Jacob Elordi’s Nate Jacobs is dead. In the penultimate episode of HBO’s “Euphoria” Season 3, titled “Rain or Shine,” the show’s most enduring antagonist met his end underground — buried alive by a loan shark and finished off by a rattlesnake — in a sequence that creator Sam Levinson designed to deny audiences the clean satisfaction they had spent seasons anticipating.
Speaking to Esquire, Levinson described the death as a deliberate act of moral subversion. “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?” he said. The result is one of prestige television’s more unglamorous exits: a former high-school predator turned failed real estate developer, dying of venom in a shallow grave beneath a construction site over an unpaid $1 million debt.
The episode revealed the full arc of Nate’s financial collapse — after inheriting his father Cal’s business operations, he burned through investor money and became entangled with criminal figures, losing toes and even his wedding ring finger in earlier violent confrontations before this final reckoning. Cassie (Sydney Sweeney) scrambled to raise the ransom with Maddy’s (Alexa Demie) help, turning to drug lord Alamo (Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje) for cash.
He killed the captor, but arrived too late. Behind the scenes, production used a boa constrictor fitted with a fake rattle for the coffin scenes, while real rattlesnake footage — the animal reportedly named “little b*tch” — covered the close approaches. Elordi, typically composed, called his death scene “quite peaceful in there,” right up until the snake’s entrance.
The episode also pulled Colman Domingo’s Ali into sharper focus through a flashback to his own addiction years, featuring Natasha Lyonne as a sex worker he sought out while using. “You see where he went down some dark horrors,” Domingo said in a behind-the-scenes video. “We know that he’s changed, and now he’s on a new mission to help guide Rue.”
Rue (Zendaya) currently operates as a double agent between Alamo and drug lord Laurie’s operation, feeding intelligence to the DEA. The cartel tested Rue’s loyalty by slicing her palm open with a knife. The episode closes on Faye (Chloe Cherry) and Rue cracking Wayne’s safe at night, only to find a pile of girls’ driver’s licenses — including Angel’s, the missing stripper from the season’s opening episodes — with no money inside. Faye, feeling deceived, screams to wake the house.
The season finale airs May 31 on HBO, with Alamo now aware of Rue’s DEA ties and every major storyline converging toward a conclusion that carries the added weight of this being widely understood as the show’s final season.
