Euphoria kills Nate Jacobs with chilling real-world details

Euphoria’s “Rain – In the penultimate “Rain or Shine” episode of Euphoria’s third season, Nate Jacobs is buried alive in a wooden coffin as revenge tied to a $1 million deadline for Cassie Howard. The scene turns horror-tinged: a rattlesnake slips into the coffin, Nate is recove

The coffin shuts, the airhole becomes a trap, and by the time Cassie Howard finally gets the chance to dig Nate Jacobs out, the punishment has already turned into something far darker than revenge.

In HBO’s season three. episode seven and penultimate installment. titled “Rain or Shine. ” Nate is buried alive in a wooden coffin as retribution for his outstanding debt to Naz (Jack Topalian). a local businessman described as mob-like. His wife. Cassie Howard (Sydney Sweeney). is forced to come up with $1 million in 72 hours—otherwise Nate will die underground of dehydration. The plan is simple. The outcome is not.

Before Cassie can succeed or fail, a rattlesnake slithers through the coffin’s airhole. When she does get a chance to dig up her husband, she finds Nate’s body purplish, bloated, and bloodshot, with the poisonous snake coiled around him. The final shot of Nate’s face lands like horror on television.

Nate Jacobs has been a principal focus of Euphoria since the show premiered in 2019. introduced as a manipulative high-school athlete with wells of pent-up rage. In season one alone. he choked his girlfriend. blackmailed a classmate. and plotted to send an innocent man to prison—then got away with it.

Season three carries a five-year time jump, pushing the ensemble into the harsh light of young adulthood. For many fans, Nate’s past actions created one clear wish: finally watching him pay. That payoff was something show creator and showrunner Sam Levinson said he held in mind while plotting the character’s fate.

“There’s this kind of funny thing where I know what the audience wants in terms of justice or karma and with that in mind. I always think. ‘Well. how can I give it to them?’” Levinson told Esquire. “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 also said he hoped viewers would feel complicit in Nate’s suffering this season. “It’s like, ‘Oh, you wanted him to get his comeuppance…?. OK,’” he continued. “You end up going, ‘Oh God, I don’t know. Should he have had it better?. Did he deserve it?’ Those kinds of questions are always exciting to pose to the audience.”.

The show has not stopped pushing at the edge of shock value. Levinson has been both praised and criticized for relying on shock value and rage bait. especially in Euphoria. which portrays young characters—especially women—in vulnerable. compromising positions. both literal and figurative. Sweeney. who has had the most nude scenes of her costars. has defended Levinson from backlash. saying the goal of Euphoria is “making people uncomfortable.”.

Levinson’s behind-the-scenes approach is part of why the death feels so grounded. He revealed to Esquire that while filming Nate’s death sequence, they used real rattlesnakes on set. He said animal wranglers warned him that the snakes’ venomous bites would kill a human in about an hour. but “the nearest hospital’s an hour and a half away.” For the coffin itself. the snake placed with Elordi was a boa constrictor with a fake rattler attached to its tail.

Elordi, in a behind-the-scenes interview for HBO, described what that meant in practice: “The snakes were rattling, which is really alarming when you’re locked in a box.”

Outside the show, Elordi has risen into “proper celebrity status” since first appearing onscreen as the love-to-hate Nate. His credits include Saltburn. Wuthering Heights. and Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein. for which he earned his first Oscar nomination for best supporting actor. Reflecting on Nate’s arc. Elordi said. “Nate is someone who’s made so many mistakes and made so many dark choices. It’s cool to see it all come to what it’s come to. ” adding: “This show is a massive part of. not just my career. but my life. It’s been amazing, and I’m so proud, being a part of it.”.

The much-anticipated season three finale will air on Sunday, May 31. Nate’s fate may be sealed. but the episode leaves Cassie and the rest of the Euphoria crew in precarious situations. largely at the mercy of crime lords. drug dealers. and murderous creditors who are impatient to collect. The message Levinson stressed to Esquire is blunt: “They’re in the real world and the consequences are real. There’s no safety net.”.

He framed the season’s major themes with a frontier image: “I like this Wild West, frontier aspect to it where you can make something of yourself, but you’re going to have to live with the consequences.”

In “Rain or Shine,” the show didn’t just kill a character. It made the audience sit inside the moment—watching justice curdle into something you can’t look away from, even as you start asking whether what you wanted was ever meant to be clean.

Euphoria Nate Jacobs Sam Levinson Cassie Howard Sydney Sweeney Jacob Elordi Naz HBO season three “Rain or Shine” rattlesnake episode seven finale May 31 pop culture news