Everything We Know So Far About Euphoria Season Three
As Euphoria’s third season approaches here’s what we can expect.
Euphoria season 2 spoilers ahead.
The fate of Euphoria season 3 has been up in the air for many years now. The show was technically renewed for a third season in February 2022, but with several different factors causing production to be put on pause multiple times, fans have been left with one big question: Will Euphoria season 3 ever come?
The short answer is yes, crossing our fingers that everything goes as planned. The next season is slated to at least begin filming some time next year.
Season three is has a lot to live up to given the way that the second season left off. Viewers were most memorably left grieving Ashtray (Javon Walton) after he and Fezco (Angus Cloud) were caught in a shootout with a SWAT team.
Audiences were also treated to a performance of Lexi’s (Maude Apatow) play, Our Life (cue the line, “Is this fucking play about us?”), which led to Maddie (Alexa Demie) and Cassie (Sydney Sweeney) brawling onstage.
The finale also raised some questions, such as, “Doesn’t Rue (Zendaya) still owe drug dealer Laurie (Martha Kelly) $10,000 for the suitcase full of drugs that she took from her and promised to sell?” That’ll be even harder to pull off considering Jules (Hunter Schafer) and Elliot (Dominic Fike) flushed the drugs down the toilet, and she and Rue have a falling out.
We also can’t forget how Nate (Jacob Elordi) called the police on his father, Cal (Eric Dane), who was arrested.
So, what’s next for the teens of Euphoria High? Here are all of your season 3 questions, answered.
When will season 3 premiere?
Euphoria was previously scheduled to return in 2025, as HBO and Max’s Chairman and CEO Casey Bloys announced during a November 2023 presentation to press—but that no longer seems to be the case. HBO is now anticipating a 2026 premiere, Warner Bros. Discovery global streaming chief JB Perrette announced at a conference in December 2024, according to Variety.
Viewers aren’t thrilled to wait any longer for more Euphoria episodes. After the 2023 Hollywood labor strikes and the tragic death of actor Angus Cloud, who played beloved character Fez, the cast and crew have been forced to alter plans. On March 25, 2024, HBO confirmed to Variety that season 3 had once again been delayed, and that the scripts are still being written. “HBO and Sam Levinson remain committed to making an exceptional third season,” a spokesperson shared. “In the interim, we are allowing our in-demand cast to pursue other opportunities.”
When will season 3 begin filming?
Just when fans started to lose faith in a third season, HBO shared released new updates: Euphoria will officially begin filming again in January 2025, and all of the main characters are said to return. This hopefully includes Zendaya, Hunter Schaefer, Sydney Sweeney, Alexa Demie, Jacob Elordi, and Maude Apatow.
“I am thrilled that we are ready to begin production on ‘Euphoria’ in January. We could not be happier with our creative partnership with Sam and this incredible cast. We look forward to bringing this new season of Euphoria to life for the fans,” head of HBO drama series and films, and EVP of HBO programming Francesca Orsi said, according to Variety in July 2024.
After false rumors of Euphoria’s cancelation circulated online in November 2024, Bloys further confirmed plans for the eight-episode season to begin production in January 2025.
Who will be in the cast?
We can likely expect to see series regulars Zendaya, Hunter Schafer, Alexa Demie, Jacob Elordi, Sydney Sweeney, Maude Apatow, Nika King, and Austin Abrams again, but we’ll have to wait for official confirmation from HBO. As for season 2 newcomers Dominic Fike and Chloe Cherry, there’s no word yet if they’ll be back.
Barbie Ferreira, however, will not return to play Kat. She announced her departure from Euphoria on Aug. 24, 2022, with a photo of fan art of her character drawn by her co-star, Hunter Schafer.
“After four years of getting to embody the most special and enigmatic character Kat, I’m having to say a very teary-eyed goodbye,” Ferreira wrote. “I hope many of you could see yourself in her like I did and that she brought you joy to see her journey into the character she is today. I put all my care and love into her and I hope you guys could feel it. Love you Katherine Hernandez.”
After the death of Cloud in July 2023, it remains to be seen how Euphoria season 3 will handle the remaining story arc of Fezco. On Aug. 2, 2023, Apatow—who plays Lexi, Fezco’s love interest—posted a tribute to Cloud on Instagram, writing, “Angus was the funniest person ever. I would get so excited to see on the schedule that we would be working together because I knew we’d have the best day, laughing so hard. He was the sweetest and made everyone around him so happy. He was just the best. Words can’t really capture how magical of a person he was. My heart is broken. Angus, getting to know and work with you was one of the greatest joys and blessings of my life. I will love you forever. ❤️”
Storm Reid, who plays the younger sister of Zendaya’s Rue, also won’t be returning for the upcoming season. She revealed the news to Rotten Tomatoes at the 2024 Governors Awards, per The Hollywood Reporter. “Unfortunately, Gia’s not returning for the third season, but I’m so, so indebted to the cast and crew of that show [and] to HBO. Euphoria is a really special thing,” Reid said.
During an appearance on The Tonight Show, Jimmy Fallon asked Elordi about his future appearance on the show and what to expect, but he didn't seem to know much either—except that, at 26 years old, it’s getting hard to portray a high school student.
“I hope it’s soon, or they’re going to have to Benjamin Button me or something,” he joked. “I’m going to have a bad back walking down the hallway, you know?”
He added, “I’m assuming that we’ll have to go forward, otherwise it’s going to seem like a weird bit.”
The fate of Euphoria still appears to remain unknown. At the Los Angeles premiere of her upcoming film Challengers, Zendaya told Variety in April 2024 that, despite being an executive producer on the show, she is in the dark about season 3.
Zendaya admitted, “I don’t know. I’m not in charge.”
“But you want it?” a Variety reporter asked her.
“If it’s right for the characters and everything turns out the way it should, of course. But it’s beyond me,” she answered.
What will season 3 be about?
As Levinson revealed to ELLE in a September 2023 cover story featuring Zendaya, the director sees Euphoria’s third chapter as a “film noir,” and that Rue’s storyline will “explore what it means to be an individual with principles in a corrupt world.”
Expect other “big swings” in season 3, according to Colman Domingo, who chatted with Deadline in 2022 after his Emmy win for his guest role in season 2. “It’s an organism, and [Levinson] wants it to keep shifting it in many ways and I think he’s going to take some really big swings actually with season 3,” the actor said. “He’s someone who, once there’s an expectation of the show, he wants to smash that expectation because he truly is a consummate artist, and he wants to make sure he’s telling some really compelling storytelling. And just because we had some successes before with this season, he said, ‘Let’s not rely on that. Let’s move forward. I’m going to go deeper with these characters. I’m going to really peel away the layers of them and just get to the human heart.’”
Euphoria will have multiple questions to answer next season after that season 2 finale showdown. Maddy gets her revenge by fighting Cassie during Lexi’s play, but what comes after that? All we see is Maddie giving her former best friend some well-needed advice. As for Cassie herself, she’s all alone after being dumped by Nate, her friends, and even her family.
We can also hope for an update on Rue and Jules’s friendship. The friends-turned-lovers ended their romance when Jules told Rue’s mother about her drug use. Although the pair briefly spoke at the end of Lexi’s play, they’re still not entirely reunited as friends or as lovers. But maybe that’s for the best, given the money Rue owes Laurie (Martha Kelly).
King, who plays Rue’s mother, Leslie, thinks there could be room to explore the character’s backstory. She told Entertainment Weekly in 2022, “Season 3, I’m hoping to see maybe a little more backstory, like where does she work? We never had that conversation. I know in my head where she works; she’s got multiple jobs. But I think it’ll be fun to see where she comes from.”
While it’s still unclear if Cherry will appear in season 3, she’s also shared her hopes for where Faye’s story could go next, such as bonding with Rue. “I think Faye has a story of addiction to tell as Rue does; even though it’s different, I think that they could learn something from each other,” she told Variety in 2022. “I also think Rue is a non-judgmental character, and I think that is all Faye needs. I think if they got closer, they would get along because they have these shared experiences and they are both chill girls in spite of it.”
In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter in August 2022, Zendaya said that, as a producer, she’d like to see a time jump for the characters in a future season. “I think it’ll be exciting to explore the characters out of high school,” she said. “I want to see what Rue looks like in her sobriety journey, how chaotic that might look. But also with all the characters, in the sense where they’re trying to figure out what to do with their lives when high school is over and what kind of people they want to be. What was special about this season was that we got to dive into [the other characters] in a much deeper sense. I think we can do that again with the third season.”
We don’t know yet if season 3 will be Euphoria’s last. In response to a question about whether the series would end with season 3, Casey Bloys told TVLine: “I will let [exec producer] Sam [Levinson] 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.”
Speaking to Entertainment Weekly on The Awardist podcast in October 2024, Zendaya referenced the planned time jump, saying, “It’s important because there’s only so much high school drama you can deal with.”
She added as a joke, “‘And then she cheats on her boyfriend again!'”
“I don’t actually know much about what is happening,” Zendaya continued. “I don’t quite know exactly what the season is going to look like, but I do know that the time jump is happening. It will be fascinating to see and understand these characters outside of the context of high school and how all the stuff that we saw when they were kids and they were in high school affects the adulthood they have and who they become in a much bigger world. I’ll be interested to see what happens too.”
