My Review of Euphoria - Season 3 (2026, HBO Series)

Written And Directed by Sam Levinson 

Tagline: "May God have mercy."

Going into this third season, there was a reasonable assumption that this would be the last time we'd be stepping into this world. Some cast members had left, tragically passed away and others seemed absolutely checked out.

Wisely opting for a time jump, it's not too shocking to see that our characters have not grown as people. In fact, nearly all of them were making even worse mistakes than before and suffering the consequences for the reckless behaviour.

Let's start off with Rue. On the plus side, she was predominantly sober for this final season. That's the only plus side with Rue. She was indebted to Laurie and her racist gang before being dragged into the world of pimp and human trafficker, Alamo Brown (Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje). There's a lot of focus on Alamo this season and Rue's involvement in his world ended up being his undoing.

Alamo's presence introduced a slew of characters such as Angel (Priscilla Delgado), Magick (Rosalia), Kitty (Anna Van Patten) and Bishop (Darrell Britt-Gibson). They're not greatly developed characters and Bishop's switch up in the finale felt like it came out of nowhere.

Alamo wasn't the only crime element of the season. Nate and Cassie might have made it down the aisle but the former's mounting debts with Armenian gangster, Naz (Jack Topalian) saw the former losing fingers and toes and getting one of the worst deaths on television this season.

I'm also curious as to what Sam Levinson has on Sydney Sweeney because some of the things that Cassie got subjected to this season verged on the ridiculous. The OnlyFans plot took certain liberties at times and Cassie's general idiocy seemed to hit new heights. Her best scenes however where with Maddy but the latter went from being one of the savviest characters on the show to easily placed under Alamo's thumb.

As for Jules and Lexi, I genuinely wonder why Levinson bothered to bring either back. Jules became a sugar baby to plastic surgeon Ellis (Sam Trammell), made middling art and slapped Rue when the latter dared to point out the obvious. Lexi worked on a night time soap opera, judged her friends and inadvertently set up the chain of events leading to Rue's demise.

- Episode titles were Ándale, America My Dream, The Ballad Of Paladin, Kitty Likes To Dance, This Little Piggy, Stand Still And See, Rain Or Shine and In God We Trust.

- Ali got to be the one who avenged Rue. He also connected with the Amish family that Rue was staying with at the start of the season.

- Rue and Jules did hook up at least once before the big fall out they had. Jules was too judgemental on Rue and Lexi's sex lives.

- Other guest actors this season included Sharon Stone, Natasha Lyonne, Danielle Deadwyler, Vinnie Hacker and Gideon Adlon to name a few.

- Standout music: Hans Zimmer replaced Labrinth for the score music this season.

- Chronology: It's been five years since the events of the second season.

I knew this was going to be the final season like everyone else did. It did have it's moments and it could've been a lot worse. Saying that, I'm not sure the spaghetti western approach was the best one from Sam Levinson, especially for this show but like I said, it could've been worse.

Rating: 7 out of 10