Break out your eye glitter and get ready to host your Euphoria watch parties, because this popular HBO show is coming back for round three, eventually, and this is what we know so far.
While there were good and bad parts of Season 2, Euphoria still prevailed with its stellar acting performances, specifically from Zendaya, and its incredible cinematography and still entertaining storyline, despite its flaws.
The series ended up being renewed for Season 3 due to the high viewership numbers, but when exactly are we going to get Euphoria Season 3? This is what we know.
What Is The Euphoria Season 3 Premiere Date?
Don’t get excited, there’s no set premiere date, and honestly, we might not get anything until at least 2025 – or maybe even later than that.
According to a Deadline report in March 2024, they said HBO is still targeting a 2025 release date. But then a Variety article a few days later said otherwise, and that filming wouldn’t even start until 2025. So at this point, we don’t really know when a premiere date will be set.
All I’m saying is don’t expect this to be on any 2024 TV schedule, that’s for sure.
What We Know About The Euphoria Cast Returning For Season 3
The main cast of Euphoria is expected to be back. While nothing has been confirmed just yet, plenty of the cast members have talked about what they’ve wanted to explore with their characters next season, specifically at a screening of the Season 2 finale episode, via The Hollywood Reporter in 2022. Some of the cast we can probably expect includes:
Zendaya as Ruby "Rue" Bennett
Zendaya is expected to return as Rue, the main character of Euphoria. She has won two Emmy Awards for her portrayal of the young woman. Zendaya has also appeared in several other movies like the Dune franchise, the upcoming Challengers, and more.
Maude Apatow as Alexis "Lexi" Howard
Maude Apatow is expected to return as Lexi in Season 3 of Euphoria. The actress has appeared in movies like The King of Staten Island and held a voice role in the series, Pantheon.
Eric Dane as Cal Jacobs
Also expected to return in Season 3 is Eric Dane as Cal Jacobs, who in an interview with Variety, said that he hopes Season 3 will bring some sort of “redemption” for his character:
There’s gonna be redemption. I mean, that’s the trajectory he’s on. I can’t imagine Cal’s life from solitary confinement. It’s tough to work Cal into the storyline when he’s behind bars.
Alexa Demie as Madeleine "Maddy" Perez
Alexa Demie is expected to return as Maddy for Euphoria, the ex-best friend of Cassie Howard and Nate’s ex-girlfriend. She held a cameo appearance in The Idol, and appeared in other movies like Mainstream and Waves.
Jacob Elordi as Nathaniel "Nate" Jacobs,
Jacob Elordi is expected to return as Nate Jacobs, the star athlete who has serious anger issues and uses them to combat his own mental health problems. Elordi has appeared in several films lately, including Priscilla, the Saltburn, He Went That Way, and more, and will also appear in Frankenstein.
Nika King as Leslie Bennett
Nika King is expected to return as Leslie Bennett, Rue’s mother. She has appeared in films such as 65 and Kevin Hart's Guide to Black History.
Storm Reid as Georgia "Gia" Bennett
Storm Reid is expected to return as Gia, Rue’s little sister. Reid recently won an Emmy Award for her guest role on the HBO series, The Last of Us.
Hunter Schafer as Jules Vaughn
Hunter Schafer is expected to return as Jules, Rue’s ex-lover. Schafer recently appeared in The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes.
Sydney Sweeney as Cassandra "Cassie" Howard
Sydney Sweeney is expected to return as Cassie Howard, the younger sister of Lexi. Sweeney has recently appeared in Madame Web and starred in both Anyone But You and Immaculate.
Colman Domingo as Ali Muhammed
Colman Domingo is expected to return for his Emmy Award-winning role as Ali in Euphoria Season 3. Domingo was recently nominated at the 2024 Academy Awards for Best Actor for his role in Rustin.
Austin Abrams as Ethan Daley
Austin Abrams is expected to return as Ethan in Euphoria Season 3. Abrams has since appeared in movies like Do Revenge, The Starling Girl and The Line.
Unfortunately, Angus Cloud tragically passed in 2023, so Fez will not be back unless he is recast, but I highly doubt that will occur. Another possible cast member that won’t return is Dominic Fike (who played Elliot), who has openly said in an interview with Variety in January 2024 that he’s ‘unsure’ if he would return for Season 3, saying he didn’t “really talk” to the people at the show anymore.
One of the cast members that we will not be seeing in Season 3 of Euphoria is Barbie Ferreira as Kat. According to her Instagram story (via The Hollywood Reporter) the actress decided to leave the show, saying that she hoped fans could see “themselves” in the character like she did:
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.
Later on, however, Ferreira revealed in an interview with Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard, that the real reason she left the series was because she felt that there was “nowhere” for Kat to go next in the season:
I don’t think there was a place for her to go. I mean, I think that there were places you could go. I just don’t think it would have fit into the show. I don’t know if it was gonna do her justice. And I think both parties knew that. I really wanted to be able to not be the fat best friend. I don’t want to play that and I think they didn’t want that either.
With such a great cast, it’ll be awesome to see most of them back, hopefully for a great third season, despite some notable cast members missing.
Euphoria Season 3 Could Take Place Five Years In The Future
While not much is known about the upcoming third season, there is a hint of how far Euphoria might jump into the future – and it could be substantial.
In an April 2023 interview with Vogue that one of the costume designers, Heidi Bivens, gave, she confirmed that she will do her best to make the outfits for the third season just as great, hinting that there have been talks of a “five-year” time jump:
I’ll do everything I can to make the third season of the show successful. I’m really excited to read the scripts. There is talk of it being approximately five years in the future, and that they’re not in high school anymore. Dorothy’s not in Kansas anymore. I mean, it might be a total trip. Who can say? But knowing Sam’s brain, it’s gonna be exciting, and he will challenge all of us, because he won't want to repeat himself. It’ll be something new for the audience to discover.
This was further confirmed by an exclusive from The Wrap in March 2024 that the reason for the delay was that Levinson wished to move the story from high school to adulthood, and that HBO was giving him the time to do so and figure out the proper scripts.
Truthfully, I would gladly see these actors play adult versions of these characters at this point, considering many of them are going into their late-twenties to early-thirties. There would be a lot of compelling stories there.
Zendaya Hopes That Season 3 Explores The Character’s Lives Post-Graduation
Zendaya’s character, Rue, is the main character of Euphoria. While there are plenty of others that the story revolves around, Rue is the narrator and who we mainly follow. Now, with the idea that the show might jump ahead five years, she's already thinking of what she wants to explore with her character in Season 3.
In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter in August 2022, Zendaya revealed that they hope that Season 3 digs into Rue’s life after high school, as well as the rest of the characters and what they might be going through after graduating:
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.
If the show does jump forward five years, this would be the perfect way to do this kind of story, and I am down for it.
Colman Domingo Says Sam Levinson Is Going To Take “Big Swings” With The Story In Season 3
Information on the story is very limited, but Colman Domingo believes that Levinson is taking some “big swings” with the upcoming third season of Euphoria. Domingo, who plays Ali, relayed in an interview with Deadline in September 2022 that Levinson wants to go “deeper” with these characters and that Season 3 is the best way to do that:
It’s an organism and [Levinson] wants to keep shifting it in many ways and I think he’s going to take some really big swings actually with Season 3. 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.’
I feel like Season 2 of the show did explore other characters in great ways – and some others (like Kat) were sort of left out to dry. But, we’ll see where Season 3 takes us.
Sam Levinson Says Euphoria Season 3 Will Remind People Of The “Film Noir” Genre
While not much is known tone-wise about Euphoria Season 3, Levinson did give a hint of what the tone would be like, and if you like the term “film noir,” you’ll be happy.
In an interview with Elle in August 2023, when they had a cover story on Zendaya, Levinson talked about his special connection to the actress. While doing so, he gave us a sneak peek of what he wanted Euphoria’s third season to be, saying that it’s very similar to a “film noir” kind of style, and that he plans to “explore what it means to be an individual with principles in a corrupt world.”
Whatever the heck that means, I don’t know, but if it means they’re grown up, and there’s crime involved, I am in.
Zendaya Could Potentially Direct An Episode Of Season 3
Another fun little tidbit that could be something we know is that Zendaya might actually get to direct an episode of Season 3. In an interview with Vogue Italia in June 2022, she was asked about the possibility of directing an episode of Euphoria, and the star revealed that she was supposed to direct Episode 6 of Season 2, but she just didn’t have the time.
It's funny, I was actually supposed to direct Episode6 [of Season 2] but then I had to act in it. I didn't have enough time, so, unfortunately, I wasn't able to this time around. I wanted to have enough time to do it the right way. So, next season, probably.
I would be so down to watch a Zendaya-directed episode, and I have a feeling it would be awesome.
Filming Will Begin At Hopefully At Some Point
Okay, so here’s where things get a little messy. Originally, according to an interview that Sydney Sweeney did with GQ in March 2024, she said that filming for Season 3 was set to begin in a couple of months, saying that “people will be really amazed with what season three becomes” and that the third season would be very different from the first two.
However, it came out not more than a week later that filming was delayed, as stated above by the Deadline article in March 2024, and that the actors were encouraged to take on other projects.
Then the Variety article in March 2024 confirmed that filming was officially put on hold until the end of 2024. The cast would come back together in October with something hopefully etched in stone, with a “solid plan” to film in 2025.
But, even with that, HBO is still targeting a 2025 premiere date… so what does that mean for filming? With a potential filming start date in 2025, I’m not sure when the series will come out.
At this point, who knows? But we’ll get up to date with the latest on filming for this series, as soon as it comes out.
While we’re not going to be getting any Season 3 of Euphoria any time soon, we can at least watch the other two seasons and enjoy those for the time being. Until then, I guess I’ll just try to be patient. There are still so many questions that need to be answered.
