Euphoria creator Sam Levinson revealed how he was inspired to write the death scene for the most recent episode of the drama series.
Spoilers below for Euphoria season 3 episode 7.
In the Sunday, May 24, penultimate episode, Euphoria fans watched Jacob Elordi’s character, Nate Jacobs, suffer a horrific death. During the episode, Nate’s debt came back to bite him — literally — as he was locked underground in a coffin for 72 hours.
His wife, Cassie (Sydney Sweeney), was forced to pay the loan sharks in an attempt to save Nate. Cassie and Maddy (Alexa Demie) were able to dig up Nate, only to see he was killed by several rattlesnake bites.
Levinson, 41, shared that the idea to bury Nate alive was an homage to one of his favorite films.
“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,” the creator said in an interview with Esquire published on Monday, May 25.
Not only was Nate buried alive, but there were snakes involved and that idea came to Levinson while enjoying a sunny day in Los Angeles.
“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 Brothers and I’m looking out the window,” he reflected. “I just had this image of a rattlesnake coming towards 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?’”
Levinson also revealed that they used “all real rattlesnakes” while filming and they got a serious warning from the animal wranglers before filming.
“When we were shooting with the rattlesnakes out in Lancaster, [California], they said, ‘If you get bitten by a rattlesnake, you have about an hour before you die. And unfortunately, the nearest hospital’s an hour and a half away. ‘So … don’t get bitten by our rattlesnake,’” Levison recalled.
While writing the scene, Levinson knew fans wanted to see Nate get his “comeuppance” in the final season — and he was happy to oblige.
“There’s this kind of funny thing where I know what the audience wants in terms of justice or karma,” he reflected. “And with that in mind, I always think, ‘Well, how can I give it to them?’ 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?”
Levinson added that by making Nate’s death so horrific, he hoped that viewers would question if the character truly deserved the outcome.
“That feeling of complicity with the audience is always an interesting note to play inside of this sort of larger structure,” he explained. “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.”
Elordi, for his part, agreed with fans that his character got what he deserved.
“That was a cool way to go. Nate was someone who has made so many mistakes and made so many dark choices,” the actor said in a segment that aired after the episode. “It’s cool to see it all come to what it’s come to.”
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