ZendayaPhoto: Eddy Chen/HBOThings should not properly on the planet of HBO’s hit “teen” drama Euphoria, per a brand new report from Selection. The highschool collection, one of many semi-recent crown jewels of the community’s status TV choices, hasn’t launched new episodes since February 2022—a.ok.a., sufficient time for much more of its less-young-by-the-minute results in develop into massively enormous stars, and for a number of folks related to the manufacturing to outright die, and for creator Sam Levinson to make a complete different TV present that was, by all accounts, an enormous, costly, and embarrassing mess. This week, HBO introduced it was delaying the beginning of manufacturing on the present’s third season (whereas nonetheless reassuring audiences that mentioned third season will likely be made), and now there’s this Selection report, which says that each HBO, and collection star Zendaya, have expressed unhappiness with a few of Levinson’s proposed story concepts for a 3rd season, forcing him again to the drafting board a number of instances as he works to seek out one thing that’ll make everyone blissful (in a provocative, genre-defining TV type of approach). HBO actually does not need to discuss J.Okay. RowlingAccording to the report, Levinson has largely labored out “compelling” arcs for Sydney Sweeney’s Cassie and Jacob Elordi’s Nate (fulfilling not less than two-thirds of Euphoria’s “real film stars now” quota). However he hasn’t been in a position to crack a plotline that everyone likes for Zendaya’s lead character Rue, having apparently pitched each HBO and Zendaya on arcs like “Perhaps there’s a time soar and Rue is now a non-public detective?” which no person apparently preferred. (Selection is fast to notice, by the way in which, that Zendaya has no official veto powers on the present’s scripts, all of which Levinson writes—but in addition notes that she and Levinson have at all times had a collaborative relationship that fueled Euphoria’s early success, so her buy-in is sort of important.) At the least some parts, urged to incorporate a Zendaya pitch the place a now-sober Rue is a being pregnant surrogate, had been reportedly rejected for “not feeling just like the present”—a tough prospect to take care of for a high-school-set collection whose leads are actually all of their mid-to-late 20s, and who’re supposedly not less than making an attempt to mature as folks.In the meantime, Euphoria has an unlimited variety of tensions hanging over its head: The 2023 demise of star Angus Cloud, whose character Fez was central to a few of Levinson’s early drafts for the third season; the demise of long-time producer Kevin Turan, additionally in 2023, additional slowing the artistic course of; the dismal manufacturing and reception of Levinson’s The Idol, which has apparently satisfied HBO that they really want completed scripts from him earlier than they ship him off to begin filming. And hanging over all of it, the sheer, nearly stultifying potential the collection carries at this factors: What number of instances has a community had a contract on its hand to make a brand new season of a extremely profitable TV present starring a number of extremely bankable film stars, all of whom, by all accounts, nonetheless really need to make the present? And all of it’s resting on Levinson’s would-be auteur shoulders: No marvel the cracks are beginning to present.