Every Season Of Euphoria — And The Special Episodes — Ranked

This post contains spoilers for the series finale of "Euphoria" and everything that came before it. Proceed accordingly.

"Euphoria" ended its three-season run Sunday with a supersized episode that turned out to be the series' swan song. And now that the disturbing HBO drama is done for good, it's time to figure out which season was its strongest. 

If you happened to miss Sunday's finale, here's a quick catch-up. Rue (played by Zendaya) accidentally overdosed on fentanyl and died. Ali (Colman Domingo) avenged her death by bringing a gun to the Silver Slipper and eliminating Alamo (Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje), who'd handed her the pills. Cassie and Maddy planned an entrepreneurial future in the aftermath of Nate's death. Jules painted and was sad. (Read a full recap of the episode here, and then hear what one of the episode's players had to say about his part in the affair.)

Now that we're all on the same page, let's get to ranking! Below, we give careful consideration to all three seasons — and a pair of between-season specials — of "Euphoria" in order to determine which comes out on top.

After waiting four years between seasons, we hoped that the time-jumped Season 3 would be a masterpiece of storytelling that took our beloved (but deeply messed-up) characters from adolescence into young adulthood. Instead, we got a wildly uneven, often preachy rumination on culpability in the drug trade, sex work as social media, and the Bible. The few transcendent moments (like Rue's woebegone phone call in the church and Ali's heartbroken speech at the Narcotics Anonymous meeting) had to fight for air against sequences both silly (Cassie's OnlyFans photo shoots) and superfluous (why did we have to watch Nate stomp those flowers again?) Don't even get us started on what Jules was doing — or should we say, how infrequently she was seen— all season. The show worked best when it focused on Rue and how her addiction affected everyone in her orbit. Season 3 lost the plot by relegating her to comic relief in the Alamo/Laurie crime plot, then using her death as justification for Ali's violent vengeance. 

Was it difficult to suspend disbelief when it came to a lot of what transpired in "Euphoria" Season 2? Yes. Once we were able to put that aside, was it a wildly enjoyable ride? Also yes. The drama's sophomore run gave us some really good stuff, including a deepening of Fezco's character, a tragic rumination on how Cal came to be the way he was, and Zendaya's tour de force performance in the episode where Rue goes through heroin withdrawal and runs away en route to rehab. But the season also gave us Elliot (Dominic Fike), who created even more friction between Rue and Jules, and rich mom Samantha (Minka Kelly), who... honestly, we can't remember a single thing Samantha did. Still, the season ended with Lexi's amazeballs life-imitates-art-imitates-life school play, the chaos of which we can overlook given the iconic Maddy reaction it caused: "Wait, is this play about US?"

Between Seasons 1 and 2, which were delayed in part because of the COVID-19 pandemic, HBO released two standalone "Euphoria" specials. The second centered on Jules; Hunter Schafer co-wrote the episode with series creator Sam Levinson, and she co-produced the episode, too. Jules' hour was framed by a visit to her therapist, which allowed us a peek at the trans character's deeper thoughts about Rue, addiction, family, and desire. "F**k Anyone Who's Not a Sea Blob" was notable for Schafer's spare and beautiful performance, and its examination of Jules' painful early childhood in particular really made us wish the show had spent a little more time with her character over the years. 

When it premiered in 2019, no one really knew what to expect from "Euphoria," an American adaptation of a dark Israeli drama about teens. "Boldly provocative and shockingly explicit, the new drama series offers an unflinching portrait of teen life today that's teeming with graphic sex, drug use, and violence," TVLine's Dave Nemetz wrote in his pre-premiere review. The drama looked and sounded so different from everything else out there at the time — and its teen characters were up to so many worrisome activities — that it was impossible to pull your eyeballs away. But amid all of the parental-agita-inducing behaviors that filled each hour, Zendaya's deeply hurt Rue and Hunter Schafer's deeply wary Jules engaged in a sweet friendship — and then romance — that became a delicate bloom amid the ever-encroaching toxicity that was high school life. That simple story, paired with the shock-inducing antics of their peers, proved an intoxicating mixture, indeed: We were hooked.

There's a reason Zendaya won two Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Emmys during her run on "Euphoria," and never more was that talent on display than in the between-seasons special episode, "Trouble Don't Last Always." The holiday special played out as Rue met her sober sponsor, Ali (Colman Domingo) at a diner on Christmas Eve; once he got her to drop the emotional jazz hands she uses to distract, she admitted that she didn't plan to be alive much longer. Stripped-down and stunning, the hour was notable in how it never backed away from the sad reality of Rue's existence: She used drugs to cope, but those drugs weren't helping much anymore, and she couldn't see a way out. Plus, she kinda thought she didn't deserve redemption, given how she'd hurt the people she loved. Zendaya and Domingo, who are always on fire opposite each other in the series, were never better than they were in that restaurant booth. And the script's resolute refusal to give the audience a glimmer of hope at the end — even in a Christmas special, for goodness' sake! — makes the hour both nearly perfect in its execution and heartbreaking in hindsight, given how Rue's story ultimately ended.

Now it's your turn. How would you rank the seasons and specials of "Euphoria"? Hit the comments with your thoughts!