Dust off your One Direction fanfic, because more Euphoria is heading to HBO, according to a press release from the network.
Though it’s still in the middle of its eight-episode freshman season, HBO has shared that a season 2 of Euphoria is on its way. The series, which hails from Assassination Nation helmer Sam Levinson and stars Zendaya and The Kissing Booth’s Jacob Elordi, is HBO’s first teen drama.
Euphoria tells the story of Rue Bennett (Zendaya), a teenager struggling with drug use who is fresh out of rehab and has zero intention of staying clean. Levinson based some of Rue’s story on his battle with mental health and addiction issues.
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"It's all cathartic," Levinson revealed to Refinery29 at the Euphoria press junket of the personal stories within the new series. "We’re all using our individual abilities as writers or actors or DPs or props to work our own shit out, our own traumas. We use our own traumas and wield them as weapons. That’s the beauty of storytelling, of making TV; it’s collaborative in a lot of ways."
Through Rue’s narration, the show explores other characters at her high school, including Elordi’s disturbed jock Nate and Rue’s brand-new best friend Jules (Hunter Schafer), who is trans.
The first season of Euphoria raised eyebrows for showcasing explicit scenes, including one moment in the pilot episode that showed 30+ naked young men in a locker room and another that involved an adult man (played by Eric Dane) having aggressive sex with an underage teenager (Schafer). Then there was that Harry Styles/Louis Tomlinson erotic fan fiction, which Kat (Barbie Ferreira) writes anonymously to much fanfare online: Tomlinson was not happy with the show animating sex between him and bandmate Styles.)
Shock value aside, many critics applauded Zendaya’s nuanced performance and the show's specificity of Gen Z angst. We'll likely get more of all that when the show returns for season 2.
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