Three Seasons of ‘Euphoria’ In, I’m Watching for Jules

Reported by Vogue.

I probably wouldn't still be watching Euphoria if my job didn't require it. Three seasons in, the show has swapped character depth for shock value—all that calculated staginess, graphic sex, and gore that feels less like storytelling and more like a Tarantino fever dream. But then Jules Vaughn shows up, and I remember why I keep coming back.

Hunter Schafer's trans artist—part-time sugar baby, full-time messy situationship participant with Zendaya's Rue—is the only character tethering me to this increasingly unhinged narrative. This season, she's wrapped up in something genuinely disturbing with a surgeon who's basically telegraphing serial killer energy (plastic wrap, no airflow—it's not subtle, babes). Meanwhile, she's navigating whatever undefined thing she and Rue have become while trying to carve out an actual artistic identity. It's a lot. Sometimes it's too much.

The Schafer Effect

Here's what keeps me watching: Schafer's presence is magnetic in a way that transcends the material. She does more with less screen time than most actors do with entire seasons. When she's in a scene—whether it's rolling up to a wedding in an objectively inappropriate Acne Studios dress or stealing a moment painting a female nude—everyone else fades into the background. That's not a compliment the show deserves; it's Schafer's raw talent refusing to be diminished by predictable plotting.

The predictability is real. Yes, trans women engage in sex work at higher rates than their cis counterparts, but does every storyline for Jules have to circle back to creepy chasers and her codependence with Rue? There's a version of this character with real depth, real ambition, real emotional complexity beyond survival mode. We got a glimpse in Episode 3—her smoking, creating, existing in her own world—and it made me desperate for more. But Euphoria seems content to keep her in orbit rather than give her a real gravitational pull of her own.

It's still early in the season. There's time for the show to prove me wrong, to actually develop Jules beyond her aesthetic and her proximity to Rue's chaos. Until then, I'm here for Schafer's luminosity and the hope that someone on this production team realizes they're wasting one of their most compelling assets—the actor, not the character she's been handed.

Read the original at Vogue.