Euphoria is driving the teen genre to the dark side — but it's not the first

HBO's award-winning series Euphoria began its new season last month with a storyline fans wouldn't be surprised by: a violent grandmother, aggressive drug dealers and a house party stacked with alcohol.

Written by Sam Levinson, who is also the show's executive producer, Euphoria follows the story of 17-year-old Rue (played by Zendaya) struggling with an ongoing drug addiction while her classmates navigate love, friendships and trauma.

In January, on the premiere date of its second season, actor Zendaya posted a statement on her Instagram page reminding viewers the content was made for mature audiences. 

"This season, maybe even more so than the last, is deeply emotional and deals with subject matter that can be triggering and difficult to watch," she wrote. 

Dark themes seem to be creeping into more shows about teens, experts say, with series such as the Gossip Girl reboot, Riverdale and 2017 Netflix series 13 Reasons Why tackling challenging topics, including drug abuse and suicide.

Levinson, who battled his own substance addiction, told reporters at the 2019 ATX Television Festival that he wouldn't shy away from depicting addiction in a harsh way. He also talked about finding the balance of telling stories about teenagers and their sex lives without further fetishizing it. 

"Any time you put anything on screen, it runs the risk of glamorizing it just by the sheer nature of it being on screen,'' he said during the panel. "How do you portray drug use? How do you portray sex or sexuality in a way that that feels authentic to being young?"

Regarding the show's explicit sex scenes, he said the camera was often fixed on a single shot, rather than moving and capturing different angles, allowing for awkwardness and discomfort to "bleed in." 

In 2019, Deena ElGenaidi, a freelance arts and culture writer based in New York City, wrote a piece in Nylon about how teen TV in general was getting darker, reflecting what teenage life currently is like for some. "Our lived reality currently has just gotten more serious, teenagers are dealing with so many more things today than teenagers were in the '90s or 2000s," she told CBC News.

ElGenaidi says teen shows she grew up with like the original Gossip Girl or One Tree Hill were more in-touch with teens at that time as common storylines followed friendship, teen romances and bullying. 

"TV shows have gotten darker to the point where sometimes they're not very realistic. It's a show outside of our lived reality and it becomes an escape," she said. 

Euphoria has had several controversial moments this year, including a pre-teen drug dealer enticing violence and Rue's near-overdose after taking opioids.

Ava Clark, an 18-year-old high school student from Toronto, says Euphoria is overly dramatic when it comes to reflecting generation Z. 

"To think that everyone in the show is younger than me is crazy because, like, that never happened in high school," she told CBC News in a Zoom interview.  "[The show] does a good job of reaching that audience, but not necessarily depicting what gen Z is actually like."