'Euphoria' releases Season 3 photos with Zendaya, Sydney Sweeney, Jacob Elordi and others: See them

After a nearly four year wait, the new season of Euphoria is finally heading our way. HBO released photos for Season 3 on Friday, teasing the fates of some fan favorite characters.

Euphoria stars Zendaya as Rue, who, in the first two seasons of the series, struggles with substance abuse in the wake of her father’s death and narrates the drama of her high school friend group. And boy, is there drama.

In Season 2, Nate (Jacob Elordi) sleeps with Cassie (Sydney Sweeney), the best friend of his on-again, off-again girlfriend Maddy (Alex Demie), while simultaneously plotting revenge against his abusive father Cal (Eric Dane). Meanwhile, Rue tries to make her relationship with girlfriend Jules (Hunter Schafer) work while hiding her addiction, which has put Rue in the crosshairs of a dangerous drug dealer, Laurie (Martha Kelly).

At the end of Season 2, drug dealer Fezco (Angus Cloud) — who just struck up a sweet romance with Cassie’s younger sister Lexi (Maude Apatow) — watches as a SWAT team kills his younger brother Ashtray (Javon Walton) in a shootout.

Season 3 of Euphoria picks up after a five-year time jump, meaning the characters are now out of high school. At an HBO presentation earlier this month, creator Sam Levinson said it felt natural to set the season that far ahead, as it allows the characters to not only leave high school behind, but college as well.

“We basically pick up Rue south of the border in Mexico, in debt to Laurie, trying to come up with some very innovative ways to pay it off,” he said in a recent Variety article. “And then Cassie is living in the suburbs with Nate, they’re engaged and she’s very addicted to social media and envious of what appears to be the big lives that all of her high school classmates are living at this point in time.”

Levinson confirmed that the two will get married before the end of the season.

Levinson, who also created the series The Idol, teased the future of other cast members as well, saying that Jules is in art school and “nervous” about her career as a painter. Meanwhile, Maddy is working at a talent agency in Hollywood but has other “side hustles” going too. Lexi, Levinson said, gets hired as an assistant to a showrunner — a new character played by Sharon Stone.

The new photos hint at the characters’ adult futures without giving away too much. A photo of Rue shows her sitting alone in a church, while a second shows her in a truck. Jules is in an art studio. Nate is in what appears to be a suburban kitchen making hamburgers. Cassie is in front of a house, letting an ice cream cone melt in her hand.

Two people who appear to be together are Lexi and Maddy. Lexi seems to be on a film set, in which the people behind her are wearing gladiator costumes, with a pass that says “crew” around her neck. A very glam-looking Maddy is on the same set.

While Euphoria Season 3 will bring back these characters, not everyone from the first two seasons is returning to the show. Barbie Ferreira, who played Kat in the first two seasons, left the show, said that it felt like her character had no place to go. Storm Reid, who played Rue’s sister Gia, also won’t be back. And Cloud died of an accidental overdose in 2023.