Sam Levinson’s Shocking Reason Euphoria Brought Angus Cloud Back—You Won’t Believe This Emotional Goodbye!
Isn’t it wild how something as simple as a forgotten reel of film can suddenly become a treasure chest of memories when a light goes out too soon? In the world of Euphoria, a show already steeped in heartache and raw reality, a quirky little experiment with a rare Kodak film turned into an unexpected tribute to the late Angus Cloud. This footage—never meant for public eyes—served as a fleeting but powerful goodbye in the season 3 finale, blending the bittersweetness of loss with a nostalgic warmth. It’s a reminder that in both life and storytelling, the smallest moments—like a quiet shot of two friends sharing a beer in a sunlit field—can carry the heaviest weight. But how do you honor someone who’s gone while keeping their story alive? And more importantly, what does it mean when the line between reality and fiction blurs in the most touching ways? Let’s dive into how Euphoria’s creators handled this delicate balance and what it reveals about addiction, friendship, and the pulse of a show that refuses to look away. LEARN MORE
7 min readAfter someone is gone, throwaway things can become treasures. A Post-It note. A voicemail. Old text messages. For Euphoria, a reel of test footage shot almost seven years ago turned into a priceless object in the same way. It was never meant to be anything except an experiment with a rare kind of Kodak film. Instead, it became a way to revisit the late Angus Cloud in the show’s season 3 finale, if only for a moment.
It was a poignant goodbye for Zendaya’s Rue, who shortly thereafter succumbed to a fatal overdose herself, becoming another lost name in the notebook of Colman Domingo’s Ali. Fez’s daring escape from prison and her madcap dash to find him was a last hallucination as her life slipped away. This triggers his bloody mission of revenge against Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje’s Alamo. The real-life destructiveness of fentanyl was a running theme this season, one that was especially meaningful to all who worked with and cared about Cloud, who lost his life due to the lethal substance.
Esquire was in the editing room watching as Euphoria creator Sam Levinson, his wife and executive producer Ashley Levinson, and editor Julio C. Perez IV wove this footage into the early moments of this latest episode. Cloud passed away on July 31, 2023 at the age of only 25. His character, Fezco “Fez” O’Neill, was more than a friend to Zendaya’s perpetually troubled Rue Bennett. He was a big brother. Yes, he was also a drug dealer, but he became a moral compass and would-be guardian angel. Fez’s refusal to keep supplying Rue, out of fear she might overdose, has become especially heartbreaking, given the actor’s real-life death from addiction.
Another showrunner might have chosen to end the character after the passing of the actor, but Levinson went the opposite way. Cloud is gone, but Fez endured. Throughout season 3, Fez was alive but out of sight, locked away behind bars, which allowed his storyline to continue in the abstract, at a distance. “His arc this season is really kind of amazing, despite the fact that he’s in prison and we don’t see him,” Sam Levinson says.
As the season drew to a close, the long-ago reel of test film became a way to show Fez—and Cloud—one more time. Without it, the Euphoria team might have stitched in pieces of old scenes as a flashback, but this was a joyful and playful moment that had never been seen by anyone before. It became especially powerful since Cloud will never be seen again.
Levinson and Perez’s work placing the footage into the episode took place on April 17, just five days after the premiere of the new season. While celebrating the stratospheric ratings data supplied by HBO for the debut, they were going about the melancholy work of wrapping things up. “I feel relieved that I was able to put it all together and that we were able to turn it into something that I’m really proud of,” Levinson says. “But then there’s always the adrenaline crash that comes with it. So I get a little sad towards the end.”
The footage with Cloud and Zendaya made it all the more bittersweet. The entirety of episode 8 wasn’t available for Esquire to watch then, but Levinson explained where things were headed: “[Fez] has a plan to use parkour to escape from prison,” he says. Rue sees a local news report about the daring getaway, which Levinson drew from a real 2023 prison break. “Remember that case?” Levinson says. “It was in Pennsylvania, where the guy climbed out of the prison and ran into the woods. It’s sort of loosely inspired by that.”
Angus Cloud died on July 31, 2023 at the age of only 25. In Euphoria’s season 3 finale, creator Sam Levinson offers a beautiful tribute to the late actor.
Rue ventures out in the hope of joining up with her old friend. “She goes running, she goes to try to find him and basically this is part of that whole sequence,” Levinson says. “As she’s driving, she passes herself, her younger self, and she sees Jules on the bike from the first episode. So there’s these memories that are flooding back.”
Her trip takes her back to a familiar corner milk store. “Rue is kind of going back through her life,” Levinson says. “So this is actually a moment where she pulls up at the old convenience store that Fezco used to work at. She’s looking up at the sign and has this flashback memory of her and Angus together.”
Levinson and Perez, longtime collaborators going back to 2018’s Assassination Nation, have a playful rapport as they work, but there’s a kind of solemnity that sets in as they work on blending this scene into new footage of Zendaya visiting her and Fez’s old haunt. They debate every move in hushed tones, trying to figure out the right places to cut away to the vintage footage.
“Come back around this side, right?” Perez says, reworking the images so they appear as Zendaya looks to the side after glancing up at the Milk sign. “Something like this?” he says, plugging in the clips. “Go ahead and use this move…”
They sound like surgeons in an operating room, trying to buy someone a bit more life. In a way, they are.
The footage itself is sweet and simple: Zendaya and Cloud stand together in a grassy field, each with a cracked beer, smiling and looking off at an unseen horizon. They look happy, maybe a little bemused. Content, at the very least. They seem impossibly young, with Zendaya looking especially babyfaced. This is as close to a garden of Eden as Euphoria gets, before all the chaos and heartbreak that befalls its characters.
Levinson shot the moment never intending to do anything with it but see how Ektachrome, a rare and—for a while, discontinued—type of Kodak film would make the actors and environment look. Season 1 of Euphoria was shot digitally, but as he neared the end of principal photography Levinson was thinking about switching things up and capturing the second season in an old-school way.
He liked the Ektachrome look so much that he struck a deal with Kodak, which agreed to start producing 35 mm reels of the film again, since the series would purchase huge volumes of it for the entirety of its upcoming seasons. Ektachrome is noteworthy for its fine grain and richly saturated colors. There is an earthiness and vibrancy to it that is easy to see, but hard to put into words. It makes the world look simultaneously fresh and antique, like ripe fruit in an old painting.
Nearly four years passed between the conclusion of season 2 and the release of season 3. The show has dealt with a lot of loss in the meantime. Not only did Cloud pass away, but so did Eric Dane, who played Nate’s sexual predator father. Dane died in February from the debilitating effects of ALS. However, he did manage to shoot some sequences for season 3 before he passed, determined to work for as long as he could.
Cloud’s death occurred long before any plans were in place for the third chapter. As Levinson thought through the season, he knew he wanted to keep Fez alive, but wasn’t sure right away how to do that. The character could stay off camera for most of it, but the wrap to the season needed some way to pay tribute to both Cloud and Fez. That’s when Levinson’s mind went back to this forgotten test reel. “It’s footage that never made it into the show,” he says. “I thought, oh, it’d be great to use that footage and just see him again—and see the two of them.”
“His arc this season is really kind of amazing, despite the fact that he’s in prison and we don’t see him,” Levinson says of Fez’s (the late Angus Cloud) off-screen journey in season 3.
The third season itself, with its tragic story arcs of high-octane drug dealing, accidental overdoses and lethally bad choices, evolved from the torment Levinson felt over what happened not only to his friend and collaborator, but to countless others who dealt with the illness of addiction.
“Angus passed away in 2023 from a fentanyl overdose, and fentanyl is an issue that we have been dealing with since the first season,” Levinson says. “What I couldn’t wrap my head around is the fact that 73,000 people in the United States were dying a year of fentanyl overdoses and it seemed like no one was doing anything about it. Politicians weren’t talking about it to the degree that you would think they would be, and it was just sort of an accepted reality.”
Euphoria made its name as a frenetic, wild-hearted drama, full of mind-warping plot twists and the extremes of human misbehavior, but the roots of this season are firmly in the reality of how life spirals out of control for those with substance abuse issues. “I really wanted to dive into that this season and deal with fentanyl, and deal with the consequences and how it’s taking away young people’s opportunity for a second chance,” says Levinson, who writes from experience. “When I was growing up and doing drugs, sure, you could O.D. on something, but it wasn’t like it is today where you make one wrong move and you’re dead.”
It’s widely believed that this will be not only the season finale, but the series wrap-up for Euphoria, as well. But Levinson stops short of saying that himself. “I mean, I don’t know. I’ve approached every season like it’s the last season. If they say, ‘That’s it, Sam, pack your bags. We don’t need another,’” he says.
Given the ratings success of season 3, HBO is very unlikely to say that. Perhaps there will be more someday. But for now, yes, this is it. “I do approach it that way, at least for my own kind of sanity,” Levinson says. “I don’t want to feel like I left anything on the field.”
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