Euphoria (series) is over: a bittersweet ending

Euphoria made a lot of waves in the tv world because it was significantly more racy and graphic than almost anything else out there. They were really pushing the limits by showing us a ton of nudity of girls, primarily Sydney Sweeney, who while they the actresses are legal adults, the characters they are portraying in the show are not and this is really thin ice for people to be walking on these days. They got a lot of attention for this and for the borderline way in which they were almost glorifying drug use and later on, drug trafficking.

I thought the show overall was completely ridiculous how teenagers were portrayed with unfettered access to drugs and money despite not having jobs, and how certain things like face tattoos being quite common (for high schoolers) and not frowned upon at all, were put on display. This made a lot of viewers upset but that sort of publicity also drove people to watch the show, or hate-watch it, and these days I think that all publicity that appears to be negative is actually intentionally perpetrated by the people who made the show. It drove me to watch it and for the most part, I thought it was a really good show despite the very improbably nature of most of what was going on.

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It was revealed long before it was ever released that season 3 was going to be the final season, so when I started watching it I was kind of surprised about how slow-moving the story was. I was also kind of surprised about how certain characters that were pretty fantastic in previous seasons, were kind of thrown to the wayside in S3.

Obviously the main focus was always going to be on actress-who-in-everything-these-days and producer Zendaya and of course Sweeney, who is also in so many things that it gets difficult to keep up with her.

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I don't know what is going on there but I will admit that I took the bait as far as the gossip is concerned but apparently Zendaya and Sweeney really do NOT get along with one another. Perhaps it is a clash of egos or just people being catty, but if you do watch season 3 you will quickly realize that their stories don't really have anything to do with one another's and they are only in a couple of scenes together.

By the end of it all, their stories have almost nothing to do with the other despite the fact that they are for whatever reasons, living in close proximity to one another (in the show.)

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one thing that may delight viewers about season 3 is that the arrogant character of Nate has quite the reversal of fortune throughout this season as he becomes the "bitch boy" due to some bad decisions made with loan sharks towards a doomed real-estate project. He spends the entire season running from the people that are going to slowly cut off pieces of him should he not come up with the money and the whole time I was watching it I was just thinking "why doesn't this guy just get a gun?"

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If you watched it, you already know. If you didn't, I am not going to spoil it for you. But let's just say that the sequence in the last picture is one of the most disturbing scenes I have seen in the history of television and I guess it kind of says a lot about what we are allowed to broadcast these days.

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Sweeney's character Cassie doing OnlyFans and making a ton of money doing it is kind of a sign of the times as well and while I don't know if this statistic is real or not, I have read that 10% of all women aged 18-25 in the USA have an OnlyFans page or service or whatever it is called. Everyone is chasing that money and Euphoria made a good choice in my mind, to point this out not in a glorifying way, but just as a statement of fact that there are people that put a lot into making these girls' pages popular and once they are there, there is a TON of money involved in it.

But the "bread and butter" of season 3 so to speak is of course the story of Zendaya's "Rue." She is involved in drug trafficking and a new character named "Alamo" takes the center stage as someone that appears to be trying to help Rue get out from her bondage with another dealer, but imagine that? It turns out that Alamo isn't actually a good person.

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While there are a lot of things going on in season 3 the real thing to focus on is Alamo and Rue and this is something I both enjoyed and didn't as far as the last episode of season 3 is concerned. A lot happens, a lot of loose ends are tied up, and it is done in a very rapid succession. In the final scene, which I will not spoil, so many characters come together in a final showdown of "epic" proportions. I say "epic" in quotes because so much of what happens is very conveniently timed and impossibly coincidental that things and people just happened to be where they were at that time.

It is entertaining, sure. But just like a lot of what happens in Euphoria, the things that happen just aren't realistic at all. You'll have to watch it to find out because although I do have some criticism of how this show was wrapped up, I do still think that it is very worthwhile viewing and I am kind of disappointed that it is over.

The last season kind of plays out like a series that never really had an overall story but was a project that was meant to carry on for as long as was necessary. In this particular case, the stars likely wanted to move on to other things and it was becoming too difficult to handle all the attitudes and schedules of stars that have a lot going on, particularly with Zendaya and Sweeney.

Should I watch it?

I think you should, yes. Despite the fact that the final season is a bit rough around the edges and seems rushed to a conclusion, it is still quality television. I believe that they could have carried this on for many more seasons but the attitudes and schedules were just becoming too difficult to manage. This is compounded by one of the apparent biggest "attitudes" also being an executive producer. There was also so many producers that there was bound to be a ton of fighting. I counted 24 overall producers and wow, is that really necessary? Drake was one of the producers. What the hell does this guy even have to do with TV?

Anyway, the final season is a good one, but not necessarily the best one. I enjoyed it and am kind of disappointed that there won't be any more of them.

_{At the moment the only place to legally stream this is with an HBO-Max subscription}