Euphoria season 3: everything we know

Let's not mince our words: Euphoria season 2 was a huge success. Sam Levinson's high school drama is both exhilarating and terrifying to behold – especially if you’re a parent having to level with the fact that your child will one day become a teenager – and the series' sophomore outing set records up and down the HBO network. 

It's no surprise, then, that the Game of Thrones broadcaster has ordered a third run of Euphoria for its HBO Max streamer, and we're excited to see how Euphoria season 3 tackles the loose ends left by season 2's explosive finale. 

Below, we've rounded up everything we know so far about Euphoria season 3, including its expected cast, story and release date.

Release date: No release date for Euphoria season 3 has been set as yet, but judging by the show's previous release scheduled, we'd anticipate seeing new episodes landing towards the end of 2023 at the earliest.

Cast: We're expecting mainstay cast members Zendaya, including Sydney Sweeney, Hunter Schafer, Maude Apatow, Angus Cloud, Eric Dane, Alexa Demie, Jacob Elordi and Storm Reid to return in Euphoria season 3, though Barbie Ferreira has confirmed that she won't be returning as Kat. 

Story: Given the revelatory events of season 2's finale (which we go over in full spoiler-y detail below), we expect two main dramas to play out in Euphoria season 3: one between Nate, Cassie and Maddy, and the other between Jules and Rue.

Euphoria season 3 release date

As above, no release date has been set for Euphoria season 3 as yet, though we do know for sure that it's on the way after HBO confirmed the series' renewal in February 2022. 

Our best guess for when new episodes might release is late 2023, but in any case, we don't expect the gap between seasons 2 and 3 to be the same as that between 1 and 2. It took a lot longer than producers and HBO had planned for the show’s second season to make it to air. After a successful first season, Euphoria was confirmed for a second run in mid-2019, but endless Covid delays meant two ‘bridge’ episodes ended up being put in place. 

If you’ve watched these placeholder episodes, you can feel Covid’s influence in every frame. One is set entirely in a single location, with Rue unloading on Colman Domingo’s Ali, her sponsor, as she tries to recover from addiction. The other documents a long conversation between Schafer's Jules and her therapist. 

Now, though – with real momentum from the show’s second season behind them – we expect Levinson to have HBO’s backing to get things moving quickly on Euphoria season 3. The only barrier to its development, in our minds, will be the respective schedules of show's increasingly-in-demand cast members. Zendaya, for instance, is booked to play a significant role in the Dune sequel (as well as star in Luca Guadagnino's new drama, Challengers), while Hunter Schafer is currently filming The Hunger Games prequel, The Ballad of Snakes and Songbirds.

Euphoria season 3 cast

We expect to see most of the show's key cast – including Zendaya, Sydney Sweeney, Hunter Schafer, Maude Apatow, Angus Cloud, Eric Dane, Alexa Demie, Jacob Elordi, Storm Reid and Dominic Fike – return for Euphoria season 3, but not all of the above have been set in stone as yet. 

One person who definitely won't be coming back is Barbie Ferreira, who has confirmed that her character, Kat Hernandez, won't be a part of season 3.

The only definite involvement so far is Zendaya, whose return was confirmed when HBO executive and Euphoria producer Casey Bloys said, when asked asked the possibility of a Euphoria without her, “she’s going to be in season 3.”

Bloys did concede that HBO has considered the possibility of Zendaya departing the series, but he stopped short of saying it would mean the end of Euphoria, adding: “It’s hard to imagine doing the show without her. But, again, that would be something for her and Sam [Levinson] to discuss.”

Euphoria season 3 story

Spoilers for Euphoria seasons 1 and 2 follow. You have been warned. 

Let's recap Eurphoria's basic premise before speculating on season 3's plot. Based on the Israeli series of the same name, Levinson's series follows a group of high school students as they (attempt to) navigate freindships, relationships, trauma and addiciton in suburban Los Angeles. 

Largely, events follow Zendaya’s Rue, a recovering drug addict who struggles to readjust to her life and friendships. We’re slowly introduced to her circle of friends and the intertwining of their lives, which is constantly played out in a state of high drama. Along the way, we meet Maude Apatow's Lexi Howard, Rue's childhood best friend, and budding playwright, Angus Cloud's Fezco, a strangely kind-hearted drug dealer who has a complex relationship with Rue. Hunter Schafer's Jules Vaughn, a transgender girl who enters an up and down relationship with Rue after moving into their high school, is introduced early on, too.

Irrespective of whether Euphoria season 3 picks up immediately after the events of season 2's finale or sometime afterwards, the most pressing issue to resolve concerns the ongoing love triangle playing out between Jacob Elordi's Nate, Sydney Sweeney's Cassie and Alexa Demie's Maddy.   

After Rue angrily revealed that Nate and Cassie had been seeing each other behind Maddy's back, it seemed like their relationship was doomed. However, after a tension-filled late night visit where Nate finally ended his on-again/off-again relationship with Maddy, he invited Cassie to live with him for a while, suggesting the pair would now be an item. 

But after the events of Lexi's play – where she decided to air everyone's dirty laundry live on-stage – Nate stormed out and ended things with Cassie, who stormed the stage herself, taking shots at her sisters and her friends. While Cassie and Maddy didn't end the season on such angry terms, you'd imagine this storyline is going to run and run in Euphoria season 3...

Elsewhere, Nate is dealing the sexual promiscuity of his father, Eric Dane's Cal. At the beginning of season 1, we saw Nate, aged 11, discovering his father's collection of homemade videos featuring him having sex with young gay men. Subsequently, he learned that his most recent video featured Schafer's Jules, who he knows to be underage. 

Eventually, after a lot of back and forth, Cal came out to his family and left them to start a new life. But Nate, who has always been angry about his father's behavior and the impact it has had on him and his mother, wasn't prepared to let sleeping dogs lie. Knowing former girlfriend Maddy had a copy of his father's tape with Jules, he tracked it down and took it back, eventually returning it to Jules. 

At the end of season 2, we saw Nate confront his father with a gun and a flash drive containing all of Cal’s explicit activity. After revealing his trauma from viewing the videos at a young age, we learned that he has decided to turn Cal in and the police come to arrest him. The end of the matter? Not by a long shot. This saga and its effect on Nate's family will likely be a key part of the Euphoria season 3 narrative. 

Then there's the small matter of Jules and Rue. After spending much of season 2 together, Jules discovered that Rue had relapsed and told her family, leaving Rue to cut ties during a bitter intervention. As Rue recovered, she and Jules remained on icy terms, but, during the finale, Jules sat next to Rue in the audience for Lexi's play and told her that she loves and misses her. Rue kissed her on the forehead before walking away, leaving us with some hope for the future. Can the two reconcile? And what will become of Dominic Fike's Elliot, Rue's former drug partner and Jules' sometime lover? That's another question to answer. 

Finally, season 2's curtain came down in a bullet-laden stand-off that ended with Cloud's Fezco being shot in the stomach and arrested for two murders. Ash, his long-time business partner, was shot dead in the drama by police, leaving Fezco truly alone. What will season 3 bring for him? And surely his arrest spells the end for his fledgling relationship with Lexi. 

In short, then, there's plenty of narrative ground for Euphoria season 3 to cover. Expanding on the above, we've rounded up three big questions that Euphoria season 3 needs to answer on a separate page. 

Euphoria season 4?

As is the nature of a show like Euphoria – which is built around a group of high-schoolers and their adolescent antics – things can’t go on forever (certainly not with the same cast, anyway). 

Speaking about the show's age-related restrictions to TVLine, Euphoria producer (and HBO executive) Casey Bloys admitted that the show has a very definite shelf-life: “Well, [the characters] are in high school, so there are only so many seasons it can go. There’s a time limit.”

Bloys was quick to point out that he's happy for showrunner Sam Levinson to figure out the show’s natural end: “We’ll follow [Sam’s] lead on that. There is no set plan. But I don’t think you want 30-year-olds playing [high school students].”

Those quotes date back to HBO green-lighting the show’s second season in July 2019, when Euphoria wasn’t quite the TV juggernaut it is now. 

However, interviewed recently, again by TVLine, Bloys stuck to his word when asked about the show’s planned third season, saying: “I will let Sam and Zendaya talk about that. I’m very excited about what they’ve got planned [for season 3]. So I will leave that to them. I will say, generally speaking, we trust where they want to take these characters. So we’ll let the creative team lead the way.”

Everyone, HBO included, seems to accept that the show can’t run for seven or eight seasons – but no end date has been set as yet, and we'd anticipate at least a couple more seasons of Euphoria before it ends for good.