Warning: Spoilers ahead! Do not proceed unless you’ve watched “Euphoria’s” seventh episode of Season 3.
Sam Levinson gave the “Euphoria” audience “what they want[ed]” when he killed off Jacob Elordi’s character, Nate Jacobs, in a “horrific” scene Sunday night.
After Season 3’s penultimate episode aired over the weekend, the showrunner spoke to “Esquire” about pressure from viewers to deliver “justice or karma.”
The filmmaker, 41, recalled asking himself, “How can I give [fans] 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?
“It’s like, ‘Oh, you wanted him to get his comeuppance…? OK,’” Levinson told the outlet while laughing. “That feeling of complicity with the audience is always an interesting note to play inside of this sort of larger structure.”
Jacobs, notably, died in episode 7 by being buried alive — and bit by a rattlesnake.
His body is later exhumed by a backhoe.
Levinson hopes audience members are left with “exciting” questions, like, “Oh God, I don’t know. Should he have had it better? Did he deserve it?”
The director initially wanted Jacobs to die a different way, he revealed to the outlet.
“II always loved the movie ‘The Candy Snatchers’ where the girl gets buried alive with a pipe as an air hole. So I had imagined that Nate would get buried alive,” he said — but then he “just had this image of a rattlesnake coming towards this pipe.”
Levinson wanted Jacobs to be “banging” while the snake “sensed the movement in the ground.”
At the time, the Emmy nominee was “listening to Otis Redding” with “the windows down” while “driving to Warner Brothers” on “one of those gorgeous L.A. days where it was perfect weather.”
He noted, “It’s sort of a funny moment where you realize that not all dark scenes come from a dark place.”
Elordi, in an HBO interview that aired after the show, dubbed his death scene a “cool way to go.”
The 28-year-old, who has been apart of the series since “Euphoria” premiered in 2019, added, “Nate was someone who has made so many mistakes and made so many dark choices. It’s cool to see it all come to what it’s come to.”
The actor, 28, described the scene as a “peaceful” one to film — and the boa constrictor [with] a fake rattle on the end of it” a “cute” and “cuddly” co-star.
The Season 3 “Euphoria” finale premieres Sunday, March 31, on HBO at 9 p.m. ET.
