Euphoria: Season 3 First Reviews: Beautifully Shot with Great Performances, but It Feels Like a Different Show

[Christopher Campbell]

More than four years since its last season aired, Sam Levinson’s hit drama series Euphoria returns to HBO this month, and the first reviews have just arrived online. Still starring Zendaya, Sydney Sweeney, Jacob Elordi, Alexa Demie, and Maude Apatow, Euphoria: Season 3 continues to follow the show’s main characters. However, now they’re in their 20s, with the story taking place away from the usual high school settings of the past. Reception to the changes is mixed, but the show’s award-winning performances are worth coming back for.

Here’s what critics are saying about Euphoria: Season 3:

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Is the show still worth watching?​

Euphoria is back, as tawdry and titillating as ever. And yet also, somehow, better.
— Nick Schager, The Daily Beast

Euphoria is never not entertaining.
— Alison Herman, Variety

It’s a bit of a relief to dive into Season 3 of the HBO drama and find that age has mellowed out both the show and the chaotic adolescents it was once about.
— Liz Shannon Miller, Consequence

Audiences have been clamouring for a concluding chapter. Levinson delivers.
— Nick Hilton, Independent

These early episodes mark a massive creative leap forward for the auteur, results that will have viewers convinced that the long wait has absolutely been worth it.
— Meghan O’Keefe, Decider

Fans of the series may find that catching up with its familiar characters is satisfying enough.
— Caryn James, BBC.com

The wait for the third season… doesn’t feel particularly worth it, the show feeling stagnant.
— Tyler Doster, AwardsWatch

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(Photo by Eddy Chen/HBO)

How does it compare to past seasons?​

Euphoria’s third season is every bit as visually arresting and stomach-churning as the first two.
— Sal Cinquemani, Slant Magazine

If the first two seasons brought a manic energy comparable to the effects of drugs, the third is the hangover that follows.
— Tyler Doster, AwardsWatch

If nothing else, it’s a relief to see Rue free of the drug abuse, soul-crushing withdrawals, and severe relapse that punctuated her Season 2 arc.
— Lyvie Scott, TV Guide

It’s certainly not as effective as Season 2, but the third and final season of Euphoria takes some ambitious swings both narratively and stylistically that are admirable.
— Sean Boelman, FandomWire

There’s much less nudity than in Seasons 1 and 2, but one unexpected theme of the first three episodes [is] a celebration of sex work.
— Liz Shannon Miller, Consequence

What [these episodes] don’t feel like is tethered to the grounding ballast that kept the first two seasons on the rails even at their most over-the-top.
— Alison Herman, Variety

The show has lost its zeitgeisty edge. Euphoria has become a series with very little to say, none of it very audacious or compelling.
— Caryn James, BBC.com

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What makes the season so tonally different?​

A bizarre, Tarantino-esque opening… [You] kind of have to see it to believe it.
— Tyler Doster, AwardsWatch

Ludicrous situations that feel like Breaking Bad meets Looney Tunes.
— Lauren Sarner, New York Post

With its widescreen framing and open vistas, the new season of Euphoria certainly feels, at least in those opening scenes, like an entirely new series.
— Sal Cinquemani, Slant Magazine

At times, the show nods to old Western movies in its dialogue and gunplay, with a tone that is almost but not quite tongue-in-cheek.
— Caryn James, BBC.com

The show is a Western now, but that’s actually not as ridiculous as it sounds.
— Lyvie Scott, TV Guide

The Western landscapes that form Levinson’s latest visual obsession are a feast for the eyes, but the new genre doesn’t feel any more connected to a suburban coming-of-age story than the characters’ new pursuits.
— Alison Herman, Variety

There are so many scenes in this season that feel like they could have come directly from an Elmore Leonard or Carl Hiaasen novel.
— Liz Shannon Miller, Consequence

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(Photo by Patrick Wymore/HBO)

Hasn’t this show always had its ups and downs?​

These episodes boast far fewer dead-weight subplots than in the past.
— Nick Schager, The Daily Beast

Euphoria hasn’t always been great, but it’s been better than this.
— Tyler Doster, AwardsWatch

There are individual beats, scenes, and performances in these three episodes that spark with that energy that the show found at its best, but 2026 Euphoria feels more uncertain of what it’s doing or saying than ever before.
— Brian Tallerico, RogerEbert.com

Euphoria always skewed nihilistic, so none of these ideas are out of place in what may be its last season. But Levinson’s series was never this spiritually hollow, and it was always more active, insistent, and ambitious.
— Ben Travers, IndieWire

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What does it continue to do well?​

What works best in Euphoria is that, even in the silliest situations, the characters feel real. The performances are there because the characters feel lived-in, which is the biggest strength of the series.
— Tyler Doster, AwardsWatch

The series has fully tapped into the laugh-out-loud madness that first made it a small-screen sensation.
— Nick Schager, The Daily Beast

Euphoria owns its contradictions, and, in this final season, shows it’s mastered them.
— Nick Hilton, Independent

Euphoria still has all the visual excess and flourish that we have come to expect from Levinson, albeit within the confines of a different genre.
— Sean Boelman, FandomWire

Levinson was already showcasing his movie geek bona fides by shooting on film, but now he’s broadened his own canvas to make the show feel even more cinematic.
— Meghan O’Keefe, Decider

Its cinematography is as beautiful as ever, featuring stunning sunrises and dazzling, neon-drenched nightscapes alike…maintaining the impeccable, cinematic style the show has become known for.
— Taylor Gates, Collider

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(Photo by Eddy Chen/HBO)

Does the time jump affect the quality of the show?​

It really can’t be overstated how well the time jump works… It’s natural for [Rue] to be hitting her quarter-life crisis in a contemporary, post-pandemic setting.
— Liz Shannon Miller, Consequence

This leap in time is a convenient metaphor for the way many of the show’s characters have been robbed of their youth.
— Sal Cinquemani, Slant Magazine

There are some benefits to the delay. Now that the characters are all full-grown adults and not teenagers, Levinson is able to go much darker with the themes and subject matter without it feeling like it is broad shock value.
— Sean Boelman, FandomWire

The characters feel disjointed this season, Euphoria now feeling like an examination of life after high school for someone who peaked while they were there, but they mostly don’t interact with each other.
— Tyler Doster, AwardsWatch

The show’s five-year time jump inherently strips it of its central thesis of “look at all the adult things kids have to deal with nowadays,” making it difficult to pinpoint why Season 3 exists at all.
— Taylor Gates, Collider

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How are the performances this season?​

Zendaya is still giving one of the finest performances on television, but it might be time to call it quits.
— Tyler Doster, AwardsWatch

Zendaya instantly reminds you why she’s won two Emmys for this role.
— Taylor Gates, Collider

Another truly great turn, the best thing about the season, and, again, the best of Zendaya’s career.
— Brian Tallerico, RogerEbert.com

Zendaya’s performance, always marked by asphyxiating narco-darkness, becomes infused with a newfound light and buoyancy.
— Nick Hilton, Independent

Zendaya is a marvel, delivering what is simultaneously among the broadest and most quietly nuanced performances on television.
— Daniel Fienberg, The Hollywood Reporter

It’s Sweeney who stands out, at least in these early episodes, imbuing Cassie with a mix of glassy-eyed self-importance and pitiable self-doubt.
— Sal Cinquemani, Slant Magazine

Levinson still gets the best performance out of Sweeney the rising star has given since… the last season of Euphoria.
— Alison Herman, Variety

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Should this be the end of Euphoria?​

It’s a little sad that this has happened just in time for the show’s likely conclusion, but… Euphoria might just go out on an, um, high note.
— Liz Shannon Miller, Consequence

There isn’t much that makes sense on the show anymore, and for that reason alone, this will hopefully be the show’s last outing.
— Tyler Doster, AwardsWatch

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Euphoria: Season 3 premieres on HBO on April 12, 2026.


Thumbnail image by HBO
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