Omg, Nate Jacobs was originally going to have a different ending in Euphoria season three

In season three episode seven of Euphoria, Jacob Elordi’s character Nate Jacobs finally met his end… in the most random way ever. Those scary mobsters thought it was a sensible plan to trap Nate in a coffin, bury him in the desert, and ask his estranged wife for more money. A rattlesnake then slithered into the coffin and bit him. Nate died from the venom before Cassie and Maddy came to his rescue. Yikes. But the original vision for this episode was quite different. Nate had an alternative ending in earlier plans for Euphoria season three.

Sam Levinson – the showrunner and main writer of HBO‘s Euphoria – detailed this alternative ending for Jacob Elordi‘s character. Nate would still die in Euphoria season three, but from a different cause. The gangsters would mess up their silly plan to extort money from Cassie. Nate wouldn’t die of dehydration in the box after 72 hours. Nate would die well before the deadline while he was buried alive, from either heat exhaustion or suffocation. The most horrifying part for viewers wouldn’t be the actual goriness of Nate’s death. The audience would have watched Cassie race around trying to save Nate, while already knowing Nate was dead and her mission was doomed.

Sam Levinson explained to Esquire: “I always loved the movie The Candy Snatchers, where the girl gets buried alive with a pipe as an air hole. So, I had imagined that Nate would get buried alive.” He changed his mind about the scene while he and his wife Ashley (who is a producer for Euphoria) were in the car. “It was one of those gorgeous Los Angeles days where it was perfect weather. We’re listening to Otis Redding. The windows are down and we’re driving to Warner Brothers and I’m looking out the window. I just had this image of a rattlesnake coming towards this pipe. He’s banging and the snake can sense the movement in the ground. And I thought, ‘What if the snake goes into the pipe and then he’s stuck inside the coffin with this rattlesnake?’

“It’s sort of a funny moment where you realise that not all dark scenes come from a dark place. I turned to Ash and I said, ‘I think I got it.’ And I explained how Nate dies in this sequence. She goes, ‘That’s what you’ve been thinking about?'”

Nate’s ultimate ending in Euphoria is very different to what viewers theorised. In a supposed early version of the first episode (which has never been officially published, but has been circulated online for years), Nate is already dead. Rue killed him in a field. The voiceover narration is from Rue telling police about the events leading up to Nate’s death. Many Euphoria viewers speculated the show would still conclude with Rue killing Nate (and not a big snake).

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Featured image credit: HBO