The penultimate episode of Euphoria Season 3 just delivered the show’s most gruesome and anxiety-inducing demise yet, completely upending expectations for how Jacob Elordi’s Nate Jacobs would finally meet his karma.

In a terrifying sequence that compounded multiple phobias, the notoriously toxic Nate was subjected to having a finger and toe severed, being buried alive, and ultimately trapped inside a coffin with a venomous rattlesnake that crawled down his breathing pipe, News.Az reports, citing foreign media.

Showrunner Sam Levinson revealed to Esquire that the horrific end was a deliberate subversion of the audience’s desire to see Nate get his comeuppance.

"I always think, ‘Well, how can I give it to them? How can I give them what they want, but make it so horrific and anxiety-inducing that by the time it happens, the audience isn't so sure they wanted it?’" Levinson said.

The scene transitions from an Old West-style shootout—drawing inspiration from classic Western directors like Sergio Leone and John Ford—into absolute horror when Nate's decaying, bloated corpse is eventually exhumed by a backhoe alongside a screaming Cassie (Sydney Sweeney).

According to Levinson, the snakes used in the Lancaster desert shoot were real rattlesnakes. The animal wranglers gave the crew a sobering warning on set: a bite would kill a person within an hour, but the nearest hospital was 90 minutes away. For the claustrophobic cross-section shots inside the coffin, Elordi filmed with a non-venomous lookalike serpent.

Interestingly, Levinson admitted the nightmare scenario was conceived on a beautiful, sunny Los Angeles day while he and his wife, producing partner Ashley Levinson, were driving to the Warner Bros. lot listening to Otis Redding.

"I just had this image of a rattlesnake coming towards this pipe. He's banging and the snake can sense the movement in the ground," Levinson recalled. "It’s sort of a funny moment where you realize that not all dark scenes come from a dark place."

The original concept was inspired by the 1973 grindhouse film The Candy Snatchers, where a character simply suffocates while buried alive. The snake was added to maximize the terror.

The episode also featured a lighter behind-the-scenes moment. During a sequence where Cassie is doing OnlyFans work rating clients, she called one admirer "Sammy"—a prank orchestrated by second-unit director Jason Reitman to tease Levinson. Though Levinson intended to change the audio to "Jason" in post-production, tight scheduling ahead of the air date kept Sweeney's original line in the final cut.

With only the highly anticipated season finale remaining, Levinson offered a blunt piece of advice for the fanbase: "When Episode 8 airs, if you're not watching it live, it’s going to get spoiled for you."

News.Az 

By Aysel Mammadzada