Sydney Sweeney’s R-Rated Euphoria Season 3 Scenes Are Controversial For The Wrong Reasons

The following article contains spoilers for Euphoria season 3 and discussions of graphic sexual content.

Whether you tune in to watch Euphoria every Sunday night or you’ve never watched an episode, chances are you’ve heard about Sydney Sweeney’s controversial season 3 storyline. The third installment of the HBO show features a five-year time jump that sees Euphoria‘s main characters out of high school and navigating the world as young adults.

Cassie Howard (Sweeney) is engaged to Nate Jacobs (Jacob Elordi) and planning her dream wedding, which includes $50K worth of flowers. With Nate refusing to spend such an exorbitant amount of money, Cassie seeks to earn the funds herself by becoming an OnlyFans superstar.

Nudity and sexual content are de rigeur on Euphoria, and the series has even had an internet sex work storyline, but it’s the specific kinks that Cassie is engaging in that are setting the internet ablaze. In the controversial Euphoria season 3 premiere, Cassie creates petplay content in which she dresses up and acts like a dog, while in episode 2, she engages in sploshing (a fetish involving being covered in wet and messy food) with an ice cream cone, and dresses as a baby in an ageplay shoot.

Multiple viewers took to social media to decry the scenes as a “humiliation ritual” for both the character and the actress, while Sweeney’s controversial baby scene had detractors accusing her and Euphoria creator Sam Levinson of “literal pedophilia.” However, depictions of these fetishes, no matter how unfamiliar, strange, or off-putting they may be to some viewers, aren’t the problem here.

Essentially, the issue isn’t the what, it’s the why. After the premiere, I saw Cassie’s Euphoria season 3 storyline as her taking charge of her sexuality for the first time. However, as shown in episode 2, “America My Dream,” her motivation paints her internet fame-seeking in a whole new light.

The Problem With Cassie’s Season 3 Storyline Is That It’s Linked To Her Need For Validation

Cassie (Sydney Sweeney) in bed with Nate (Jacob Elordi) in Euphoria season 3, episode 2

Cassie’s fear of abandonment and deep-rooted need for male validation have been core traits of her character since Euphoria revealed her backstory in season 1. After her father left the family when Cassie was a young girl, she became desperate to form lasting romantic attachments, and Euphoria‘s first two seasons saw her jump through humiliating, masochistic, and dangerous hoops to get it.

While Cassie has grown in that she’s more aware of the power of her sexuality, in her tipsy confession to Maddy (Alexa Demie) in episode 2, it’s obvious that validation is Cassie’s primary motivator here, not 10 figures’ worth of wedding flowers. When Maddy brutally dismisses Cassie’s doggie video as desperate and advises her to be herself, Cassie responds, “Who am I?” She then assures Maddy she can “be anything,” which is as telling as it is tragic.

The fact is, Maddy’s right — Cassie is desperate, and that desperation makes her OnlyFans storyline not only frustrating but insulting. Euphoria had a golden opportunity to show the empowering side of sex work, and Cassie would have been the perfect character for it, had she been driven to create content out of the desire to make her own money and not be beholden to her breadwinner fiancé.

Euphoria isn’t the only popular show about internet sex work on the air right now. Last week, Apple TV’s Margo’s Got Money Troubles debuted to rave reviews. The limited series centers on Elle Fanning’s titular character becoming an OnlyFans creator so she can make a proper living and support her newborn as a single mom. Not only does Margo’s Got Money Troubles frame this as a lucrative, sensible career path, but it’s also creatively fulfilling for Margo, who has always desired to be a writer.

Euphoria Season 3 & Margo’s Got Money Troubles Rotten Tomatoes Scores
Title	Critics Score	Audience Score
Euphoria season 3	40%	47%
Margo’s Got Money Troubles	96%	88%

But by Cassie needing OnlyFans to validate her, Euphoria is essentially portraying sex work as sad, and this only adds more fuel to the internet fire that the show already created. Even though Cassie is aware that ageplay is “a whole subculture,” the only thing she cares about is that the people in that subculture will validate her.

She doesn’t really understand it, and as is apparent by incensed internet reactions, neither does a significant portion of the audience. Ageplay, or paraphilic infantilism, is a completely different paraphilia from pedophilia, according to psychologists (via Science Direct), and Euphoria had an opportunity to not only clear that up but also show Cassie engaging with kinks and fetishes unfamiliar to viewers in a healthy way.

Sadly, nothing about what Cassie’s doing is healthy. The worst part is that her pursuit of online fame is, deep down, because Cassie knows she won’t find long-lasting validation with Nate, and that, in this regard, marriage is the end of the road. Sure, she deletes her account when Nate caves on the wedding flowers, but once Cassie comes down from that validation high, she’ll need another, and it’ll likely come in the form of another gratuitous Euphoria scene.