason to do so. At a certain point, it was hard to tell whether or not Levinson was seeking to satisfy his audience, himself, or a strange mix of both. Before we close the book on Euphoria for good, let's do a postmortem on the show's origins and its cultural impact.
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