Warning: Spoilers ahead! Do not proceed unless you’ve watched “Euphoria’s” seventh episode of Season 3.
“Euphoria” catapulted Jacob Elordi, Sydney Sweeney and Zendaya into their current status as A-listers, and now, one has been axed from the show.
Season 3 killed Elordi’s controversial character, Nate Jacobs.
He was buried alive in a coffin, with a pipe leading to the surface so that he could breathe. A rattlesnake slithered down the pipe and bit him.
He had been placed there by Naz (Jack Topalian), the gangster he owes about a million dollars to.
Naz’s plan was to leave Nate down there (with a pipe to breathe) for 72 hours while his wife, Cassie (Sweeney) could get the money together.
Unfortunately for Nate, before 72 hours was up, a snake got him. Naz also didn’t make it out alive, as he was fatally shot by Season 3’s other gangster, Alamo (Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje). Cassie and Maddy (Alexa Demie) scrambled to get the money together as Nate got dug up, but they got a nasty surprise, as they were met with his dead body.
In the “inside the episode” segment at the end, Elordi said in his post-mortem interview, “It was a cool way to go, Nate is somebody who’s made so many mistakes and so many dark choices.”
The actor called it a “bittersweet thing,” adding that the show has been a “massive” part of “not just my career, but my life,” and said that he’s “proud” to have been part of it.
First premiering in 2019, the Sam Levinson-created drama initially followed its characters in high school. Elordi, Zendaya and Sweeney were lesser known at the time.
“Euphoria changed my life,” Elordi, 28, told Variety in 2023.
“Saltburn” was the Australian star’s big-screen breakout that same year. Per Vogue Australia, his “Wuthering Heights” co-star Margot Robbie (who produced “Saltburn”) suggested him for the role at the time after watching him in “Euphoria.”
The “Frankenstein” star told GQ UK in 2023 that before landing on the HBO show, “I wasn’t booking jobs. I think I had – I don’t know, $400 or $800 left in my bank account – and ‘Euphoria’ was my last audition before I went home for a little while to make some money and recuperate.”
In the first two seasons, Nate was the show’s villain. He was a high school jock with anger issues – he manipulated, threatened and blackmailed everyone around him, choked his then-girlfriend, Maddy (Alexa Demi), and struck up a relationship with her best friend, Cassie (Sweeney).
Nate’s issues stemmed from finding his father Cal’s (Eric Dane) sex tapes at a young age.
In Season 3, which is set five years after high school, Nate had a dramatically different personality.
His rage issues inexplicably seemed vanished, his demeanor was softer and nicer and he appeared to genuinely love Cassie (instead of using her, like he was in Season 2).
Instead of being menacing, he did a goofy dance at his wedding. After he didn’t get his way in front of a board of bureucrats, rather than blackmail or threaten them, he just pathetically cried and begged.
Outraged fans criticized “Euphoria” for Nate’s inexplicable personality change and slammed it for giving the character a “lobotomy.”
Season 3 saw Nate take over his dad’s construction business, but he ran into issues when he had to stop his build because of an endangered flower – the white fritillary.
The show also revealed that he conned people into giving him money for his construction projects, including the gangster Naz.
In the third episode of Season 3, when Nate didn’t pay Naz the half a million dollars he owed him, Naz interrupted Nate and Cassie’s wedding and had him brutally beaten on his wedding night. It all culminated in Naz cutting off Nate’s toe. However, Nate later got it sewn back on.
Topalian exclusively told Page Six that Elordi did most of his own stunts during the scene where Naz’s henchmen threw Nate around.
“That’s [Elordi] really doing the struggling and the fighting and the falling and all of that,” he told us.
He called Elordi “committed,” “giving,” and “prepared,” but “between scenes, he’s back to being Jacob.”
“Obviously, he gets back into character really quickly,” he went on. “But once [the director calls ‘cut’] even though he’s been beaten and abused, he’s still having a lot of fun. He’s still cracking jokes and doing things like that.”
Elordi told Entertainment Weekly in November that his acting process was different in Season 3. He noted that he likes to “obsess over” his work, and take the time to prepare by going through “every element and construct it and put it together.”
The booked and busy actor – who was in “Frankenstein” and “Wuthering Heights” back to back – noted that he had “no time” to prepare for Season 3.
“And I didn’t have scripts in any kind of full sense. I sort of just had creative conversations with Sam, so I had no choice.”
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