The first trailer for the third season of Euphoria promises more sex, drugs and violence, teasing a troubled life after high school for the show’s characters.
Zendaya, Sydney Sweeney, Hunter Schafer and Jacob Elordi are among those returning for episodes four years in the making. The new season will take place five years after the characters were last seen.
The trailer shows Zendaya’s Rue involved in trouble with drug dealers, including a returning Martha Kelly, Sweeney’s Cassie becoming a cam girl while married to Elordi’s Nate, and Schafer’s Jules becoming a sugar baby.
The official logline reads: “A group of childhood friends wrestle with the virtue of faith, the possibility of redemption, and the problem of evil.”
Other returning cast members include Alexa Demie, Chloe Cherry, Maude Apatow and two-time Oscar nominee Colman Domingo.
“We’re gonna have a devastatingly gorgeous, epic season that I think is breaking the mold of television,” Colman told Deadline. “I think it’s gonna become more cinema than television.”
Newcomers this season include Sharon Stone, Rosalía, Natasha Lyonne, Danielle Deadwyler and Marshawn Lynch. This season will also see Oscar winner Hans Zimmer join as composer.
The show’s creator, Sam Levinson, has called it “our best season yet”.
“The one thing we all agreed on is we can’t go back to high school – although many, many shows have had 30-year-old high school students, we’re not,” he said. “Five years felt like a natural place [to jump] because if they had gone to college they’d be out of college at that time.”
It follows Levinson’s second show for HBO, music drama The Idol, which received largely negative reviews. The Guardian’s Rebecca Nicholson called it “a big, dumb spectacle”.
Sweeney, who is now leading the hit domestic thriller The Housemaid, has called the season “crazier” than what’s come before. Zendaya, who led the hit tennis drama Challengers in 2024, will next be seen alongside Robert Pattinson in The Drama and Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey. Elordi is now on the Oscar trail for Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein after winning the Critics Choice award for best supporting actor.
Euphoria will premiere on 12 April.