This show is in serious jeopardy of never returning.
My initial report about “Euphoria” season 3 being in turmoil kickstarted a week’s worth of headlines, and it hasn’t died down. Many questions about the HBO series remain.
Zendaya, star and executive producer of “Euphoria,” is further sowing doubt into the final season ever happening. Speaking to Variety, the actress claimed she’s “not in charge” and that “it’s beyond me” if the third season will ever occur.
Last month, a source had hinted to me that the show was done: “it’s about commitment and I just don’t see everyone being onboard, at the same time, after this last delay.”
Variety also had a bombshell report about the behind-the-scenes chaos. It turned out that creator Sam Levinson had originally pitched to HBO, in winter 2023, a third season that jumped ahead five years, with “very compelling” arcs for Sydney Sweeney’s Cassie and Jacob Elordi’s Nate. However, Zendaya disliked the script so much that Levinson had to rewrite the entire thing from scratch.
But after Levinson finished his updates to the S3 scripts, HBO executives were not happy with the final result. They didn’t like Zendaya’s new arc, which had her character sidelined as a private detective. An assortment of other storylines didn’t make sense to them either.
This sent Levinson back to the drawing board with a third revision and, according to Variety, insiders say the updated scripts still don’t tonally feel like “Euphoria,” which means Levinson is probably going to have to rewrite the whole thing again, for the fourth time.
HBO reportedly explored replacing Levinson as the creative head. There was also the idea of turning season 3 into a movie. All of this doesn’t even take into account the fact that, two years since the last season, some of the main actors (Zendaya, Colman Domingo, Jacob Elordi, Sydney Sweeney, Hunter Schafer) are no longer doing TV and have graduated into the movie business.