Sam Levinson Explains the Shocking Death in Euphoria Season 3

In the penultimate episode of Euphoria season 3, creator Sam Levinson delivers one of the show’s most punishing and phobia-heavy deaths yet, as Jacob Elordi’s Nate Jacobs is killed in a sequence built around buried-alive terror, a venomous rattlesnake, and a final exhumation that turns the moment into outright horror. Levinson says the goal was not simply to give viewers the “justice” or “karma” they may have wanted for Nate, but to make that payoff so unsettling that audiences would question whether they really wanted it at all. Throughout the season, Levinson has complicated Nate’s portrayal by briefly emphasizing his humanity, only to send him into a grim end that fits the character’s long history of violence, control, and cruelty.

The story was explored in an Esquire visit to the Warner Bros. lot, where Levinson and his wife and producing partner Ashley Levinson were finishing postproduction on the episode alongside editor Julio C. Perez IV. The trio worked through sound-mixing details, including how much rattle to give the snake, how the coffin should sound, and how to make the final death sequence feel as horrifying as possible. Perez, known for his taste in music and subculture, helped shape the episode’s tone with a style Levinson says fits the show’s interest in the fringes of mainstream culture and the dangerous energy of underground scenes.

Levinson says the season’s broader themes are rooted in faith, family, and a search for meaning beyond social media narcissism. Ashley Levinson described season 3 as unusually religious, while Sam Levinson said he wanted to explore belief in something greater than oneself as a counterweight to modern disconnection. That spiritual undercurrent contrasts sharply with the show’s violence, corruption, and emotional instability, especially in Nate’s storyline. As the character faces debt, moral hypocrisy, and escalating danger, his fate becomes the show’s most nightmarish culmination of consequences.

Levinson also explained that the snake death evolved from an earlier idea in which Nate would simply suffocate or die from heat while buried alive. The rattlesnake arrived later, inspired by a sudden image Levinson had while driving to work in Los Angeles. He imagined a snake drawn toward the air pipe leading into the coffin, creating a claustrophobic death scene that would merge Western imagery, grindhouse horror, and psychological punishment. That frontier sensibility shaped the season’s broader visual language, which Levinson said was influenced by classic Western filmmakers such as Sergio Leone, Howard Hawks, John Ford, and Don Siegel.

The episode also includes dark comic beats, including an OnlyFans scene involving Sydney Sweeney’s Cassie and a prank reference to Levinson’s name that became part of the joke during editing. But the prevailing tone is shock and dread. As the sequence ends, Nate’s bloated, decaying body is revealed after being dug up, and the show shifts fully into horror. Levinson says the final episode of the season is coming soon and warns that viewers who do not watch live may be spoiled quickly.