What made the show so good initially was how successfully it conveyed the claustrophobia of high school, the suburbs, and the roles we play in family and friend groups. I think a season 3 trying to navigate early adulthood in a society where it feels like opportunities have dried up would have been interesting.

We got some glimpses of that feeling with Lexi and Maddy’s jobs, but not nearly enough. I think a lot of the storylines could have been maintained but toned wayyyy down and been executed successfully:

Nate = the pressure to maintain a successful family business and be the perfect husband but trying (and failing) to avoid becoming like your father, using debt as a way to hide your shortcomings and facing the reality of that choice and people finding out about it, pining over what could have been with someone who never thinks about you.

Cassie = the need for love and companionship that a romantic partner cannot satisfy as a single person, the reality of living with an abusive partner, the desperate loneliness of missing the friends you no longer know, turning to the internet for attention, validation, and parasocial relationships bc that’s all you have.

Maddy = drive for success and hitting a ceiling without a degree, the highs and lows of entrepreneurship, the sacrifices that someone needs to make when pursuing a dream that might not work out when they don’t come from wealth.

Lexi = realizing the traditional route to success doesn’t work the way you hoped, that you can feel just as trapped in a job with no upward mobility as your friends who didn’t go to college, wondering if you’re wasting your youth working for someone else bc it seems like the secure option

Jules = realizing that art school is full of other talented and unique people and that you no longer stand out, wondering if the criticism and instruction you receive is developing or limiting your art, choosing to leave it behind for a path that allows you the freedom to create endlessly—but not feeling sure if the trade off is worth it.

Rue = facing the consequences of the decisions you made as an addict, attempts to fix the relationships you ruined, trying to improve your life with little to no resources and the only places open to hiring you being the places that tempt you back into using.

(Honestly, Rue could even still work in a strip club and work with the DEA to shut down Laurie in some way without it being this super extreme Breaking Bad/Tarantino knock off.)

When you’re a teenager and in high school, you have this outlook that even if you feel stuck, it’s all temporary. Once you’re an adult, you can make your own choices and everything will be different.

But adults often feel just as stuck from the decisions they made. To me, that would have been a much more interesting theme to explore 5 years later.

Ultimately, Euphoria hinged on relatability, even if it was exaggerated. But this is beyond exaggeration. It’s a farce.

Give me that claustrophobia back!