Why Euphoria was closed: critics' opinion and the results of the season

The creator of the series "Euphoria" Sam Levinson announced the closure of the cult HBO show: there will be no fourth season. The news was announced on The New York Times' Popcast podcast immediately after the release of the final episode of the third season. Soon, the closure was officially confirmed by representatives of HBO to Variety. All the details are in the Izvestia article.

Seven years of neon

"Euphoria" was released in June 2019 and in the first few weeks turned into the main pop cultural phenomenon of the end of the decade. The story of 17-year-old drug addict Roo Bennett (Zendaya) and her classmates from a California suburb became the first teen series that talked about addiction and abuse, which is why it found millions of fans around the world. The first season garnered 80% on Rotten Tomatoes and 16 Emmy nominations, making Zendaya the first black actress to win the statuette for Best Actress in a drama twice. The second season of 2022 scored 78% among critics. In seven years, the series has released three seasons and 26 episodes.

Production hell

Fans of the show had to wait four years for the third season. The update was announced back in February 2022, but production has stalled time after time. In 2023, Hollywood was gripped by a large-scale strike by the Screenwriters Guild and the Actors Guild, which froze dozens of projects. Filming of Euphoria began only in February 2025— almost three years later than the original plans.

In parallel, the cast lost several actors at once. In July 2023, Angus Cloud, who played the role of Fesco dealer, died — he was 25 years old. In February 2026, Eric Dane, who played the father of the main antagonist, died. Barbie Ferreira, whose character Kat became one of the audience's favorites, left the project back in 2022: her ideas for character development did not match Levinson's vision. Storm Reed (Ru Jia's younger sister) turned down the role due to a scheduling conflict.

While Euphoria was on hiatus, Levinson shot the mini-series "Idol" with The Weeknd and Lily-Rose Depp — it was this project that undermined the credibility of the creator of the show. Even before the premiere, reports of a toxic atmosphere on the set leaked to the press: according to Rolling Stone, 13 actors and crew members complained of emotional and physical pressure. A separate scandal was caused by Levinson's decision in the middle of production to dismiss director Amy Seimetz and completely rewrite the script, removing the female gaze from the story. "Idol" was released in the summer of 2023 and was panned by critics: on Rotten Tomatoes, the series scored less than 30% and was recognized as one of the worst HBO projects in many years.

Shortly before filming of the third season of Euphoria began, Kevin Touraine, Levinson's business partner and close friend and co—founder of Little Lamb Productions, died. According to IndieWire, Zendaya, who had previously openly supported the creator of the show, also cooled down amid the "Idol" scandal. Levinson found himself in creative isolation: without a partner, without the trust of the main star, with a reputation that needed to be rehabilitated.

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The third season of "Euphoria" and the opinion of critics

The third season started on April 12, 2026 with a fundamentally new beginning: the authors made a five-year leap forward, transferring the characters from schoolchildren to adults. Rue is a taxi driver and moonlights as a drug courier, Maddie has become a star agent, Cassie and Nate are preparing for a wedding, Lexi works as an assistant to a Hollywood showrunner. The move was supposed to remove the age dissonance — the actors were under thirty at the time of filming.

However, it was the time jump that became one of the main complaints of critics. Without adolescent maximalism, which made the suffering of the characters understandable and justified, the characters turned, according to reviewers, into deeply unhappy adults, whose destructiveness ceased to look romantic. The rating of the third season on Rotten Tomatoes was only 40% — this is the "rotten" status and an anti-record in the history of the show.

The first reviews set the tone even before the premiere: Rotten Tomatoes described the season as beautifully shot and well-acted, but felt like a completely different series. The Hollywood Reporter recorded a general consensus: Levinson seemed to have lost the essence of what made the show attractive. NME and a number of other publications drew attention to the fact that the addiction of Ru — the core of the whole story — was pushed into the background right up to the very end.

Critics also unanimously noted the excessive exploitation of women without narrative justification. In the first two seasons, the characters' sexuality conveyed something about their personalities and traumas, and in the third, it turned into a commodity or a tool of control - and lost its psychological depth.

The audience's reaction was just as harsh. According to The Mirror, after the second episode, statements like "this season is already a disaster" spread on social networks. Many fans of the show found the character development unconvincing and perceived the new visual style — shooting on film in a warm, almost Western palette instead of branded neon - as a betrayal of aesthetics, which became the hallmark of Euphoria.

HBO released the third season of "Euphoria" after four years of waiting.

The end of "Euphoria"

Euphoria appeared in 2019 as a series for those who still did not know how to name their pain. For Generation Z, it became not just a TV show, but a kind of safe space where you could see yourself. The aesthetics of the first seasons — neon, glitter as a visual language — felt like an attempt to make the unbearable beautiful.

Seven years later, the audience, who once perceived the characters as their peers, have matured themselves: they began to build a career, pay off a mortgage, deal with their problems and look at self-destruction much more soberly. However, the "Euphoria" did not have time to change with them. The final season once again featured the same characters who, despite their age, seemed to remain hostages to their previous traumas and behaviors. As a result, the main blow to the series was not the scandals, the decline in audience interest, or the difficulties with production, but the inability to develop with its viewers.

On May 29, Medialogia presented the top 30 Russian series ratings for April 2026. The series "Molodezhka" became the leader (2057 points). For the first time since January, the rating was topped by a Russian project. The top five also included the TV series "Boys" (The Boys, 2013 points), "Magic Battle" (1839 points), "Daddy's Daughters" (1788 points) and "Univer" (1682 points).