It is March 25th, and to say that most of the main cast of HBO’s hit show Euphoria is busy would be an understatement. Zendaya is coming off the first big hit of 2024, Dune Part II, Sydney Sweeney is riding high from the successes of Anyone But You and Immaculate, Hunter Schaffer had a supporting role in The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, and her first starring role in Cuckoo comes out in little over a month. Then there are Jacob Elordi’s roles in last year’s Saltburn and Priscilla, Colman Domingo’s Best Actor Oscar nomination for Ruston (and an upcoming one for Sing Sing, and not to mention his forthcoming roles in the Michael Jackson and Nat King Cole biopics), Maude Apatow’s Broadway stints, Storm Reid’s roles in Missing and The Last of Us, and Dominic Fike’s music career. Last but not least, there is the tragic passing of Angus Young. “Takes a deep breath.” (Let’s not forget about Barbie Ferrera and her festival-award-winning ‘Bob Trevino Likes It).
So, it shouldn’t be surprising that HBO has announced that Euphoria season three has been delayed—everybody is extremely busy! They didn’t take a page out of The Bear playbook, where FX foresaw their stars would get booked quickly and is currently shooting seasons three and four back-to-back. Sam Levinson is still working on the scripts, and HBO is committed to doing a season three (why wouldn’t they?) But as a counterpoint, it might be okay for the show not to overstay its welcome and end with its last season. Streaming and television currently do this weird, sometimes aggravating dance of knowing when to end a show or prematurely cancel it. This is why it’s hard for viewers to want to get invested in anything new. You start watching a new Netflix show, and the next thing you know, it’s gone because it didn’t do some unquantifiable metric. What about continuing shows just for ratings sake?
There’s a consensus that a considerable quality drop between Euphoria seasons one and two happened. The last two episodes were pretty much a school play recounting events of the first season. Rue stays clean and detaches herself from her codependent relationship with Jules (the debt to Laurie seems like it’s forgotten about?). The goofy love triangle between Cassie, Maddy, and Nate comes to a head, and Cal is off to jail. It seems like everything is wrapped up to me. Levinson himself is coming off the negatively charged The Idol and might need another season of Euphoria to attempt to redeem himself. Having some time away, the way the second season ended might be the best way for the show to go out. As the cast can pursue other projects, who is to say that the core will ever be free to return to the show in a timely fashion? You could have a Stranger Things situation on your hands where the cast is essentially ready to leave the franchise behind. You can even revisit this Euphoria story down the line and have a real-time jump to get time to formulate a compelling story.
If this “delay” leads to an end, it won’t be so bad. At best, this was a jumping-off point for a group of really talented people to spread their wings.
Photo Credit: HBO
