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| Is Nate Jacobs Really Dead in Euphoria Season 3? Jacob Elordi’s Brutal Exit Has Fans Losing It. (Credits: HBO) |
Euphoria has never exactly been known for handing out peaceful endings, but Season 3 might have just delivered its most unhinged farewell yet. The HBO drama shocked viewers after seemingly killing off Nate Jacobs, with Jacob Elordi’s character ending up buried underground in one of the bleakest twists the series has pulled so far. And honestly, if fans thought Nate surviving high school chaos meant he was untouchable, the writers clearly had other plans.
By the time Season 3 rolls around, the teenage disaster squad of East Highland is technically grown up, though emotionally most of them are still running around like people who ignored every life lesson imaginable. Rue Bennett remains tangled in dangerous situations involving Laurie, Alamo, and federal pressure, but surprisingly, it’s Nate’s storyline that spirals into full crime-thriller territory.
Gone is the smug football boy with anger issues and confusing charm. Nate is stressed, broke, reckless, and somehow still making catastrophic decisions with the confidence of a man who thinks consequences are optional.
The season reveals that Nate took over his father’s business and tried launching a massive construction project, hoping to prove he could finally become something respectable. Predictably, everything collapsed almost immediately.
The project gets halted after a rare flower species is discovered on the land, leaving Nate with a million-dollar debt owed to a ruthless loan shark named Naz. It’s peak Euphoria logic: one minute you’re planning luxury developments, the next minute botany ruins your life.
Things only become messier after Naz crashes Nate and Cassie Howard’s wedding and notices they somehow spent fifty thousand dollars on flowers while still owing him a fortune.
That moment basically seals Nate’s fate. Naz decides subtle reminders are overrated and responds by having Nate’s toe cut off on his wedding night. Romantic atmosphere destroyed instantly.
Cassie then desperately throws herself into online content work to help repay the debt, but the money coming in is nowhere near enough.
Naz grows increasingly impatient, eventually cutting off Nate’s finger and sending it directly to Cassie like the world’s most horrifying delivery package. Somehow, the relationship still continues, which honestly says everything about Euphoria’s definition of romance.
The real nightmare begins when Naz buries Nate alive beneath the same construction site that destroyed his finances in the first place.
A breathing tube connected to the coffin gives him limited air while Cassie is handed a seventy-two-hour deadline to come up with the money. It’s grim, absurd, and exactly the kind of over-the-top storytelling that has made Euphoria impossible to look away from.
Cassie genuinely tries to save him, but her situation completely falls apart. She loses her income sources, gets fired from LA Nights, and watches every backup plan collapse one by one.
In desperation, she turns to Maddy Perez, which might be one of the most awkward requests in television history considering Nate and Cassie practically detonated Maddy’s trust seasons ago.
Still, Maddy proves she’s somehow the closest thing this universe has to a functioning adult. Believing she can fix the situation, she contacts Alamo, a dangerous figure she met through Rue’s orbit. Maddy assumes his money and criminal connections can solve everything neatly. Naturally, that assumption explodes immediately.
Alamo arrives at the meeting point carrying what appears to be a bag full of cash, only for the entire exchange to descend into violence.
Instead of paying Naz, Alamo simply shoots him dead, apparently deciding debt negotiations are outdated. Naz’s terrified henchman then digs Nate out of the coffin in hopes of saving himself.
But by the time the coffin is opened, Nate is already dead. And the reveal is properly horrifying. Earlier in the episode, Nate desperately screamed and pounded against the coffin for help, unknowingly attracting a rattlesnake slithering through the desert ground above him.
The snake eventually enters the coffin itself. When Nate’s body is finally discovered, visible bite marks across his face confirm the reptile killed him long before dehydration could. Even by Euphoria standards, it’s an incredibly brutal way for one of the show’s biggest characters to go out.
The twist has completely divided viewers online. Some fans are calling Nate’s death poetic justice after years of manipulation, violence, and destruction. Others think the series crossed into full soap-opera madness, with several viewers joking that Season 3 feels less like teen drama and more like a fever dream written at 3am after watching crime documentaries back-to-back.
A lot of viewers also admitted they expected Nate to survive somehow because the character had repeatedly escaped consequences in earlier seasons. Instead, the show doubled down and gave him one of television’s most miserable endings in recent memory.
Meanwhile, reactions to Jacob Elordi’s apparent exit have been massive. Many fans praised the actor for making Nate both terrifying and strangely tragic across the series, while others argued the show may struggle without one of its most chaotic central figures.
There’s also growing speculation online about whether HBO could still pull a fake-out twist later, especially since Euphoria has never been entirely allergic to dramatic surprises. Still, based on what the episode shows, Nate Jacobs appears very, very dead.
What makes the moment hit harder is how pathetic Nate’s downfall ultimately becomes. For years, he acted like the most powerful person in every room.
Yet in the end, his empire collapses over bad decisions, unpaid debt, and a snake in the desert. There’s something darkly hilarious about the fact that after all the emotional destruction Nate caused over multiple seasons, nature itself basically clocked in and finished the job.
Now fans are left debating whether Nate deserved this ending, whether Cassie’s storyline became even sadder because of it, and whether Euphoria has finally pushed its chaos too far.
One thing’s certain though: viewers are not staying quiet about this episode. So, did the show completely nail Nate’s downfall, or did Season 3 go full madness mode? Fans online clearly cannot decide.