Euphoria season 3 finale spoilers follow.
Euphoria finally returned for its third season after a four year long wait, and the events of the episodes pretty definitely made it clear that it won't be coming back for a fourth.
One of the major things that happened in the final episode was that main character Rue, played by Zendaya, dies from an overdose of pain medication laced with fentanyl.
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In a new interview with the New York Times, the show's creator Sam Levinson revealed that it wasn't initial plan that he had in mind, but things changed due to a real-life tragedy.
"I had originally written a different trajectory for the character of Rue. During the writers’ strike, we got the news that Angus passed away", he said, referring to Angus Cloud, the actor who played dealer Fezco O'Neill in the show, who died in July 2023 from an overdose involving multiple substances, including the same one Rue died from.
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"I'd always been really concerned about the prevalence of fentanyl. It’s something that we’ve dealt with over the seasons and even in my first film [Another Happy Day].
"But once he passed away, I had to reconceive the script and I thought, 'you can't tell a story about addiction today without the very real consequences."
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He continued: "Most people don’t get a second chance. Fentanyl can just take you out in an instant. It wasn’t like when I was growing up; you could literally take pills off the street and you might have a bad trip or something, but you'd be fine.
"This is something that hits close to home for a lot of people in this country. So it felt like the responsible thing to do."
He explained that he wanted the theme of this season to be "pulling back the illusion" that escapes such as drugs, fame, money or social media validation makes people happy, and that he wanted audiences to have that painful feeling of losing someone you love unexpectedly.
He touched on how Rue's addiction hadn't been a big a part of seasons 2 and 3 compared to the first, stating that there are "different phases" but "always underneath the surface".
To make things even more tragic, Levinson added that he thinks the fentanyl was from the same batch she smuggled into the country in the first episode of the season.
Of course, it's not the only major death in this third and final season that Levinson has defended recently.
Euphoria is available via HBO Max in the US, and on Sky, NOW and HBO Max in the UK.
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Joe Anderton is a freelance news writer at Digital Spy, having worked there since 2016. In his time, he's covered a host of live events and interviewed celebrities big and small. A big fan of TV and movies both mainstream and obscure, Joe also enjoys video games and in particular PlayStation. Joe currently does not use Twitter, but he only ever used it to tell people to watch the film Help! I'm a Fish.
