Euphoria 3. Sezon Eleştirileri: Dizi Beklentileri Karşılayamadı mı?

Hit US drama Euphoria has made its long-awaited return, with stars Zendaya, Sydney Sweeney and Jacob Elordi all back - but many critics say it doesn't live up to its previous heights.

The Guardian's review declared that season three, which has arrived four years after the last, "was absolutely not worth the wait", while the Telegraph said it "feels tired and dated".

Others were more positive, with the Times calling it "a dazzling (and stomach-churning) series", and the Independent saying this "generation-defining show paints a clear-eyed, unflattering portrait of modern America".

The show's depiction of sex, drugs and angst has always had shock value, and it has caused fresh controversy with a trailer for future episodes that shows Sweeney's character dressed as a baby in a sexualised pose.

In a short snippet in the trailer, Sweeney's character Cassie, who is now an OnlyFans content creator, is seen being filmed in curly pigtails with a dummy in her mouth and legs open.

"This isn't character development, this is fetish content. Disgusting," wrote one user on social media, while another commented: "This is just disturbing."

Only the first episode is available to viewers so far, in which Cassie is seen persuading fiancé Nate (played by Elordi) to allow her to post videos online to help pay for their wedding.

The Guardian's Hannah J Davies' two-star review said the HBO drama has become "a grubby, humourless work of torture porn that's obsessed with and repulsed by sex work".

Referring to Cassie, she said: "The way the show handles her cam girl ambitions, in particular, feels bafflingly dated, while storylines around sugar babies and kink feel simultaneously voyeuristic and judgy."

The characters first appeared in 2019 as high schoolers, and are now in their early twenties.

Zendaya won Emmys for best drama actress for both of the previous seasons, and her character Rue is now a drug mule in order to pay back a debt to a dealer.

Davies wrote that both Zendaya and Sweeney give excellent performances.

And creator Sam Levinson is "clearly trying to make a point about drugs – in particular synthetic opioids – ravaging the lives of ordinary Americans", she added.

"But did he have to make his characters' lives so horrifically bleak in order to do so?"

The Telegraph's Eleanor Halls also gave the show two stars, saying it "increasingly feels like the misogynistic fantasies of a creepy old man".

"Essentially, Levinson has trapped all of his female leads in the performance, or exploitation, of sex work, and the camera peers and leers at them with every shot," she wrote.

As with the first two seasons, he has written the best lines for Rue, "the only character he seems to care for", she said.

"Unlike Cassie, who has become such a caricature of an airhead sex kitten that you wonder if Levinson might actually be trolling America's pin-up Sweeney, Rue is endearing, funny, complicated and unpredictable."

However, as the season goes on, "even Rue can't quite make you care about this sorry group of amoral ghouls, who seem to loathe themselves as much as each other", Halls concluded.

'Breaking Bad meets Looney Tunes'

The New York Post's Lauren Sarner called the new season "an unhinged disaster" and "an off-the-rails roller coaster of insanity".

"Whether that's good or bad depends on if you want to see the biggest Gen-Z superstars - Zendaya, Jacob Elordi and Sweeney - in ludicrous situations that feel like Breaking Bad meets Looney Tunes," she said.

"It delivers that in spades. But if you want narrative coherence and character consistency, Season 3 leaves you wanting."

As for Sweeney's character, Sarner added: "If there's a loftier point to be made beyond the camera ogling her, it's nowhere to be seen."

Elsewhere, BBC Culture's Caryn James' two-star review said the show "has lost its zeitgeisty edge".

"Euphoria has become a series with very little to say, none of it very audacious or compelling," she wrote.

And Variety's Alison Herman said the show is "never not entertaining" but now "feels like entertaining but disjointed fan fiction".

Vulture's critic Roxana Hadadi said "so much of this early phase of Euphoria's return feels completely airless".

She wrote: "Moments that gesture at America's prevailing culture as a corrupt, hypocritical thing that trickles down to infect everyone are a fascinating glimpse into what might be Levinson's unfiltered thoughts on our collective psyche, but then he'll cut to another shot of a female character being joyfully objectified, and the sense of Euphoria offering something deeper, something more insightful, collapses."

'Captures the moment'

Among the more enthusiastic reviewers, the Independent's Nick Hilton awarded four stars and said: "These new episodes (the three made available to press, at least) feel true to their characters and an accurate continuation of the saga."

He added: "This is brassy, unsubtle filmmaking that captures the moment we're living in, where attention has been commoditised and only extremes of content – the naughtiest! the sexiest! the grossest! – get eyeballs."

The Times's Ben Dowell gave the show four stars: "This is Euphoria with a much wider canvas. Before, it was a slickly stylish Instagram-friendly tale of various teenagers from a middle-class suburb in Los Angeles doing irresponsible things. Now they are in their twenties and the terrifying expanse of adult life symbolised by the dusty desert lies ahead.

"While the stage is set for more heartbreak and danger, you also sense that this show has grown up along its ensemble."