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To say that season three of Euphoria is long-awaited would be something of an understatement. HBO’s high school drama debuted in 2019, when it garnered a fanfare of attention with its heady mix of grinding trauma, heavenly eyeshadows and cheap/daring (delete as appropriate) feats, including a locker room scene starring 30 penises. In the years since, it cemented itself as a show with much to say about gen Z’s relationship to sex, drugs and mental health, and pushed Jacob Elordi, Sydney Sweeney and former Disney teenybopper Zendaya to the A-list. It has also released a mere 18 episodes in that time, a victim of everything from the Covid pandemic to the Los Angeles fires. Like a new Rihanna album, Euphoria season three has – in time – become shorthand for a pop culture mirage that would maybe, possibly arrive sometime before 2030. At least, we hoped, before most of the cast were in their 30s.

Excitement, too, has waned over time. Rumours of rifts between the cast and creator Sam Levinson have only grown since its return was confirmed last autumn, and the press tour that followed has had a distinct flavour of “contractual obligation” about it (social media posts from the cast were few and far between, while Zendaya, in an interview with Variety, ambiguously described filming as a “whirlwind”). It brings me no pleasure, then, to report that, based on the three episodes released for review, Euphoria’s third (and probably final) run was absolutely not worth the wait. It’s a grubby, humourless work of torture porn that’s obsessed with and repulsed by sex work.

We kick off five years after the end of season two, with recovering addict Rue (Zendaya) drawn into the thoroughly insalubrious world of drug dealer Laurie (Martha Kelly), to settle her debts. Her life as a mule between Mexico and the US is imagined in cinematic sequences that draw on westerns and blaxploitation, and which have something of a resemblance, too, to the sex worker-centric films of Sean Baker. It’s gnarly stuff: drug-filled balloons are lubed up and swallowed (“And that, ladies and gentlemen, is how fentanyl is smuggled into the US,” says Rue in a heavy-handed voiceover), accomplices are roped in in the form of Chloe Cherry’s Faye, and Rue finds herself working for Alamo (Lost’s Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje), a Stetson-wearing club owner with a rehab clinic on speed dial. In short: she cannot and does not catch a break.

Elsewhere, Cassie (Sydney Sweeney) is on the cusp of trad wifedom with toxic jock Nate (Jacob Elordi), formerly the subject of a love triangle between her and ex-bestie Maddy (Alexa Demie). These days they are the perfect all-American couple – apart from Nate’s crumbling business and Cassie’s penchant for making OnlyFans content while dressed as a puppy. The way the show handles her cam girl ambitions, in particular, feels bafflingly dated (“You wanna sell your body for floral arrangements?!”), while storylines around sugar babies and kink feel simultaneously voyeuristic and judgy. All this while also making sure Sweeney is topless by episode two, and casting Grammy winner Rosalía as an arse-shaking, Spanglish-speaking stripper. If nothing else, Levinson is a master of contradictions.

The Euphoria of old could be shocking, surreal, occasionally cringe (see: Dominic Fike’s musical interlude as Elliot) and often blackly funny, with meta school plays and storylines like Kat (the sadly departed Barbie Ferreira) faking a terminal illness to dump her boyfriend. These days, its humour extends to Colman Domingo cursing “butt sex”, as Rue’s AA sponsor Ali. A potentially droll scene where Nate and Cassie’s housekeeper asks them which food items to throw away from an uneaten buffet – underscoring their wastefulness by listing each item one by one – is instantly deadened by Nate threatening to kill the woman. He was always a sociopath, sure, but now he’s just plain mean.

Levinson has described the series as a paean to the third step in AA – “surrendering to a power greater than ourselves” – and a tribute to Angus Cloud, who played Fezco, and who died in 2023 at the age of 25. (Certainly, there is a sense of loss that has overshadowed this season; this is also the final on-screen role for Eric Dane, as Nate’s dad, Cal.) Levinson was clearly trying to make a point about drugs – in particular synthetic opioids – ravaging the lives of ordinary Americans. But did he have to make his characters’ lives so horrifically bleak in order to do so? As for Rue’s relationship with Jules (Hunter Schafer), it was once the unapologetically queer heart of the show, and a rare representation of trans life on TV that didn’t feel exploitative. Here, it’s just another conduit for a confused exploration of the sex economy, and a storyline that seems desperate to unleash Euphoria’s brand of brainrot bimbo-ism on one of its most interesting women. Jules is an artist and a sugar baby, but mainly she is just another blank canvas for assorted shades of male perversion.

The performances are mostly good – and sometimes excellent, as in the cases of Zendaya, Sweeney and Akinnuoye-Agbaje. But Euphoria season three is grim TV that seems hellbent on rattling us for the sake of it. If its cast seemed desperate to get it over and done with, well, now we know why.

• Euphoria season three is on Sky Atlantic and HBO Max in the UK from 13 April; and in the US on HBO and Max from 12 April.