Euphoria creator Sam Levinson breaks down 'horrific' character death ahead of season 3 finale | indy100

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*Warning - major spoilers ahead for Euphoria S3 episode 7*

The latest episode of Euphoria has us all shuddering and watching with gritted teeth as one of the main characters was killed off in a particularly gruesome way.

After getting beaten up, losing a toe and a finger (it's been a pretty grim time), Nate Jacobs (Jacob Elordi) was facing pressure to pay back the money he owed to Naz (Jack Topalian), and when his wife Cassie (Sydney Sweeney) wasn't delivering the goods, she was given a 76 hour deadline or Nate would die from dehydration as Naz had him buried in a coffin underground until the debt was paid.

Although in the end, it wasn't paid as Maddy sought Alamo's helped and instead of giving Naz the money he just shot him dead, and when Nate's coffin was unearthed, Maddy and Cassie are shocked to discover Nate is already dead.

It turns out his cries caused group vibrations which attracted a venomous rattler who came down the small hole Nate had for air and ultimately bit him and killed him.

Now, the show's creator Sam Levinson has broken down the end of Nate's character arc.

“There’s this kind of funny thing where I know what the audience wants in terms of justice or karma and with that in mind, I always think, ‘Well, how can I give it to them?’” Levinson explained to Esquire. “How can I give them 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?”

This season Nate appeared to be a meek and mellow version of himself - a choice of Levinson that "muddied the moral waters by repeatedly highlighting flashes of his humanity." That being said, both viewers and Levinson hadn't forgotten the toxic masculinity displayed from him in previous seasons, and so the creator and show runner knew from "get-go that Nate was finished this season."

Eddy Chen/HBO

“It’s like, ‘Oh, you wanted him to get his comeuppance…? Okay,’ ” Levinson noted.. “That feeling of complicity with the audience is always an interesting note to play inside of this sort of larger structure. You end up going, ‘Oh God, I don’t know. Should he have had it better? Did he deserve it?’ Those kinds of questions are always exciting to pose to the audience.”

“It was what was exciting about the characters being out of high school,” he continued. “They’re in the real world, and the consequences are real. There’s no safety net. I like this Wild West, frontier aspect to it where you can make something of yourself, but you’re going to have to live with the consequences

This wasn't the original plan for Nate's demise, as Levinson revealed his original idea was just to have Nate die from suffocation or heat while buried alive with Cassie desperately trying to save him and cited the inspiration behind this.

“I 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."

But he recalled the moment the snake death idea came to mind while driving to work with his wife.

“It was one of those gorgeous L.A. days where it was perfect weather. We’re listening to Otis Redding. The windows are down and we’re driving to Warner Bros. and I’m looking out the window,” he recalls. “I just had this image of a rattlesnake coming toward this pipe. He’s banging and the snake can sense the movement in the ground. And I thought, 'What if the snake goes into the pipe and then he’s stuck inside the coffin with this rattlesnake?'”

Jeremy Colegrove/HBO

“It’s sort of a funny moment where you realize that not all dark scenes come from a dark place. I turned to Ash and I said, ‘I think I got it.’ And I explained how Nate dies in this sequence. She goes, ‘That’s what you’ve been thinking about?’”

In the behind the scenes video, Elordi described how it was “a cool way to go” and “quite peaceful” filming inside the coffin, and shared his experience working with a real snake (yes, it was real).

“They had a boa constrictor that they put a fake rattler on the end of, and Sam was like, ‘We’re just gonna drop a snake on you,'” Elordi explained. “The snakes were rattling, which is really alarming when you’re locked in a box.”

“He was real cuddly, so he just saddled up next to me and it was nice,” he said, calling the snake "super cute". “But he was real sleepy. I had to kind of nudge him to get him to come up."

But what does the Aussie actor make about how his character was sent off?

“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. This show is a massive part of, not just my career, but my life. It’s been amazing, and I’m so proud, being a part of this," he said.

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