Has Euphoria lost the plot? Fans call for HBO show to be cancelled

After four years, Euphoria returned for its third season, yet not without complaint. 

The HBO show follows the former students of East Highland High School after a five-year break, charting their new lives as adults.

But despite boasting a star-studded cast including Zendaya, Sydney Sweeney and Jacob Elordi, fans have called for the show to be cancelled.

Since landing on the box in 2019, the show has been famed for breaking boundaries with its graphic portrayal of teenage drug use, sex and violence.

However, viewers have now claimed that creator Sam Levinson's 'disturbing' and 'misogynistic' storylines for the new season have 'lost the plot'. 

In the latest episode, titled America My Dream, fans were appalled by how far Sydney Sweeney's character, Cassie Howard, was willing to go, with it being the actress's most X-rated scenes in her career yet.

That first episode saw her dressed as a baby, while another scene had her dressed as a lingerie-clad dog.

And now, she's gone fully nude.

Cassie was captured posing for a series of provocative photos for her OnlyFans account.

There's one graphic shot featuring ice cream dripping down her nude cleavage, while another shows her wearing nothing but a soaking wet, see-through American flag wrapped around her.

This is followed by a baseball-themed shoot, which sees her just donning a nude thong.

Later on, she portrays an 'adult baby' with her legs up in the air for the camera, while sucking on a dummy.

Rue (Zendaya) said in the voiceover: 'It's a shame she was with Nate. Cassie was exactly the kind of girl you'd dream of signing. 

'Beautiful, but directionless. So desperate for attention, she's willing to humiliate herself.' 

'Somebody save Sydney Sweeney,' one fan wrote on X, as many others called the scenes a 'humiliation ritual.'

'Please god i cant keep seeing cassie degrade herself in the most embarrassing ways imaginable,' someone else added. 

'Sydney girlllll say no to some stuff,' another fan pleaded. 

'How is Sydney even agreeing to do this season of Euphoria?' someone else questioned.

'Why would sydney agree to doing allat… weird.'

'Seated for sydney sweeney to be typecasted the rest of her career.'

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Fans were already taken aback by Cassie's 'puppy play' exploits, which led to the show's creator, Sam, having to defend the scenes.

He told The Hollywood Reporter: '[Cassie] has got her dog house and her little dog ears and the nose, and that has its own humour, but what makes the scene is the fact that her housekeeper is the one filming it.

'What we wanted to always find is the other layer of absurdity that we're able to tie into it so that we're not too inside of her fantasy or illusion - the gag is to jump out, to break the wall.'

Speaking about her character's OnlyFans career at the season three premiere, Sydney told Entertainment Tonight: 'I mean, Cassie's a crazy character.'

'She will do anything and at all costs to be famous this season, and she makes a lot of very wild and interesting choices,' the actress said.

The first episode of the show's third season had fans criticising the hyper sexual depictions of its female characters.

A trailer for the entire season depicts Sweeney's character dressed as a baby in a compromising sexual position.

Former Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly bashed the trailer while on her show, claiming it 'sexualizes infancy'.

'The truth is - this is sexualizing infancy. That's what this is,' Megyn said.

She went on to hit out at fans who defended its content as a 'pretty common kink,' even branding Euphoria's creator, Sam, as 'sick.'

She accused him of 'injecting nudity' into scenes so the actresses would have to take their clothes off.

Kelly speculated that the actresses put up with the excessive nudity because they want to be stars, but noted that some stories have leaked to the press that the women were uncomfortable.

She argued that the controversial scenes were an example of 'Hollywood not understanding at all where the line is,' adding that most 'normal people,' including Sweeney's fans, will recoil at her dressed as a baby.

The hosts of the Ruthless podcast agreed with Kelly's analysis, with one even speculating that Sam was working out a 'sick fetish' through Euphoria's production.

The Daily Mail reached out to HBO Max for additional comment on Megyn's criticism of the show. 

Sam previously defended the explicit nature of his work, noting during the 2023 Cannes Film Festival that, ‘We live in a very sexualized world. 

'The influence of pornography is really strong in terms of the psyche of young people.’

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Was Sydney Sweeney's return to Euphoria a mistake? Actress faces backlash over 'sexualised' role

Sydney told The Independent in 2022 that she never felt pushed into doing naked scenes, and Sam welcomed feedback.

'There are moments where Cassie was supposed to be shirtless, and I would tell Sam, "I don’t really think that’s necessary here." He was like, "Okay, we don’t need it,"' she added.

In 2023, Sydney told Variety that she'd asked Sam to amp up Cassie's mania: 'Give me more. I'm going to show you what I have. There's so much to this girl.'

Brutal reviews have said the new series has an over-reliance on 'shock value' elements such as nudity and sexuality rather than developing decent storylines.

Viewers previously expressed their disgust after the season launch, revealing they'd been left feeling sick by characters throwing up and suffering with bouts of diarrhoea.

Particularly nauseating scenes include Rue and Faye (Chloe Cherry) - struggling to choke down lube-covered balloons of fentanyl in order to smuggle it over the Mexico-US border.

The characters are seen struggling for air and vomiting while forcing down the drugs - but the scenes for extracting the fentanyl are even more gruesome.

In order to obtain the drugs, the pair are forced to defecate in a strainer - which is later washed off and used to serve spaghetti.

While waiting for her turn to use the toilet, Faye struggles with a bout of explosive diarrhoea, with a dog eating the excrement.

Ahead of its premiere, the third season was also torched with early reviews, with the show being labeled as an 'unhinged disaster' yet 'pretty uneventful.'

It also held a 46% critics score on Rotten Tomatoes before the first episode became available on the streaming site.

Lauren Samer from the New York Post labeled the third season - which has a five-year time jump - as 'Breaking Bad meets Looney Tunes.'

'In the first two seasons, the show's strength was how it dug into these characters' lives. The plot got wild, but it was anchored by human drama.'

Samer added, 'Now, as we find them as adults, it would be more compelling to see them struggle because of their flaws. Instead, many of them struggle because random criminal henchmen are after them.'

The BBC's Caryn James gave the first three episodes two out of five stars.

James also wrote that 'Euphoria has become a series with very little to say, none of it very audacious or compelling.

'Based on the three episodes, of eight, that HBO made available in advance, it is a strained attempt to make the closed circle of friends it follows, now in their early 20s, somehow the same only different.'

Euphoria airs at 9pm (ET/PT) on HBO on Sundays. In the UK, the series airs at 2am and 9pm on Mondays on Sky Atlantic and streams on HBO Max and Sky Go/NOW