Euphoria Season 3 Review – HBO Max
There was a time when Euphoria felt like the biggest show on television.
When Season 1 dropped in 2019, I watched every episode twice. Sundays couldn’t come soon enough. It had that perfect balance of style, chaos, and raw emotion — the kind of show you couldn’t look away from even when it was making you uncomfortable. It felt fresh. It felt dangerous. It had a grip on the cultural conversation that felt immediate and total.
Season 2 did more of the same — and for a while, that was enough. The performances were still incredible. The drama was still gloriously messy. But you could feel by the end that the novelty was starting to crack, that Euphoria was quietly drifting from the thing that made it feel so special.
Then came Season 3.
I want to be clear — I still found this season entertaining. There were still shocking moments, still episodes that had me anxiously waiting for the next one, still flashes where the show reminded me exactly why it became such a massive deal. I was pulled back every week.
But from Episode 1, something felt off.
The desert backdrop gives the season a new visual identity, and in theory I’m always open to a show shaking things up. A fresh setting can bring new energy. It can feel like a reset. It can let characters grow in ways a familiar environment won’t allow.
Here, though, it almost feels too fresh.
Every character is living a completely different life. Everyone feels scattered — and not in the way that feels intentional. The show has jumped forward, shifted its focus, moved into a new phase, but it never seems fully confident about what that phase is supposed to be. Instead of a natural evolution, Season 3 feels like a show trying to reinvent itself and wrap itself up at the same time.
That’s a brutal balance to pull off. Euphoria doesn’t fully get there.
What made the original season so addictive was how connected everything felt. The characters were messy and flawed and sometimes impossible to defend, but their stories were tied together. There was a clear emotional center. You cared because the show gave you time with these people. You understood their pain, their patterns, their mistakes, their love for each other.
Season 3 doesn’t have that same line.
Some storylines are genuinely tense. Some are interesting. Some are shocking. Others feel unbelievable, rushed, and disconnected from anything resembling the show we used to know. At times, it feels like Euphoria is throwing chaos at the screen because chaos has always been its identity. And to be fair — that still works, somewhat. This show knows how to keep you watching. Even when I was frustrated, I still wanted to know what happened next.
Season 3 is messy, uneven, and questionable. But it’s rarely boring.
The performances still carry a lot of weight, which has always been one of Euphoria’s biggest strengths. By Season 3, though, it’s impossible to ignore how massive some of this cast has become. The show is now anchored by legitimate A-list stars, and that changes the texture of everything. It no longer feels like a group of young characters trapped in their own world. It feels bigger, more polished, more aware of its own importance.
Sometimes that works. Sometimes it makes the whole thing feel less like Euphoria and more like a prestige event.
There is also an unavoidable sadness hanging over this season because of Angus Cloud and Eric Dane. Both were taken far too soon. Cloud brought a quiet, natural warmth to Fez that made him one of the emotional heartbeats of the show. Dane’s work as Cal gave Euphoria one of its most complicated, uncomfortable, and unforgettable characters. The long gap between seasons already felt heavy — four years is a lot to ask of any audience — but it feels heavier knowing we didn’t get nearly enough time with either of them. It was especially moving to see Dane still bringing that same intensity to the screen while facing his ALS diagnosis. Their absence echoes throughout the season, and for longtime fans, it adds a layer of grief to a show that already made saying goodbye so difficult.
That grief is also where Season 3 loses me.
I still cared about these characters. But I didn’t always feel like the show was giving me enough time with the ones I cared about most. For a season that feels like it could be the end, there’s a surprising amount of space given to characters and storylines that were never part of the emotional foundation. New directions aren’t automatically bad. But when you’re potentially closing the door on something like this, fans are going to want to sit with the people they already love.
Season 3 never fully lets that happen.
It feels caught between two versions of itself — one that wants to be a fresh start, one that wants to be a goodbye — and it never commits to either. The nearly two-hour finale does its best to pull everything together, and there are moments that land. There’s a sense of finality in parts of it. But by the time the credits rolled, I couldn’t shake the feeling of: that’s it?
Not because it needed a clean ending. Euphoria has never been a neat show. But with that much history behind these characters, and that much runway in the finale, I expected more. I expected it to be more focused. I expected the goodbye to hit harder.
It didn’t.
Too many loose ends. Not enough time to make any single farewell matter.
And yet — I’d still be lying if I said I didn’t enjoy watching it.
That’s the pull of Euphoria. Even when it’s frustrating, it keeps you locked in. Even when storylines go off the rails, the style and talent and sheer madness carry you through. It still knows how to create a moment. It still knows how to make an episode feel like something you need to talk about. It can still make you anxious, annoyed, shocked, and invested all in the same hour.
But Season 3 is a clear step down.
The first two seasons were messy, dramatic, intense, and addictive in a way that felt genuinely singular. Season 3 has pieces of that. It never captures the magic. It’s rushed in some places, overextended in others, and oddly unsure of itself for a show that once knew exactly what it wanted to be.
There’s no official announcement that this is the end. But by the finale, it certainly feels close. I’d watch Season 4. And I’d be nervous about it.
Maybe Euphoria was always going to struggle to grow up. Maybe a show built around such a specific time, feeling, and group of characters was always going to lose something once it moved too far from that original spark. Season 3 is still watchable. Still stylish. Still dramatic. Still wild enough to keep fans coming back.
But for a show that once felt impossible to look away from, Season 3 too often feels like it’s chasing a feeling it used to create effortlessly.
