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CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION | ||
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Positive:
37
Mixed:
34
Negative:
2
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Critic Reviews
Jan 10, 2022
Jun 14, 2019
Jun 5, 2019
Season 1 Review:
An early career-defining performance from Zendaya, who is an absolute revelation here; a similarly fantastic breakout performance from trans actress and model Hunter Schafer in her first major role; and strong work from Levinson, who created, wrote and directed (five of the eight episodes), getting the vehicle that emphatically announces his arrival.
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Jan 10, 2022
Season 2 Review:
This season of Euphoria is doing the most, and sometimes it’s so much that key figures fall somewhat by the wayside. This is a television series that doesn’t just depict the darker impulses of adolescence — horniness, jealousy, resentment, a flippant attitude toward one’s mortality. It wears them like a bodycon dress, a fresh gel manicure, and carefully applied eye glitter. And more often than not, this version of “too much” is a hell of a drug.
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Jan 10, 2022
Season 2 Review:
Blazing with creativity and screen-popping visuals, “Euphoria” is a crackling live wire of a series with frightening and chilling insights into the world of far too many teenagers — and their parents — whose lives are in danger of being swallowed up by addiction-fueled actions.
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The PlaylistJan 10, 2022
Season 2 Review:
Every time that “Euphoria” threatens to sink into one of its less believable valleys—such as in Cal’s over-written arc this season—one of the young performers brings it back with an interesting choice or unexpected grace note. They’re all so very present in every scene of this show, creating characters who feel vibrantly alive.
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Apr 13, 2026
Season 3 Review:
If anything, the new version feels more representative of what Euphoria’s tongue-in-cheek title was always meant to convey. The state of euphoria was something the characters were perpetually chasing, but never managed to attain. Out of all the seasons, this latest one feels truest to that cruel irony.
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Feb 9, 2022Radio TimesJan 13, 2022
Season 2 Review:
If you enjoyed season one of Euphoria, you will enjoy this. If you didn’t, you won’t. It continues in much the same vein, both exhibitionist and bombastic, but also introspective and tender. There is much in there that is surface level, designed to send your jaw hurtling to the ground, but this is entertainment, baby! A little bit of that never hurt anybody, and it takes care in other ways to ensure that it’s not an empty vessel.
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The IndependentJan 11, 2022
Season 2 Review:
Given the show initially leaned on shock value, a second season (and the ones that will surely follow) would have to sidestep the inevitable diminishment of that shock. But Levinson keeps his foot on the pedal in other ways, with the support of a cast who are only getting better. Remarkably, Euphoria continues to justify its provocative existence.
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Jan 10, 2022
Season 2 Review:
Darkness encroaches on Rue’s life this season, as she repeatedly betrays the people around her, leading to a chaotic and intense intervention episode. Desperate, impractical, painful and pellucid, it reminds us that despite Euphoria’s effortful thrills and frills, the series is most worth watching for Rue’s journey.
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The GuardianDec 3, 2019
Season 1 Review:
Its louder moments are graphic and brash but its quieter moments are equally impactful, a well-modulated drama that knows when to push and then pull back. It’s hard to know where it will go and that’s part of its untamed appeal but as it stands, it’s one of the most audacious and effective new shows I have seen this year.
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Jun 13, 2019
Season 1 Review:
This show isn’t an easy watch, nor a particularly pleasant one. It’s often brash and blunt, defiantly refusing to tie up loose ends or let its characters take easy ways out. But just like the teens it depicts with such staggering candor, once you get past its immediate attempts to hold the audience at arms length, “Euphoria” has an undeniable pull that makes it too intriguing to ignore.
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Apr 8, 2026
Season 3 Review:
Levinson also chooses shock value too often, leaning toward depravity in the third episode. Yet it’s easy enough to choose hope with so much visual excitement and star power on display — and, for us romantics, with Rue and Jules allowed to be in the same room again.
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Apr 8, 2026
Season 3 Review:
The show has, like its characters, grown up a lot. It’s a little sad that this has happened just in time for the show’s likely conclusion, but should this level of quality hold for the remaining episodes of the season, Euphoria might just go out on an, um, high note.
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Jan 10, 2022
Season 2 Review:
"Euphoria" ultimately leans into its best and worst impulses in Season 2: It's grating, but intoxicating; implausible but grounded; severe but deeply emotional whenever it cedes the spotlight to Rue and Jules. And like the show's glitter-covered miscreants, we just can't help but keep chasing that high.
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Jan 10, 2022
Season 2 Review:
Euphoria Season 2 is good, but not quite great. ... Without seeing the final pieces of the overall puzzle, it’s impossible to say if Euphoria Season 2 manages to succeed as a whole. What we have seen is as masterful as it is messy. Euphoria remains an imperfect gem that works best as a showcase for the next generation of towering acting talents.
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ColliderJun 17, 2019
IndieWireJun 4, 2019
Season 1 Review:
Despite Levinson’s clear command over his storytelling aesthetic, Zendaya’s strong turn, and a rich authenticity driving each scene, viewers shouldn’t expect to enjoy the series, which is ultimately its biggest downfall. ... As it stands, the severe darkness dulls the impact beyond blunt force trauma. There’s a connection to be made with Rue and her journey, but joy seems too far out of reach.
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Jun 13, 2019
Season 1 Review:
The success of Euphoria’s teen drama ultimately depends on which teen it focuses on at any given moment. With Rue and Jules at the center, you feel the exhilaration of their friendship as much as a real concern for their growing troubles. But with its less fully developed characters, the series can feel like little more than a lurid performance of teenage pain.
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Apr 8, 2026
Season 3 Review:
“Euphoria” is never not entertaining. Over the years, Levinson has proven capable of crafting an engaging spectacle in his sleep. (Even “The Idol,” his disastrous collaboration with The Weeknd, demanded attention, if not approval.) There’s just a disjointedness to the various elements of Season 3 that this new incarnation of “Euphoria” has yet to overcome.
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Jan 10, 2022
Season 2 Review:
The second season still prods at taboo, but it inevitably does so with less of the special surprise of Season 1. In anticipation of that diminished shock, the writers attempt to find other avenues of discovery, turning away slightly from hard-nosed depravity in search of humanity. They find it, here and there, but there is something shaggy about the process.
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Jan 10, 2022
Season 2 Review:
Levinson’s capable of making that ever-so-slightly comic and relaxed version of the show whenever he wants to. He just doesn’t seem interested in it. ... Euphoria is great enough often enough to excuse at least some of its bad behavior — even if the show also takes after Cassie, who admits at one point, “I keep making mistakes and not learning from them.”
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Jun 19, 2019
Season 1 Review:
In its best moments, it’s a thoughtful, open-hearted story about teenagers trying to navigate life as the first fully-online generation, test subjects in an unfettered landscape of dick pics, adult predators, and synthetic hallucinogens. But it’s also the kind of drama so relentlessly provocative—images of erect penises crop up with the persistence and frequency of weeds in springtime—that it prompts a question: Who is this supposed to be for?
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Jun 14, 2019
Season 1 Review:
Beautifully shot, artfully composed, nevertheless unsettling and needlessly cruel. To really get the show, one must shed any notion that a teenager can be happy or satisfied — even in moments of chemical or sexual ecstasy. The show defies any notion that stories are something that build toward a moral or a theme or even a central idea. ... The narrative never coheres because it’s not really supposed to. Alluring yes, but far from great television.
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Jun 14, 2019
Season 1 Review:
It succeeds at sucking the viewer into its vibe and at building some genuine suspense about how certain story lines will play out. Zendaya is also exceptional as Rue, the glue that holds this sprawling ensemble piece together. But I can’t say for certain that I fully like it, either, because it’s gratuitous for reasons that don’t always seem necessary.
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Uncle BarkyJun 13, 2019
Season 1 Review:
The performances, particularly by Zendaya, Schaefer and Ferreira -- are not the problem. But getting “real” doesn’t have to mean diving head first into a cesspool of drugs, profanity, promiscuity and a borderline indifference to it all. That’s where Euphoria so far fails not only itself, but the many impressionable youth that likely will be the series’ core audience.
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Jun 13, 2019
Season 1 Review:
It’s a credit to both actors [Zendaya and Hunter Schafer] that the characters’ relationship feels so pure; I only wish we got less of diffident Rue’s solitary wanderings and more of the girls together. ... Though its heroine is informed by Levinson’s youth, Euphoria’s nihilism feels as contrived as a Burger King ad.
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LooperApr 13, 2026
Season 3 Review:
Season 3 of "Euphoria" is at its best as a pulpy, cartoonish approximation of the way early adulthood is an endless maze of coveting the seemingly enviable lives of your peers, unable to see through the strained charades they perform. .... But where the show used to seem too mature and provocative for a soap opera about teenagers, it now feels much too childish for a crime drama about adults. Time will tell if Levinson is able to strike a better balance with the remaining episodes, but from what we've seen so far, it doesn't feel particularly likely.
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RogerEbert.comApr 8, 2026
Season 3 Review:
Only time will tell if Levinson and company can turn what is essentially just the setup for the season into a payoff that feels deeper and more focused. Or if it will be content to reflect the uncertainty of its characters through storytelling that can feel maddeningly uncertain itself.
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Jan 11, 2022
Season 2 Review:
Despite Zendaya's attention-getting, award-winning presence, the HBO series remains so unrelentingly bleak and nihilistic that it's overly defined by how far series creator Sam Levinson will push standards in terms of nudity, sex and drug use. (Answer: Pretty far indeed.)
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Jun 17, 2019
Season 1 Review:
Rue and Jules’s relationship is the jewel of “Euphoria.” I’ll keep watching because I desperately want to protect them. Otherwise, the show so far (I’ve seen four episodes) is a highly self-conscious study of ennui, overfull with fancy camera tricks and thousand-dollar designer getups.
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Jun 14, 2019
Season 1 Review:
The results sometimes engaging, often frustrating. ... He oscillates distractingly among tones and styles, jumping between dark-comic satire and earnest melodrama. The juggling of plot lines results in scenes continually being cut off before they develop momentum. It’s too bad, because scene by scene, piece by piece, there are things to like.
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Jun 11, 2019
Season 1 Review:
Because "Euphoria" is so shrewdly conceived, and often so visually and sonically striking, it's easy to overlook the fact that there's no organizing principle. Characters are introduced, then dropped. Scenes begin, then meander, then end. Segues, at least here, are for suckers. You have entered the mind of a teenager.
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Apr 13, 2026
Season 3 Review:
You’d think that these events would have prompted some serious introspection on the part of the characters, but as we revisit them in the first few episodes of Season 3, it’s clear everyone has reverted to their factory settings. The difference is that, as they fan out on separate quests, each storyline comes slathered in the tropes of its own familiar genre.
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Apr 8, 2026
Season 3 Review:
He has a stacked cast perfectly capable of taking these characters, battle scars and all, to the next level. But based on the three episodes of eight provided for review, it looks like he’s squandering the stars that aligned their busy schedules for this on repurposed old habits from the past.
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The GuardianJan 10, 2022
Jun 14, 2019
Season 1 Review:
Euphoria has all the elements of a juicy teen soap, but the high school antics are curdled into their most sickening formulations, the fun sanded off till the skin is raw. Everywhere you look is only sadness and debasement. Euphoria has plenty of antecedents, other teen incitements that push a frenzied kind of emptiness—Kids, Skins, Less Than Zero—but there’s an especial dullness to Euphoria’s provocation.
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