Euphoria’s “Horrific” OG Character Death Broken Down By Sam Levinson

Warning: Spoilers ahead for Euphoria season 3, episode 7.Euphoria‘s latest episode has sent shock waves around the world.

HBO’s controversial and R-rated series Euphoria is finally reaching its conclusion after seven years, and the final season certainly isn’t holding back. The season 3 premiere amassed 8.5 million viewers in its first three days of release, as well as global viewership surpassing 20 million within days of its return. The controversies have certainly been a topic of conversation as people come back every week to see the carnage.

In season 3, episode 7 of Euphoria, a shocking death becomes the forefront of the episode as an original character, Nate Jacobs (played by Jacob Elordi), is killed. His death was both shocking and heartbreaking, and also karmic justice for his past mistakes. However, the manner in which he died sparked a lot of conversation. Creator Sam Levinson broke down the gruesome and “horrific” death in an interview with Esquire:

“There’s this kind of funny thing where I know what the audience wants in terms of justice or karma, and with that in mind, 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?
It’s like, ‘Oh, you wanted him to get his comeuppance…? Okay. That feeling of complicity with the audience is always an interesting note to play inside of this sort of larger structure. You end up going, ‘Oh God, I don’t know. Should he have had it better? Did he deserve it?’ Those kinds of questions are always exciting to pose to the audience.”

Nate has certainly been facing some form of justice throughout season 3 as he had relationship struggles with his new wife, Cassie Howard (played by Sydney Sweeney), and then faced the consequences of dealing with a loan shark by having him beaten nearly to death with a finger and toe cut off.

However, his actual death was far more sinister and involved Elordi’s character being buried alive with just a small air vent to be held as ransom until he could pay his debts. It turns out the air vent was actually his undoing, and a rattlesnake found its way into the air vent, biting Nate, and leading to his shocking death. Cassie and his ex-girlfriend Maddie (played by Alexa Demie) found Nate’s body left in a gruesome state.

According to Levinson, the animal wranglers gave a stern warning ahead of production: “When we were shooting with the rattlesnakes out in Lancaster, they said, ‘If you get bitten by a rattlesnake, you have about an hour before you die. And unfortunately, the nearest hospital’s an hour and a half away,’ ‘So … don’t get bitten by our rattlesnake.’”

Levinson stated that Elordi’s character was always destined for such a fate due to his toxicity, anger, violence, deplorable, and irredeemable nature shown during seasons 1 and 2. Nate Jacobs was shown to have some flashes of humanity throughout season 3 to muddy the waters, which Levinson did intentionally to throw the audience off and make them question if he even deserved such a fate. The creator used the time jump from high school to adulthood to take away “the safety net” from his deeply flawed characters.

Euphoria is available to watch on HBO.