There has been a lot of criticism regarding Euphoria suddenly going all wild west. Season 3 premiered recently, and it had everyone wondering why the show’s vibe went Neo-Western, and Sam Levinson broke down the process and the vision behind it.
Sam Levinson on Euphoria S3’s opening scene
Sam Levinson and Marcell Rev, the showrunners behind HBO’s Euphoria, spoke to Variety about Season 3’s opening scene.
“When we started location scouting and talking to our consultants from the Drug Enforcement Administration, we visited their headquarters in Los Angeles, and on the wall, I saw a picture of a jeep stuck on top of a border wall. And I said, “What happened here?” You know, some idiot tried to drive a car over the border filled with stuff. And I thought that feels like the kind of dumb thing Rue would try to do.”
Right off the bat, the first episode opened with Rue escaping the border and entering Chihuahua. The sequence itself has a lot of tension and builds up with her character trying to make it out alive of the border crossing along with the jeep.
Unfortunately, Rue leaves the jeep behind and somehow ends up alive despite the situation she was in. While Zendaya isn’t well-versed in parkour, the actress has performed many of her stunts. Even for this particular sequence, they made sure it was safely done.
We see an inverted V-shaped structure that resembles a border wall. Levinson himself admitted that the process of shooting often would involve logistics, and therefore, they decided to make the set themselves. To make a 200 ft design like that is no cakewalk. The crew also did the entire process and shot the scene under a scorching sun, but that’s not it.
As rightly pointed out by Levinson, the opening scene of Rue struggling to break free from that tangent mirrors her life in general. She tries to make ends meet, and in Season 3, this theme follows through as she plans on reinventing her life.
Rue’s Neo-West Arc has more to do with her escapism, her inner turmoil, and her need to cling to the glimmer of life. Season 3 is about that very hope, which she finds through Alamo Brown.
Euphoria Season 3 is available for streaming on HBO Max.
