Euphoria Season 3 is now targeting a 2025 production start date.
On March 25, 2024, Deadline reported that HBO was delaying production on the third season of Euphoria. “HBO and Sam Levinson remain committed to making an exceptional third season,” the company said in a statement. “In the interim, we are allowing our in-demand cast to pursue other opportunities.”
According to sources speaking with Variety, “no one at HBO is at all sure a third season of Euphoria will ever come to fruition given the disparate visions for the show’s next chapter.”
Levinson’s original vision for the new series featured a five-year time jump. HBO was reportedly happy with the storylines given to Sydney Sweeney and Jacob Elordi’s characters in the early drafts; however, the company took issue with Zendaya’s proposed character arc.
One draft of Euphoria Season 3 saw Rue become a private detective
“When Levinson turned in his revised scripts in late 2023 and early 2024, HBO execs were now the ones feeling unsatisfied,” Variety’s article reads. “There was a new arc for Zendaya’s Rue, whose character in Levinson’s first pass had been relegated to the background in a somewhat surprising storyline about her working as a private detective, which HBO had immediately vetoed. Among many other ideas for the rewrites, Zendaya had pitched an idea in which Rue, who is now sober as a twentysomething young woman, would be a pregnancy surrogate. But insiders say the new scripts simply didn’t feel like the show tonally.”
HBO reportedly considered a number of options, including having Levinson step away from the series or turning the third season into a movie.
Variety notes that Euphoria’s third season “isn’t dead” and “could very well come together.” HBO reportedly told the cast that they’d have a plan in place for Euphoria Season 3 by October 2023 so that production, which is expected to last 25 weeks, could begin in 2025. The new season will likely have only six episodes rather than eight; although, “if Levinson were to need more, HBO is open to it.”