Break out your eye glitter and get ready to host your Euphoria watch parties, because this popular HBO show is coming back for Euphoria Season 3, eventually, and while it won’t be a part of any 2024 TV premiere schedule, it’ll be coming…at least within the next few years.
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, and at this point, we do know that filming will begin next year, so I really would not expect this to come out within the next year. I’d say 2026 at the bare minimum.
The Euphoria Season 3 Cast
The main cast of Euphoria will officially all be back, according to a report from Variety in July 2024. This includes:
Zendaya as Ruby "Rue" Bennett
Zendaya will 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, Challengers, and more.
Eric Dane as Cal Jacobs
Also returning 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 will return as Maddy for Euphoria, the ex-best friend of Cassie Howard and Nate’s ex-girlfriend. She made a cameo appearance in The Idol, and appeared in other movies like Mainstream and Waves.
Jacob Elordi as Nathaniel "Nate" Jacobs,
Jacob Elordi will 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.
Storm Reid as Georgia "Gia" Bennett
Storm Reid will 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 will 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 will 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.
There are several other actors from the Euphoria cast that are expected to return as well. These include:
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.
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.
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.
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 Cast Members That Will Not Be Back
A 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.
Unfortunately, Angus Cloud tragically passed in 2023, so Fez will not be back unless he is recast, but I highly doubt that will occur.
What Is Euphoria Season 3 About?
There is basically nothing out there when it comes to Euphoria Season 3 and what it could be about. But there are plenty of ideas that have been passed around.
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. However, from the Variety article above confirming the cast, that was an idea that HBO didn’t seem to be a big fan of.
There were also talks of Rue becoming a PI (a private investigator) that would jump years into the future, but that was also turned down by HBO.
I mean, the actors are getting older, so it would make sense to lean a bit away from high school. Zendaya is even a fan of it. 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 somehow jump forward five years in some way, this would be the perfect way to do this kind of story, and I am down for it. But at this point, everything is up in the air.
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.
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 Is Set To Begin In January 2025
Praise the Lord, we finally have some kind of update on when filming for this show will begin. Thanks to that July 2024 Variety article above, we officially know production will begin on Euphoria Season 3 in January 2025 after years of delays.
Sydney Sweeney did an interview with GQ in March 2024 where she said filming was supposed to begin soon. 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. Now, we know that Season 3 is officially happening – but what that means for a premiere date, I have no clue.
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.
