Euphoria‘s season 3 premiere elicited some strong responses after some viewers didn’t enjoy watching Zendaya‘s Rue swallow drug balloons, while others slammed how the show wrote off the late Angus Cloud.
During the Sunday, April 12, episode of the HBO show, Rue was reintroduced after a five-year time jump, which showed her new life as a drug mule. A scene minutes into the premiere depicted Rue and Faye (Chloe Cherry) using lube to swallow large quantities of balloons filled with drugs.
They then had to smuggle the balloons from Mexico to the United States without getting caught. Rue made it home just in time to poop out the balloons, but Faye had “an accident” and feces were seen running down her leg before a dog tried to lick some of it off.
“The first episode of Euphoria is disturbing, guys, really tough, I swear, I don’t know how to react,” read a post via X, while someone else said of creator Sam Levinson, “There’s something seriously wrong with you.”
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Others weren’t thrilled with Jules (Hunter Schafer) being absent from the premiere or the scenes where Cassie (Sydney Sweeney) was dressed as a dog for her OnlyFans, which she created to help bring in more money ahead of her wedding to Nate (Jacob Elordi).
“This is so embarassing [sic] even for jacob,” read another social media post. “But, how Sydney sweeney can agree to do something like this? It’s like a humiliation ritual.”
There was also backlash to Rue revealing that Fez (Cloud) is serving a 30-year prison sentence. Some viewers weren’t thrilled that the show kept Cloud’s character alive after the actor’s offscreen death only to have him behind bars.
“I just watched the first episode of Euphoria S3 and I’ve already decided to skip the rest of this new season… Sam Levinson, you’re disgusting,” another viewer posted via X.
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Levinson, meanwhile, recently addressed the changes he had in mind for season 3.
“We have a motto of: Evolve or die,” Levinson told The Hollywood Reporter on Sunday. “We wanted to make sure we were changing things up. We wanted to give it a feeling of a memory that was fading away — a bit rougher.”
He continued: “We’re seeing them out in the world, in the wider world, and allowing the actors to communicate emotionally through the performance, as opposed to in the past, when we did it more so through camera. We wanted to see them fending for themselves.”
The creator teased his vision for the show’s return, saying, “I wanted to tell a story about the step of surrendering our will and our lives to the care of God as we understand him. These characters who are now adults are free to choose what kind of life they want to live, but there are consequences that come with those actions. I look at that long period of time [between seasons], with all of its tragedies and everything, as a blessing.”
Euphoria airs on HBO Sundays at 9 p.m. ET.
