Euphoria died with its purple-glitter aesthetic – and so did its women

Season one, to borrow trendy internet lingo at the moment, thrived on the emotional maxxing of every character. The fictional teenagers narrated a version of adolescent life that moved from getting high to navigating situationships to endearing prolonged heartbreaks. Neon-soaked visuals gave the show its distinct language and a trippy, teenage party aesthetic.

But more importantly, the aesthetic was never just visual. The heavy glitter makeup, the skimpy, bold outfits worn casually in school corridors, the impracticality of it all – none of it was meant to mirror reality. It was meant to escape it. That unreality gave its characters, especially its women, a kind of freedom. They were excessive, chaotic, self-aware and, in many ways, in control of their own story.

Its majority identity was because of how the aesthetic was marketed to the masses. The glitter wasn’t decoration- it is what defined the show, put it miles apart from any other teenage high-school drama that came before.

Euphoria’s chaos faded with its purple

But the latest season came as a disappointment for many, including me. Seasons one and two now feels like a nostalgic chapter of what was once a defining coming-of-age drama.

Season three introduces a time lapse that reshapes how the show once felt. The time jump forward strips away parts of the characters and, more importantly, removes the compelling illusion of chaos that once made them feel singular. Adulthood, unlike adolescence, remains largely indifferent to emotional intensity.

As much as I miss the old Euphoria and hoped to revisit it, season three hits you with a deeper statement of how adulthood barely registers emotional intensities. Everything feels plainer now. The neon haze has faded, replaced by the harsh, almost unbearable heat of suburban Southern California.

In its attempt to mature, the show trades glitter for beige. What we get instead feels like a badly shot episode of Breaking Bad – leaning into the visual language of prestige realism without earning any of its depth. The chaos is gone, but nothing meaningful replaces it.

Even the fashion, once a defining force of the show, has been reduced to tacky pieces that exist purely to show skin. Earlier, the outfits said something – they exaggerated identity, they pushed boundaries, they created a visual language. Now, they feel hollow, functional, stripped of personality.

Adulthood, in Euphoria, doesn’t expand the world, it merely flattens it. Teenage life allowed space for identity building, where everyone felt like they were either in love, heartbroken, or somewhere in between. But adulthood replaces that with the decentralising pressures of logistics – rent, food, work and survival. In doing so, reality dulls everything that once made the show compelling.

And somewhere along the way, the women disappear

In the first two seasons of Euphoria, the female characters carried a certain kind of authority. They were self-aware and in many ways in control of their own story. But in the latest season, nearly every female character is in some form tied to men or constrained by them.

Rue Bennett, for instance, began as an addict navigating a destructive life. In the latest episode, she works as a drug mule and then a strip club manager, her trajectory looking increasingly dictated by forces she cannot control.

Similarly, Cassie Howard, who seemed to be enduring a humiliation ritual throughout the show, now lives a ‘trad-wife’ lifestyle. She exists in a weak, manipulated, objectified life with Nate Jacobs, whose need for control has been quite evident from the start. And yet, the tonality is strange, you are almost expected to sympathise with him now, to read him as a normalised presence rather than a threat.

Cassie, on the other hand, is pushed to an extreme that borders on grotesque. Her OnlyFans content – dressed up as a baby, performing for an audience – feels deeply unsettling. She is framed as a feminist’s worst nightmare, and yet the show insists you feel bad for her. It’s a contradiction that doesn’t interrogate itself.

Same goes with Jules Vaughn. Once a strong, self-defined trans character, she is now reduced to a full-time sugar baby, performing a desire for older men to survive. Kat Hernandez has been written out entirely, her absence saying more than her presence ever did.

All the central characters who dominate much of the screen in terms of appearance have lost the factor of autonomy. The new show comes off with a misogynistic storytelling, with women tied up in some way or the other to men’s needs.

It begins to feel less like a story about young women and more like a projection of what they are supposed to become – a white man’s idea of what women are.

Will Maddy be Euphoria’s saving grace?

On the other hand, Maddy Perez seems to be the only character who still got some sense of herself in Euphoria at least for now. That said, it’s hard to predict where her arc will go next. For the moment, she appears to align most closely with the show’s earlier energy – the last remnant of a world where women could exist loudly, unapologetically.

Even with limited screen time, Maddy commands attention whenever she appears. She captures the essence of the story through her unfiltered and magnetic expressions. In the latest episode, however, it was disappointing to see her attend Nate and Cassie’s disastrous wedding, only to be poked at by Nate’s mother. The moment felt unnecessary, though it also read to me as a form of closure – some kind of closure that Maddy has been seeking after the betrayal she experienced.

The show also revisits the concept of OnlyFans this season, presenting it in a way that feels somewhat eye-opening. It touches on the rise of influencer culture and how the platform offered financial stability to some. But even here, the framing is telling. While several platforms opened up new ways for income to flow, it also raises questions about how women’s labour and bodies are monetised within digital mediums – less as empowerment, more as survival.

Euphoria once built a world where excess, chaos, and emotion gave its characters, especially its women, a sense of control. Strip that away, and what remains is something far more familiar.

Not maturity. Not realism.

Just control.