Euphoria's Sam Levinson & Marcell Rév Talk Season 3's New Look The creators of Euphoria, Sam Levinson and cinematographer Marcell Rév, have unveiled the visual and narrative evolution of Season 3, which diverges from the emotionally intense close-ups of previous seasons. The new season, inspired by Westerns like Rio Bravo and The Wild Bunch, as well as Jurassic Park, introduces a broader cinematic style aimed at immersing viewers in the characters’ experiences. The season’s opening episode, titled “Ándale,” features Rue (Zendaya) five years after high school, now relatively sober but entangled in dangerous situations, including a perilous attempt to cross the Mexico-U.S. border wall while selling fentanyl. Levinson and Rév emphasized a shift in storytelling, moving away from the subjective, close-up shots of earlier seasons to a wider aspect ratio that frames the characters within a larger world. “We wanted to be inside the characters’ heads,” Levinson explained, highlighting the deliberate choice to step back and present the story with a more expansive visual language. The border wall scene, which opens the season, was shot using a telescoping crane and real blue skies, with Rév drawing inspiration from Jurassic Park’s tension of being trapped. The production built a five-foot replica of the border wall near Los Angeles to achieve the desired authenticity. Another standout visual challenge was the candlelit dinner between Nate (Jacob Elordi) and Cassie (Sydney Sweeney). The scene, which reveals Cassie’s cunning and Nate’s financial strain, was shot with 200 real candles to create an intimate, tense atmosphere. Rév insisted on avoiding artificial lighting, carefully positioning the candles to illuminate the actors’ faces while maintaining the scene’s authenticity.#sam_levinson #euphoria #zendaya #angus_cloud #marcell_rev
Euphoria Is a Monument to Sam Levinson’s Lack of Creativity The third season of Euphoria has become a testament to Sam Levinson’s stagnation as a writer, reducing the series from a nuanced exploration of addiction, identity, and adolescence to a self-indulgent spectacle of style and provocation. While Levinson initially drew from his own struggles with addiction to craft a raw, character-driven narrative, the show has since devolved into a constant, tedious act of thumbing its nose at skeptical audiences. What began as a portrayal of Rue’s sobering journey, Jules’s experience as a trans teenager, and Nate’s fraught relationship with his father has transformed into a series of increasingly absurd meta-commentaries, flashy camerawork, and over-the-top violence. The season-two finale, in which Lexi stages a play about her sister Cassie’s affair with Nate and betrayal of her friend Maddy, epitomizes this shift. The episode becomes a meta bonanza, with Euphoria winking at its own reputation and amplifying its absurdities. Yet, this self-referentiality reveals how the show is now defined almost entirely by artifice, with Levinson’s writing plateauing to the point where he can only reference the series’ past rather than imagine its future. The first three episodes of the season, released to critics, underscore this stagnation. Four years have passed since season two, and five years in show time, yet Euphoria and its characters remain trapped in high-school thinking, caught in the same holding pattern and narrow worldview as before. The romantic entanglements, petty grievances, and juvenile views on love and success are unchanged, suggesting a deliberate critique of Gen Z’s self-centeredness and performative culture.#sam_levinson #euphoria #ryan_gosling #zendaya #angus_cloud
