Sam Levinson knew Nate had it coming—but Euphoria fans did too.
After Jacob Elordi’s Nate Jacobs was killed off in the penultimate episode of the show’s third and final season, the series creator revealed why he opted to make the character’s death so gruesome.
“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 told Esquire in an interview published May 24. “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?”
And Levinson certainly struck the correct cords in Nate’s terrifying exit. After spending the entire season narrowly avoiding death by the hands of loan shark Naz (Jack Topalian), who had cut off one of Nate’s fingers and toes, his debts finally caught up to him.
As a final warning, Naz buried Nate alive for what was supposed to be 72 hours, as Cassie (Sydney Sweeney) attempted to strap together the money to release him. But while Nate’s wife was successful in paying back his $1 million debt, Nate died before he could be rescued after being bitten by a rattlesnake.
For Levinson, the death had to be particularly uncomfortable to make the audience contest with their real feelings toward Nate as a character.
HBO“It’s like, ‘Oh, you wanted him to get his comeuppance…? Okay,” Levinson added to the outlet. “That feeling of complicity with the audience is always an interesting note to play inside of this sort of larger structure. You end up going, ‘Oh God, I don’t know. Should he have had it better? Did he deserve it?’”
As Levinson put it, “Those kinds of questions are always exciting to pose to the audience.”
Elordi, meanwhile, felt that his character’s demise was a “cool way” to exit the series—which is set to end after season three concludes May 31.
“Nate is someone who has made so many mistakes and made so many dark choices,” Elordi reasoned in a talk back at the end of the episode. “It’s cool to see it all come to what it’s come to.”
