This article contains spoilers for Euphoria through season 3 episode 3.
Euphoria has always enjoyed mistreating young bodies. From the physical toll Rue (Zendaya) faces during her numerous drug relapses and withdrawals, to the way characters like Jules (Hunter Schafer) and Kat (Barbie Ferreira) utilize their sexuality in dangerous situations, the story of this teenage drama is told through the exploitation – self-inflicted or otherwise – of the human body
Euphoria has also never been short on raw violence. In its first two seasons, Nate (Jacob Elordi) chokes and bruises his ex-girlfriend, puts another high schooler in a neck brace after almost beating him to death, and holds that same ex-girlfriend at gunpoint during his streak of blackmail. Season 2 built on these violent themes by writing a fatal ending for Ashtray (Javon Walton), the murderous sidekick of the show’s primary drug dealer, Fezco (Angus Cloud).
The first episode of Euphoria’s third season arrived on April 12, with die-hard fans and skeptics alike wondering how this installment would build on or burn down the themes of hedonism and bodily cruelty that have come to be expected out of the show. The first three episodes have not only led the characters farther down that path, but into realms of actual body horror that put the first two seasons to shame.
Body horror is defined as a focus on the mutilation, decay, or otherwise torture of the human body, in which “the human body itself becomes a source of fear, anxiety, and disgust, often through graphic and disturbing depictions of bodily changes, mutilation, or alteration,” according to IMDb.
The most obvious example of body horror in Euphoria’s newest season comes in the form of Nate Jacobs. The once powerful high school bully has found himself in over his head as a real estate developer, owing money to not only his friends, but to a Godfather-esque investor named Naz who is owed over half a million dollars.
In episode 3, Nate and Cassie Howard (Sydney Sweeney) finally get married. Although the ceremony goes relatively smoothly, Naz makes an appearance threatening to become Nate’s “worst nightmare.” In seasons 1 or 2, this likely would have meant more blackmailing or a tensely homoerotic conversation in the parking lot of a motel four episodes later. In season 3, this threat was followed through before the credits roll; Naz and his henchman surprise the groom as he carries his wife across the doorstep, leading to a gruesome beating for Nate and a broken nose for Cassie, and ending with Nate’s pinky toe severed from his foot.
The ending of this episode evokes films by David Cronenberg and Quentin Tarantino. Although these directors and many others have laid a solid foundation for the body horror subgenre in the film industry, it is rare for a teenage drama to feature such explicit sequences of bodily harm. Recent television shows like The Last of Us, The Boys, and Hannibal have contributed to a culture of body horror fans within the TV industry, but for a show not categorized under the umbrella of horror, Euphoria is taking an unexpected leap with these moments of violence.
As if the burst pipe of Nate’s toe spewing blood all over his luxury home wasn’t enough, the new season of Euphoria is also exploring body horror within its fetishized sex scenes. Jules has always been the femme fatale of the show, and in this season she has dropped out of art school to pursue a surprisingly lucrative career as a sugar baby to disturbed men.
One of these men is a married plastic surgeon who, after courting Jules for some time, wraps her head-to-toe in cellophane, naked with her arms stretched to the sky in a bone-chilling cosmetic cocoon. “I just might keep you forever,” he says as her breath fogs up the plastic wrap plastered across her mouth. It’s hard for a singular moment to outdo every freaky scene that precedes it in a show like Euphoria, but this one brought a whole new level of horrifying to season 3.
The show’s antihero, Rue Bennett, is facing some of the most harrowing plot points of the show thus far, whether she’s teetering on the edge of the border wall between Mexico and the United States or staring down the barrel of a gun while her boss shoots an apple resting on her head.
Rue begins her season 3 storyline by paying back her debt to the unassuming, but feared drug dealer Laurie (Martha Kelly). Instead of paying Laurie back the millions of dollars she owes, Rue starts working as a drug mule, forced to “body pack” by swallowing dozens of balloons filled with fentanyl and transporting them into the United States.
The scene in which Rue and her friend Faye Valentine (Chloe Cherry) are forced to lubricate their throats and choke down latex-bound balls of lethal drugs is a grotesque depiction of the illegal drug trade. It is paired with another scene in which a young woman collapses at an airport while Rue narrates about the immediate fatality when a balloon pops inside a person’s digestive system in another haunting and horrific moment of TV from Sam Levinson, the show’s director and screenwriter.
Levinson has faced backlash from fans and others in the industry for his objectification of young women, on both Euphoria and his single season drama, The Idol, including unnecessary nude scenes and a general unwillingness to write female characters who aren’t objects of sex. Ultimately, it will be the remainder of Euphoria’s third season that clarifies whether Levinson is displaying a penchant for gratuitous impropriety, or if these moments of body horror are elements of the show’s larger shift into a popular horror subgenre.
New episodes of Euphoria season 3 release Sundays at 9 p.m. ET on HBO and HBO Max.
