Euphoria Season 3: [Spoiler]'s Death Explained By Creator Sam Levinson
"Euphoria" Season 3, Episode 7's shocking and gruesome character death has viewers talking ahead of the HBO show's finale.
In "Rain or Shine," Nate Jacobs (Jacob Elordi) meets a grisly end after Naz (Jack Topalian) kidnaps him and buries him alive in a coffin. A horrifying twist sees a venomous snake slither through the air pipe and sink its fangs into Nate's neck. During a recent interview with Esquire, "Euphoria" creator Sam Levinson broke down his decision to give one of his most toxic characters such a revolting death.
"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?'" Levinson said. "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?"
How Sam Levinson came up with Nate's death scene
From his days as a high school football player to his failed stint as a real estate developer, Nate carried himself with an ill temper and an inflated ego. Regardless of whether audiences believe Nate had it coming, Sam Levinson used his demise to raise the stakes of the harsh world the characters of "Euphoria" navigate in Season 3.
"It was what was exciting about the characters being out of high school," Levinson told Esquire. "They're in the real world and the consequences are real. There's no safety net. I like this Wild West, frontier aspect to it where you can make something of yourself, but you're going to have to live with the consequences."
As for how he devised Nate's uniquely disturbing death, Levinson described the moment he knew a snake was the perfect killer while driving through Los Angeles one day. "The windows are down and we're driving to Warner Brothers and I'm looking out the window," he remembered. "I just had this image of a rattlesnake coming towards this pipe. He's banging and the snake can sense the movement in the ground. And I thought, 'What if the snake goes into the pipe and then he's stuck inside the coffin with this rattlesnake?'"