Five Years Later: Inside the Dark New World of 'Euphoria' Season 3

They're older. They're messier. And if creator Sam Levinson is to be believed, they're about to deliver the most unforgettable season yet.

After a three-year wait that felt to its fans like forever, "Euphoria" is finally pulling back the curtain on Season 3. At an event in London this week, Levinson finally gave the first real glimpse into where our dear-and deeply troubled-characters have landed. Spoiler alert: nowhere good.

The time jump alone is enough to make your head spin. Five years. Not the perfunctorial TV dodge of a few months or a single summer. Five full years have passed since we last saw Rue, Jules, Cassie, and the rest of East Highland's most damaged souls. They're no longer teenagers fumbling through high school hallways. They're adults now, supposedly, navigating the wreckage of the choices they made when the world was watching.

"Five years felt like a natural place," Levinson says, "because if they'd gone to college they'd be out of college at that time." It's a brutally efficient narrative leap that sidesteps the messiness of dorm rooms and frat parties, drops us instead into the cold reality of what comes after-when the safety nets disappear and consequences finally catch up.

Rue's Dangerous Game South of the Border

Let's start with the character who started it all: Rue Bennett, played by two-time Emmy winner Zendaya. The last time viewers saw her, she was clawing her way toward sobriety, one agonizing step at a time. Now? She's south of the US border in Mexico, drowning in debt to Laurie-the chillingly calm drug dealer who once locked her in an apartment and suggested some truly horrifying ways to settle accounts.

The description from Levinson sends a shiver down the spine: Rue is "trying to come up with some very innovative ways to pay it off." Innovation, in the world of "Euphoria," rarely means anything good. What desperate measures will she take? How far has she fallen? And more importantly, will this season finally break the cycle, or will we watch Rue spiral even deeper?

That debt comes due, not just financially but existentially. Laurie doesn't forget, and she doesn't forgive. And three years since Season 2 aired in early 2022, that storyline's unresolved terror has haunted fans. Now it seems, the bill has come due.

A Suburban Nightmare: Cassie, Nate, and the Instagram Illusion

If Rue's storyline sounds dark, wait until you hear what's become of Cassie and Nate.

They're married. Suburbanites. Playing house in some perverse burlesque on the American dream. And Cassie, played by Sydney Sweeney, has acquired a new habit-one become grotesquely universal in our digital time.

Social media.

"Cassie is very addicted to social media and envious of what appears to be the big lives that all of her high school classmates are living," Levinson revealed. It's a mirror held up to an entire generation, scrolling through highlight reels while their own lives feel increasingly hollow. Picture it: Cassie, once the golden girl desperate for male validation, now trapped in a different kind of prison – one made of Instagram squares and perfectly filtered lies.

She's watching everyone else seemingly thrive while she's stuck planning a wedding to Nate Jacobs, a man whose capacity for manipulation and violence we've witnessed in excruciating detail. Speaking of which, Levinson promised their wedding will be "unforgettable" for audiences.

In "Euphoria" terms, "unforgettable" rarely means champagne toasts and happy tears. It means chaos. Drama. Possibly disaster. Will someone object? Will Nate's true nature finally erupt at the altar? Or will Cassie's social media obsession derail everything in spectacular fashion? Whatever happens, you can bet it won't be a fairy tale.

Where Everyone Else Ended Up

The time jump scatters the ensemble cast across worlds, in pursuit of different versions of escape and success.

Art student Jules, played by Hunter Schafer, is in art school chasing her dreams of becoming an artist. It's perhaps the most hopeful trajectory of the bunch – Jules finally getting to explore her identity and creativity in a space that might actually nurture her. But this is "Euphoria." Hope is usually the setup for heartbreak.

Maddy, portrayed by Alexa Demie, has made it to Hollywood, working at a talent agency. She's always been the most ambitious, the most determined to claw her way out of East Highland's suffocating orbit. Has she found what she was looking for in the City of Angels? Or has she discovered that the entertainment industry has its own special brand of toxicity?

Meanwhile, Lexi – played by Maude Apatow – is working as an assistant to a showrunner. And not just any showrunner. Sharon Stone. Yes, that Sharon Stone. It's a delicious bit of meta-casting that hints at the kind of Hollywood satire we might see woven into the season. After all, Lexi's infamous play in Season 2 showed she's got a sharp eye for exposing uncomfortable truths.

The Absences That Echo

Not everyone made it to Season 3, and not all departures were by choice.

Several are not returning: Austin Abrams, Barbie Ferreira, Algee Smith, and Storm Reid are all gone. It's unclear what happened to any of these characters, but their absence is largely felt.

And then there's the loss that hangs heaviest over the production: Angus Cloud, who played the lovable drug dealer Fezco, died in 2023 at just 25 years old. His character was one of the show's few sources of genuine warmth and protection, particularly for Rue. How "Euphoria" chooses to handle his absence will be one of the season's most emotionally charged elements.

But life, and television, moves forward. Rosalía, the Spanish singer-songwriter, and Trisha Paytas, the internet personality and actress, are both joining the cast for Season 3. What roles they'll play remains shrouded in mystery, but their additions suggest the show is expanding its universe in unexpected directions.

Why We Keep Coming Back

"I feel strongly this is our best season yet," Levinson said with the kind of confidence that usually denotes somebody sitting on something special.

It's a bold claim for a show that's already redefined what teen drama can be. Since its 2019 debut, "Euphoria" has been praised and criticized in equal measure – celebrated for its unflinching portrayal of addiction, trauma, and identity, while simultaneously questioned for its graphic content and aesthetic glorification of dangerous behaviors.

But here's the thing: we keep watching. Not because it's comfortable, but because it's real in a way that so much television isn't. It captures the texture of modern adolescence and young adulthood – the way phones mediate our relationships, the way trauma echoes through generations, the way we perform versions of ourselves for audiences both real and imagined.

Zendaya's performance has already cemented her place in television history. Her first Emmy win in 2020 made her the youngest lead actress winner ever at 24. Two years later, she won again, becoming both the youngest woman to win twice in the category and the first Black woman to achieve that milestone. At just 28 now, she's already a legend.

But accolades aside, what makes "Euphoria" essential viewing is its willingness to sit with discomfort, to refuse easy answers, to let its characters be messy and broken and real. In an era of comfort-watch television, it dares to be difficult. The Wait Is Almost Over April finally brings Season 3, after an interim that has felt much more like withdrawal than hiatus. Its dedicated, fervent fan base, those who analyze every frame and debate every decision, have been seriously starved for new content.

Will Rue find a way out of the debt that doesn't destroy her? Can Cassie break free from both Nate and her digital demons? What's next in heartbreak for Jules? And what does "unforgettable" even mean as it applies to a Nate and Cassie wedding? 

The questions mount like pills on a nightstand, but if there's anything "Euphoria" has taught us, it's that the answer is never simple, never clean, and never what we expect.

 Five years older, five years more broken, and yet still painfully, beautifully alive. This is "Euphoria." And we are all addicted.

"Euphoria" Season 3 premieres on HBO Max this April. The series airs on HBO Max, which is owned by CNN's parent company.