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IN THE FIRST two seasons of Euphoria, there weren’t many characters more detestable than Jacob Elordi’s brooding, brawny, violent Nate Jacobs. While on the surface Nate was the typical popular jock—a football player from an All-American family—the show would often pull the curtain back to reveal something much darker. Nate spent most of his time on screen causing pure chaos and throwing parties, coming together like some hybrid of Steve Stifler from American Pie and The Joker.
Nate was an absolute nightmare; at any moment, he could show up and beat someone within an inch of their life. He clearly had very little moral scale outside of what benefited him in any given moment, and he wasn’t afraid to use his brute strength to achieve it. Euphoria succeeded with this vastly unlikable character because we saw the violence he was capable of, not only with his physical strength, but with his twisted, one-step-ahead mind as well. In season 1, he embarked on an absurdly long catfish con to emotionally manipulate Jules (Hunter Schafer), make her feel bad about herself, and protect his family’s reputation after he found out his father (Eric Dane) was having sex with her. In season 2, he conducted a similar Machiavellian plan to then have his father arrested for his sex crimes.
Nate was certainly not someone anyone watching Euphoria would want to spend any real-life time around. But he was a character with a specific purpose, and we very clearly saw that there were no limits to what he could do, and what he was capable of.
In 2019 and 2022, when season 1 and 2 of Euphoria were respectively released, this was a great avatar for a kind of unbridled rage that has been commonly associated with Gen Z men. Repressed, angry, and without much of an idea what to do with that energy, Nate put a face on something that in the real world isn’t quite so easy to define or put into a box. Nate wasn’t just an antagonist for the show, but a mirror to something in society that had been growing increasingly visible.
So, reflecting on all that a question becomes clear: Why is Nate so soft in season 3?
HBO
Euphoria’s third season pushes events five years into the future, with Nate and Cassie (Sydney Sweeney) now living in creator Sam Levinson’s world of heightened, tacky modern suburban malaise (Understanding the quasi-absurdity of this setting is the key to enjoying the season; nothing here is actively going for 100% realism). Nate has taken over his father’s construction business, hoping to revive it from the reputational hole it’s been left in. As a result, Nate runs in and out of scenes talking about “making deals” (of which sort, we never really understand), and, in general, it seems, has mellowed out. There’s no hint of the anger, violence, or menace that we previously understood Nate to be capable of. Instead, Nate spends most of his time stressed out about money and frustrated with Cassie’s ambitions.
Those ambitions play a key role. Cassie wants to at least gain internet stardom (and some extra cash to pay for her wedding flowers of choice) on OnlyFans, and, at most (depending on how much her old frenemy Maddy (Alexa Demie) will help her) legitimate Hollywood fame. Nate, clearly desperate to keep up appearances for the life he believes a modern man should have—with his grown-up job, big suburban house, and upcoming fancy wedding—does not approve. But he eventually folds with some reservations.
Attempting to control Cassie’s side hustle is the only glimpse Euphoria gives of the old Nate. And we’re simply meant to wonder why he’s changed. Perhaps Nate is tired of his old life, tired from long days working and trying to make money and make a living, tired of doing this and that and having to still come home and be his internal vision of what he needs to be as the Man of the House for his wife-to-be and the surely-nosy suburban neighbors. It’s not easy to be an adult, and it certainly wouldn’t be easy to add “continue being an evil genius” on top of that. Time comes for all of us. Maybe at some point in the last five years, he just had to let it go.
There’s also the fact that Elordi has become a massive star in the time since Euphoria last aired. He’s appeared in movies like Saltburn and Priscilla and just earned his first Oscar nomination for playing The Monster in Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein. He’s one of Hollywood’s most heralded leading men (next appearing in Ridley Scott’s The Dog Stars), a favorite of men and women alike for what he brings to characters (Even his turn in Wuthering Heights earlier this year was polarizing, but, for me, he brought a dark sensuality to the role that very few others could).
Is it possible that someone on the “Hollywood Next Great Leading Man” track wouldn’t want to be seen as such a dark, despicable character? After all, Elordi has recently been mentioned as a contender to be the next James Bond. Maybe. But that’s probably not the case with Euphoria and Nate’s evolution. One of Elordi’s upcoming projects is a film adaptation of Cormac McCarthy’s novel Outer Dark, a tale of brutal violence and incest in the modern west. If he’s willing to take on material that dark and challenging, he’s not being put off by Euphoria.
HBO
So, then, Nate has simply evolved. Characters change, and this one has as well. But surely the old Nate could come out when the time calls, right?
Well, not so far. In the season’s jam-packed third episode, "The Ballad of Paladin,” Nate and Cassie’s wedding plays out normally enough to start, complete with a choreographed dance, Nate’s father giving a not-so-bad speech, and, of course, Cassie trying her best to hold back an ocean of tears (Sweeney is quite talented at what I’ll call a Mia Goth face). Their friends are there, their neighbors are there, and Nate’s investors (for what, exactly, is still not quite clear) are in the house too. The party is packed. But they’re also joined by an uninvited guest as well—his loan shark, Naz. When Naz grills Nate about throwing such a lavish party while still owing him money, it creates an awkward air in the room for everyone. The threat is real, but Naz leaves. We all know he’ll be back.
If Nate is anywhere near the person he was at the start of the show, you know this is eating at him. The Nate of season 1 would’ve been creating a Rube Goldberg scheme to get out of this. And maybe he was—but he’s pushing it down. Because a Modern Good Husband doesn’t do those things, not in Nate’s mind. And he just needs to keep pushing it down. Those bubbling feelings take literal form a bit later when Cassie, in the midst of her own meltdown, accidentally pops a champagne cork directly into his face. Nate of the past might have blown up. This Nate pushes it down.
Their fighting continues. Cassie is hysterical and upset. Nate isn’t who she thought he was. Nothing is perfect. Nothing is right. The day is ruined. Nate tries to calm her down. Rinse. Repeat. And, for a moment in their limo ride home, things seem to have settled in as “OK.”
That is, until they get home, and Naz is waiting for them. Naz has his goon absolutely demolish Nate, beating him within an inch of his life, up and down their foyer staircase in the background as Cassie weeps about her big day being ruined in the foreground.
Sweeney, sitting still on the ground in her wedding dress, crying hysterically, as her new husband is getting violently thrown up and down the stairs around behind her makes for a striking shot, and probably one of the best visuals of the year on television. But for as tremendous as it is in the moment, we still must wonder: What’s happened to Nate?
As Naz’s goon just keeps beating and beating and beating into Nate, he just keeps running away. He’s not fighting back. We could view this as a character moment: Nate knows, consciously or subconsciously, that he kind of deserves this. He’s inflicted so much pain on others and this is the universe’s way of bringing things back around. Or, you know, if he fights back too much he’ll just get murdered.
What we see is visceral. Nate gets beaten. He begs for it to stop, and it doesn’t. And then the pliers come out. In a moment that certainly lets us know that this isn’t the same Euphoria that we started watching in 2019, Naz’s goon clips Nate’s pinky right off. The blood starts flowing. Cassie’s still crying. It’s a mess.
HBO
And so we’re left to wonder. Is seeing Nate get what he deserves, and lying down as it happens, the intent? Even when Nate needs to be his old self, he can’t do it. Life is draining. Has the need to be a good old husband in suburbia taken all of his violent edge?
Fortunately, this season is just beginning. And part of what does make Euphoria an entertaining show is that we truly cannot possibly imagine the directions in which things are going to go. Seriously. This very episode—which was mostly devoted to a wedding—opened with Rue (Zendaya) becoming an arms dealer. A reminder that the show started with her as a high school student whose significant problems were passing math and history class.
Maybe getting beaten to a pulp (and violently losing his pinky toe) is the spark that Nate needs to get his old edge back, like how a superhero loses his powers only to regain them in time to get a climax and save the day. It would make sense, in a sick and twisted way, if Euphoria’s version of that is Nate getting his mojo back and violently beating dudes to a pulp again. But this time, we’re on his side? Maybe? Not sure the show has done the work on this character to warrant that just yet, but we’re certainly not in favor of seeing people get their toes clipped off.
Euphoria only released its first three episodes to press, and that’s all that’s aired to date. Quite literally no one watching—viewers and critics alike—know where this is going to go in terms of Euphoria’s most prominent male character, and what it’s all trying to say by the end of the day.
Whichever way the show decides to take Nate from here—whether he becomes some sort of anti-hero or returns to his villainy—it’s clear that the show has set him down a whole new path of modern masculinity. As the season progresses, we’ll just have to see which one he winds up on.
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Evan is the culture editor for Men's Health, with bylines in The New York Times, MTV News, Brooklyn Magazine, and VICE. He loves weird movies, watches too much TV, and listens to music more often than he doesn't.