01 June,2026 06:27 PM IST | Mumbai | mid-day online correspondent
Zendaya in a still from Euphoria
Seven years, three seasons and one devastating farewell. HBO's Euphoria has officially closed its curtains.
After 26 episodes spread across three seasons, creator Sam Levinson broke the news on Popcast, The New York Times' music podcast, confirming that the show will not return for a fourth season. HBO subsequently backed Levinson's statement, making it official, the Season 3 finale, titled In God We Trust, was, in fact the series finale all along.
The turbulent drama drew its final curtain on HBO on Sunday night with a gut-wrenching conclusion, the death of Zendaya's beloved protagonist Rue. In the episode, Rue is shown consuming painkillers laced with fentanyl and the sequence that follows sees her slipping away in a drug-induced haze.
Levinson, never one to shy away from raw storytelling, stood firmly behind the choice. "It felt like an honest ending," he said in a post-show segment on HBO. "The honest ending is people like Rue don't make it." He elaborated further, saying the show was always built around a singular truth, "I wanted to tell an honest story about addiction. I also wanted to tell a story about grief and the emotional turmoil that it can create."
One of the most heartfelt elements of the finale was an emotional nod to the late Angus Cloud, who played fan-favourite Fezco and passed away in 2023. As Rue overdoses, she dreams of Fezco. Levinson explained, "I wanted to tell the story for Angus and for people who weren't granted a second chance." Adding that Cloud's death deeply shaped the entire season.
For many fans, the closure wasn't entirely unexpected. A four-year gap had already stretched between Season 2 and 3, during which Zendaya and several co-stars evolved into full-blown global stars with packed film schedules. Zendaya herself had openly remarked in interviews that she believed this season would be the show's last.
Levinson had also been quietly conveying the end for months. Earlier this year, he told Rolling Stone he writes "every season like it's the last," and when pressed about a fourth season, he simply said," I don't know," before expressing a desire to spend time with his family and step away from the grind. He also told an audience at the American Cinematheque that Season 3 is "hands down our best season," and warned fans that the final episodes would be heavily spoiled if not watched the moment they dropped.
Levinson summed it up best on Popcast, "In terms of the story we set out to tell, which is a story about addiction and its consequences, this feels like the end to me."
And what an end it was.
