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Jacob Elordi’s Nate Jacobs character died in Sunday’s Euphoria episode, with the actor calling his buried-alive exit, after seven years, a cool way to go.
Jacob Elordi‘s seven-year run on Euphoria ended Sunday night with one of the most gruesome character exits HBO has staged in years. The episode buried his villain, Nate Jacobs, alive in a coffin with only a breathing pipe, then sent a rattlesnake down the pipe to finish the job. The body was later exhumed by a backhoe in the same episode.
Elordi, 28, framed the death warmly. In an HBO behind-the-scenes video that aired after the episode, the Australian actor called it a cool way to go, noting that Nate was a character defined by mistakes and dark choices. “It’s cool to see it all come to what it’s come to.”
The scene was physical. Elordi was shut into a real coffin for the shoot, with the lid drilled on top of him in the dark. He described the experience as peaceful.
The boa constrictor wearing a fake rattler at its tail end, he said, was the more memorable scene partner. The Independent’s full quotes from the HBO video and the timeline of Elordi’s run on the show include his bittersweet reflection on leaving after seven years, since the show’s January 2019 premiere. The series, he said, has been a massive part of not just his career, but his life.
Showrunner Sam Levinson defended the gruesomeness in an Esquire interview the following day. The 41-year-old said he set out to give viewers what they had been demanding while making them regret asking for it.
“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 said. He laughed his way through the quote. “It’s like, ‘Oh, you wanted him to get his comeuppance? OK.'”
Page Six’s writeup of the Levinson interview, including the buried-alive imagery he cribbed from the 1973 film The Candy Snatchers, captures the creator’s process. Levinson, by his own telling, was driving to Warner Brothers with Otis Redding playing when the rattlesnake image arrived in his head.
The plot mechanics anchor in money. Nate owed a gangster roughly a million dollars; the gangster delivered him into the ground with a 72-hour ultimatum for his wife, Cassie, played by Sydney Sweeney, to produce the cash. The snake foreclosed the deadline.
The death writes out one of the show’s three pillar characters. Elordi, Sweeney, and Zendaya all returned for Season 3 after a four-year hiatus. Their three trajectories anchored the show’s pop-cultural rise.
IMDb’s aggregation of fan and critic commentary on the Nate death tracks the immediate online reaction, with much of it shock-laced and a meaningful portion arguing the scene tipped the season into territory that critics have already labeled as torture porn.
The third season returned after a four-year break and is set five years after the events of Season 2. Critical reception has skewed harsh, with reviewers writing that the show has lost its earlier edge and emotional weight.
The Euphoria Season 3 finale airs next Sunday on HBO. Whether Nate’s death is the closer or just the setup for a bigger one is the open question.
