In the penultimate episode of Euphoria season three, which aired on Sunday night, the audience witnessed a brutal and tragic end for one of the series' main characters, Jacob Elordi's Nate Jacobs. After his wedding night was marred by violence and torture, including the loss of a finger and a toe, Nate was cruelly buried alive. However, his fate was sealed when a venomous rattlesnake slithered into the hole where he was buried and bit him. This devastating turn of events was a direct consequence of Nate's business dealings with Naz (Jack Topalian), which had left him deeply in debt.
Naz later confronted Cassie (Sydney Sweeney) and gave her 72 hours to pay off the debt that Nate owed him. To help free Nate, Alamo (Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje) killed Naz, but when the coffin that held Nate was unearthed, his lifeless body was revealed.
In an exclusive interview with Esquire, the creator of the hit HBO series, Sam Levinson, spoke about the decision to kill off Nate, a central figure in the show since its debut in 2019 who was known for his controlling and abusive nature. "There's a funny thing where I know what the audience wants in terms of justice or karma," Levinson said. "With that in mind, I always think, 'Well, how can I give it to them?'" He continued, "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?"
Levinson explained that he had planned for Nate's demise from the beginning of the season. Despite enduring grief, trauma, and violence throughout the first two seasons, Nate showed glimpses of humanity in season three due to Levinson "muddying the moral waters." This shift was a setup for what unfolded in episode seven, titled "Rain or Shine."
"It's like, 'Oh, you wanted him to get his comeuppance...?' It's an interesting note to play inside of this larger structure," Levinson said. "You end up going, 'Oh God, I don't know. Should he have had it better? Did he deserve it?' Those kinds of questions are always exciting to pose to the audience."
He continued, "It was what was exciting about the characters being out of high school. They're in the real world now, 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."
Levinson revealed that his original idea was for Nate to die from either suffocation or heat while buried alive. "I always loved the movie The Candy Snatchers where the girl gets buried alive with a pipe as an air hole," he said. "So I had imagined that Nate would get buried alive." However, he changed his mind about how to kill Nate one day while driving to work with his wife Ashley Levinson.
"It was one of those gorgeous L.A. days where it was perfect weather," Levinson recalled. "We were listening to Otis Redding and driving to Warner Brothers with the windows down. 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." He added, "What if the snake goes into the pipe and then he's stuck inside the coffin with this rattlesnake? It's sort of a funny moment where you realize that not all dark scenes come from a dark place."
Following the episode's premiere, Elordi shared his thoughts on filming inside the coffin and working with a real snake for the scene. "They had a boa constrictor that they put a fake rattler on the end of," he said in an HBO post-show segment. "The snakes were rattling, which is really alarming when you're locked in a box." But he called the snake "super cute" and said, "He was real cuddly, so he just saddled up next to me and it was nice." He added that the snake was "real sleepy" and had to be nudged to get him to come up.
Overall, Elordi was pleased with how his character was sent off. "Nate was someone who has made so many mistakes and made so many dark choices," he said. "It's cool to see it all come to what it's come to. This show is a massive part of not just my career but my life. It's been amazing, and I'm so proud to be a part of this."
The finale of Euphoria season three premieres on Sunday at 9 p.m. on HBO. Check out all of The Hollywood Reporter's coverage here.
