Euphoria

HBO

This third and final season of Euphoria has been totally off the rails from the start, but now, it’s finally starting to feel like a good thing. The premiere, which felt like a complete departure from the entire series, is starting to find its footing. As it stands, its biggest weakness is not its storylines or performances, but rather the lack of Labrinth’s soundtrack, replaced by a bizarre Hans Zimmer score that was never more out of place than it was last night.

A big criticism of the first two episodes of season 3 of Euphoria was the Cassie and Nate storyline, with Jacob Elordi’s Nate feeling like he was phoning it in, and Sydney Sweeney feeling like she was herded into some sort of humiliation ritual. But now? While Nate is still not what he was in the past two seasons, I was very impressed with Sweeney’s performance as Cassie last night, easily the best I’ve seen from her in this series, and probably, honestly, one of her best across her movie roles as well.

It started with a locked-up Cassie walking down the aisle with her mother, lamenting the history of her marriage, which began at her wedding and only went downhill from there. The idea is that she’s implying Cassie is doing the opposite, given that Nate is such a great guy, but a frozen Cassie arrives at the altar with tears rolling down her face. And not the happy kind.

The reception is utter insanity. Nate is visited by Naz, where Cassie learns in real time that he’s in a serious amount of debt, and spends the rest of the wedding alternating between barely holding in a breakdown, occasional denial and pure rage. The two best sequences are when she’s practically sobbing during the tackiest first dance I’ve ever seen filmed, and then the end, where Nate is beaten to a pulp as she sits there crying that she has a bloody nose, entirely unconcerned with what’s happening to him. Reportedly, this scene originally had her trying to help Nate fight off the attack, but they changed it to her just sitting there in hysterics.

Sweeney has gotten flak, sometimes rightly so, for her performances in recent roles, whether they’re critic or audience or box office hits or misses, but this seems like the part she’s most suited for. I don’t mean that as an insult; it’s just that she’s really good at playing Cassie as a wholly self-absorbed airhead, and that was never more true than last night. Before this, I’d argue that Zendaya’s Rue was the only one really putting in the effort, but I think we can add Cassie to that list as well.

Nate? The show still has a big Nate problem. This feels nothing like the dark, violent, almost evil version of the character. Unless this storyline somehow ends with Nate murdering Naz, I suppose. For now, though, he’s been muted to the point of an entire personality change. And it’s just not working. Fortunately, his wife is picking up the slack.

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Pick up my sci-fi novels the Herokiller series and The Earthborn Trilogy.