Euphoria’s third season hasn’t even aired yet and critics already sound like they need a cigarette and a lie-down.
The first wave of reviews coming in are, frankly, brutal, with most agreeing the show looks gorgeous, but has lost the plot — literally and thematically.
With the show due back on April 13, Euphoria’s third outing is officially its worst-reviewed yet on Rotten Tomatoes. Right now, season three is sitting on a pretty underwhelming 56 per cent critics score from 16 reviews, a noticeable drop from season two’s 78 per cent and the 80 per cent earned by the debut season.
‘What is happening right now?!’
The New York Post points to a scene where Cassie (Sydney Sweeney) shrieks “What is happening right now?!” and says that line “sums it up, as a whole”, describing the season as “an off-the-rails roller coaster of insanity”. The review calls the show an “unhinged disaster” and says it delivers “Breaking Bad meets Looney Tunes” mayhem if you just want chaos, but warns that “if you want narrative coherence and character consistency, season three leaves you wanting”, accusing the show of “lazy writing” that “sacrifices depth for absurdity”.
Provocative, exploitative, or just exhausted?
The Hollywood Reporter’s take is more philosophical, asking whether Euphoria was ever truly provocative or “simply an exploitative show that looked provocative because it was focusing on characters who were too young to vote” and argues that season three “would seem to confirm it”. Did I just get clocked?
The critic calls Zendaya “a marvel” whose Rue belongs somewhere on TV’s “Mount Rushmore of antiheroes and antiheroines”, but says the new episodes drift toward “flashy irrelevance”, full of “lurid neon signs”, “Sydney Sweeney in canine cosplay” and even “pig urine”, without feeling especially timely or insightful.
Vulture goes harder, describing the season as “a cannily shot phantasmagoria that’s as beautifully lit as it is emotionally hollow”. Its review claims that “so much of this early phase of Euphoria’s return feels completely airless”, arguing that scenes like Rue suddenly becoming an arms dealer and images of “nipples coated in ice cream and cocaine” turn the cast into “bodies for debasement and scintillation rather than means of storytelling”.
This review certainly doesn’t help the ongoing rumours about show-creator Sam Levinson and his on-set behaviour, from a supposed feud with Zendaya to complaints about the work environment. Anonymous members of the production team have accused Levinson of demanding long working hours, committing violations of SAG-AFTRA rules and contributing to injuries on set.
Most recently, Labrinth, a featured artist on the season one and two soundtrack, posted his grievances on Instagram, condemning the show and said, “DOUBLE F*CK EUPHORIA“.
‘Well-crafted, weakly-written nothing’
Collider lands somewhere between admiration and exhaustion. It praises the “beautiful” cinematography, “visual feasts” of production design and costumes, and says Zendaya “reminds you why she’s won two Emmys for this role”, calling her “one of our greatest young actors” who commits fully to every outlandish scene.
Sydney Sweeney is described as “admittedly great” and Alexa Demie’s Maddy gets credit for a storyline that feels grounded and emotionally rich, but the review ultimately says nearly every episode “features a woman being humiliated, exploited, or degraded”, and concludes the new season amounts to “a whole lot of well-crafted, weakly-written nothing”.
Entertaining, but ‘fanfiction of itself’
Variety’s verdict is slightly gentler but still pretty damning. The review notes that “very little is the same” after four years, pointing to the deaths of Angus Cloud and Eric Dane, Barbie Ferreira’s exit and behind-the-scenes angst over scrapped ideas like Rue as “a pregnancy surrogate or a private detective”.
It says the first three episodes “do feel like Euphoria: bombastic, stylish and able to offset grandiosity with sly, cutting humour”, but no longer “tethered to the grounding ballast” of its high-school roots, describing the new focus on sex work — from Rue working for a strip-club boss to Cassie’s OnlyFans and Jules’ (Hunter Schaefer) sugar daddy — as “so total and abrupt that it can’t help but feel somewhat random”.
So… should we still watch Euphoria season three?
Across the board, critics agree on a few things: Zendaya is still doing career-defining work, the show remains visually stunning, and elements like Maddy’s storyline and the handling of Fez’s fate have real emotional bite.
But the larger takeaway from this first batch of reviews is that, four years and a major time jump later, Euphoria season three looks increasingly like a glossy, nihilistic hangover, one that many say hasn’t figured out why it exists beyond the spectacle.
Reviewers were only able to access the first three episodes, so maybe it gets better from here. If you’re optimistic or want to see the mess unfold for yourself, Euphoria season three premieres in Australia on April 13 on HBO Max.
Lead image: Euphoria / X
The post ‘Unhinged Disaster’: The Euphoria Season 3 Reviews Are In And They Are BRUTAL appeared first on PEDESTRIAN.TV .
