\n<\/p>\n
There\u2019s a scene early on in the new, breathlessly anticipated third season of Sam Levinson\u2019s Euphoria<\/em> where Sydney Sweeney\u2019s sickly sweet Cassie and Alexa Demie\u2019s razor-sharp Maddy reunite. Cassie is now a bored California housewife-to-be, dabbling in OnlyFans for extra money for her blowout wedding, and Maddy, a promising talent agent with a nose for spotting clients who can make her a killing. Cassie tells Maddy that if more people knew her, she could be huge. Maddy replies that Cassie might currently just be a big fish in a small pond. Cassie grins. \u201cBut, what if I was a big fish in a big pond?\u201d<\/p>\n That is, broadly, the ambition of this next installment of the HBO behemoth. There\u2019s a five-year time jump from the previous season\u2014which dropped over four years ago, if you can believe it\u2014and our beloved heroes, anti-heroes, and villains have all now been unleashed from the confines of high school.<\/p>\n They\u2019re scattered across the West Coast: Zendaya\u2019s Rue is on the nation\u2019s southern border, doing drug runs in and out of Mexico alongside Chloe Cherry\u2019s Faye, in an effort to pay her debts to terrifying kingpin Laurie (Martha Kelly). Meanwhile, Hunter Schafer\u2019s Jules is a painter moonlighting as a sugar baby; Jacob Elordi\u2019s Nate, an eager young developer engaged to Cassie; and Maude Apatow\u2019s Lexi, a Hollywood assistant to a prolific showrunner (Sharon Stone).<\/p>\n This is a more sweeping, sprawling story told on a giant canvas, and, in a way, it makes perfect sense that Levinson chose to go in this direction. Euphoria<\/em> has been a culture-shifting phenomenon since its debut back in 2019, and remains one of its network\u2019s most-watched shows\u2014so, why not expand its world and show us where these compelling characters end up?<\/p>\n Then, there\u2019s also the matter of logistics: Euphoria<\/em> was renewed for a third season in 2022, with production set to kick off the following year, but this timeline was disrupted by everything from the WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes to substantial rewrites. At one point, it was put on hold and seemed at risk of being abandoned altogether. But then, Levinson appeared to have settled on a storyline that the studio was on board with (after a number of false starts), and had managed to bring this all-star, in-demand cast back together. How could he possibly pass up the opportunity to make another season, given its immense success? And with this time lost and his actors now in their late twenties, what else could he do but take them out of high school?<\/p>\n<\/div>\n