‘Euphoria’ Author Explained Why He Killed Nate Jacobs Right Before the Finale
‘Euphoria‘ has always made a habit of delivering moments that leave audiences staring at a black screen long after the credits roll. Season 3 returned after a lengthy absence, finding its characters no longer cushioned by the halls of high school but thrown fully into an adult world where, as creator Sam Levinson put it, there is no safety net. The season picks up years later with Rue still navigating the fallout of her addiction, while the wider ensemble is entangled in criminal gangs and drug cartels far beyond anything the show had explored before.
Nate Jacobs, brought to life by Oscar-nominated Jacob Elordi, was never an easy character to root for. A core fixture of the series since its debut, Nate was long defined by a controlling, abusive nature that kept viewers in a state of repulsion and fascination throughout the show’s earlier seasons. In Season 3, his arc pivoted toward a lavish wedding and his father’s business, until a debt of one million dollars with the wrong people sealed his fate through a series of violent escalations.
The penultimate episode brought that downfall to its horrifying conclusion. Buried underground by a loan shark named Naz, Nate’s only lifeline was a small air hole in his coffin. Cassie, played by Sydney Sweeney, enlisted help to rescue him, and for a brief, agonizing moment it appeared as though she had succeeded. When the coffin was finally dug up, however, Nate was already dead, a rattlesnake having slithered through the air hole and delivered a lethal bite.
Levinson revealed to Esquire that the death had been on the cards since the early stages of the season. His core philosophy was to give the audience the justice they had been quietly demanding for years, but to make the delivery so brutal and unsettling that viewers would find themselves questioning whether they had truly wanted it. He also framed Nate’s end as a natural consequence of the season’s thematic obsession with the real world and its unforgiving rules, treating the storyline as a modern frontier in which choices carry genuine, irreversible weight.
The rattlesnake itself was not the original plan. Levinson had initially envisioned Nate dying from suffocation or heat, but the now iconic snake idea came to him spontaneously while driving through Los Angeles with his wife and producing partner Ashley Levinson. Listening to Otis Redding with the windows down on his way to the Warner Brothers lot, he pictured a rattlesnake moving toward a pipe, sensing vibrations from beneath the ground, and the scene locked into place immediately.
@alanreviewscinema EUPHORIA SEASON 3 EPISODE 7 NATES DEATH SCENE 😭😭😭😢 #euphoria #natejacobs #jacobelordi #sydneysweeney #cassiehoward ♬ original sound – alan 🍿🎥🎬
The production took the sequence seriously enough to use real venomous rattlesnakes for exterior shots, with crew members receiving a sobering warning from the snake wranglers on location in Lancaster that the nearest hospital was further away than the time a rattlesnake bite typically allows. For the scenes filmed directly with Elordi in the coffin, a non-venomous boa constrictor with a fake rattle was used, and the actor later described the animal as surprisingly docile and cuddly.
Elordi himself expressed understanding for the send-off, reflecting that a character who had made so many destructive choices across so many years arriving at this particular end made complete sense. With one episode of the final season remaining, Cassie is left reeling from losing her husband while Rue has landed herself in fresh trouble. Whether the show sticks its landing is the only question left to answer, and if you have thoughts on whether Nate’s death gave you the catharsis ‘Euphoria’ promised or left you feeling more complicated than relieved, the comments are the place to settle it.
