The long-awaited third season of Sam Levinson‘s Euphoria opened on a solemn note as an in memoriam card flashed on screen dedicated to late star Eric Dane. The remembrance, which featured the Grey’s Anatomy alum’s picture and his birth dates, is similar to the one HBO Max previously posted for late actor Angus Cloud.
At the end of the premiere episode, just after the credits, were dedicated tributes to Dane, Cloud and producer Kevin Turen. (See images below.)
In presenting the first episode of the season at the TCL Chinese Theatre last week, the creator commemorated “those who we lost.”
“Some people ask why it took so long between seasons two and three,” he said. “There were obvious factors — the strikes, trying to make a schedule work with our very in-demand cast, but the real time was in trying to figure out how to find a way to pay respect to those who we lost.”
Cloud, who portrayed Fezco in the first two seasons of Euphoria, died in 2023 from “acute intoxication” at the age of 25 in Oakland, Calif. Turen unexpectedly died a month afterward, at the age of 44. Dane was able to reprise his role in the third season of the HBO drama before his death in February; the actor died of of respiratory failure with ALS as a contributing cause.
While Cal (Dane), Nate’s (Jacob Elordi) father, doesn’t appear in the season premiere, he will be featured later on. Though it’s unclear how the show will address the character’s departure, Levinson told Extra that he adjusted his writing in real time to factor in Dane’s health. “He showed up and I could tell he had a slight slur in his voice and he told me that. I said, ‘Don’t worry. We’ll just put, like, five beer bottles in front of you and you’ve been drinking all night.’ He was like, ‘Perfect, perfect.’ And his character, it was such a gift.”
Contrastingly, Season 3 includes a scene in which Rue (Zendaya) visits her erstwhile high school friend Lexi (Maude Apatow) in Los Angeles, where she now works as an assistant to a famed TV executive (Sharon Stone); while there, she urges Lexi to call Fez, with whom it seemed she would embark on a romance last season. In the show’s canon, Fez is serving 30 years in prison but still misses Lexi, despite not having been in contact for years.
Of the decision to conclude Fez’s journey that way, Levinson told Entertainment Weekly: “I fought very hard to keep him clean when he was alive, and losing him was really tough,” adding, “I felt like if I couldn’t keep him alive in life, then, I could in the show.”
