Euphoria season 2 has quietly proved that there is a future for the show without Zendaya's character Rue at the center of it at all. The hit HBO show first debuted in 2019 with Zendaya's Rue serving as an omniscient narrator observing the lives of her classmates at East Highland High and, in its second season, Euphoria has ballooned into a full-blown phenomenon. Over the same two years, Zendaya's career has rightfully exploded, with the actress having a banner 2021, starring in Dune, Spider-Man: No Way Home, and Space Jam: A New Legacy, while lining up a slew of highly-anticipated upcoming projects that could take her away from the time-consuming task of starring in an episodic television series.
Zendaya's reign has continued into 2022 with Euphoria season 2 once again proving that she's one of the greatest young actresses working today. Still, the show itself has suffered what some could call a "sophomore slump" in terms of storytelling as the show shifts its focus away from fan-favorite characters like Kat, Jules, and Maddy to focus on Nate Jacobs and his extremely toxic family, and an affair between Cassie and Nate that has proven to be controversial. Despite potential creative issues—not to mention the rumored drama behind the scenes—the show itself is more successful than ever, begging the question as to what happens with its leading lady if Euphoria continues to be renewed for years to come.
Luckily, Euphoria season 2 shows a future without Zendaya in the vein of some of the greatest teen dramas brought to the scene. While Rue's struggles with addiction have anchored the more dramatic side of the show, the other characters have proved that her story isn't absolutely necessary for the show to continue. Euphoria could easily go the route of Degrassi, introducing a new generation of teenagers at East Highland High who have their own increasingly fraught lives to deal with and at the center of it all could be Rue's sister Gia, played formidably by Storm Reid.
Various shows centered around teenagers have run into this exact problem over the years. The teens at the center of Euphoria are not going to be in high school forever and whether or not some of them actually make it to college, the show following the current group of Euphoria characters into higher education would feel disingenuous to the ethos of the series. Euphoria is about teenagers in every sense; from the way they conflate every minor setback and squabble with apocalyptic levels of emotion, to the way high school can feel like the best years of their lives until they realize that's no longer true. Losing that element would be to lose everything Euphoria has become about in its short time on the air.
While Euphoria season 3 is confirmed to bring back Zendaya, and HBO chief Casey Bloys has said he does not see a future for the show without her, there certainly is one. In a recent episode of Euphoria, Rue comments to her younger sister that she knows nothing about her life anymore, and while this is meant as a reflection on the fact that Rue is consumed by her addiction, it also serves as a way to look at the show beyond Zendaya's embattled character, something the show will need to do eventually.
For the sake of the story, Euphoria needs to move beyond Rue's addiction at some point or risk playing into a brutal cycle that could see the character hit rock bottom again and again. While this is certainly reflective of the way addiction consumes people's lives, it would ultimately be a challenge to depict this every season without risking Euphoria's narrative becoming stale. Luckily, there are plenty of directions the show could go in and right now, Reid's Gia seems like a promising candidate to lead the show in the future when everyone's favorite East Highlanders age out.