Speaking on the red carpet at the Academy Museum Gala, Elordi opened up about returning to the HBO drama and made it clear that the experience of filming the new season was unlike anything he had done before. While he stopped short of revealing major plot details, his comments suggest that the next installment may push both the characters and the show itself into unfamiliar territory.

“It was incredible, man,” Elordi said. “It was incredibly liberating. I got to play something so sort of far out from what I’ve done before.”

That alone is enough to spark attention. Elordi’s character, Nate Jacobs, has long been one of the most volatile and psychologically complex figures in the series — a character defined by menace, repression, control, and emotional violence. For Elordi to describe his Season 3 work as “liberating” and dramatically different from his previous material hints that Sam Levinson may be steering Nate into a space audiences have never seen before.

Elordi also had high praise for Levinson’s vision, signaling that the creator has built something ambitious for the long-awaited return.

He said Levinson “constructed something that’s incredibly clever and cinematic. I think people are really going to like it.”

That description feels especially meaningful given the show’s reputation. From the beginning, Euphoria has stood apart from other teen dramas through its dreamlike visuals, raw emotional intensity, and often polarizing storytelling. If Season 3 leans even further into the cinematic scale Elordi describes, viewers may be in for a chapter that feels larger, sharper, and more stylized than anything that came before.

Yet even with filming underway, Elordi says he is still largely in the dark about the broader shape of the season. According to him, the production keeps character arcs tightly separated, leaving cast members with limited knowledge of the full picture.

“Everybody shoots at different storylines,” Elordi said. “I don’t know what anyone else is doing. I had a really singular storyline. You don’t know what the other story lines are. It’s like FBI files. So it’s great because I’ll get to consume the show the same way that everybody else does as a fan, which I haven’t been able to do before. I’m really excited.”

That comment reveals a lot about how secretive Euphoria remains behind the scenes. Rather than giving actors a complete map of the season, the production appears to isolate narratives so thoroughly that even key cast members are left guessing. The result is striking: Elordi himself may end up watching the finished season with the same uncertainty and anticipation as the audience.

He also took a moment to directly address a rumor that had circulated about the show’s visual format. A previous report claimed Elordi had said the entire third season was shot in VistaVision, a high-resolution film process associated with a grand, classic cinematic feel. Elordi flatly denied that claim.

“I did not say that, that is not true,” he said, adding, “It’s shot on a lot of different kinds of film and it’s beautiful.”

That clarification matters because Euphoria has always been as much about visual identity as narrative shock. Fans closely track every detail about how the show is filmed, lit, and styled, and the rumor about VistaVision fed into growing curiosity about how Season 3 might look. Elordi’s response shuts down the idea that the season was made entirely in that format, while still reinforcing that the series continues to treat its visual presentation with unusual care and ambition.

Warner Bros. representatives did not respond to a request for comment regarding the reported use of VistaVision, leaving Elordi’s statement as the clearest response for now.

The return of Euphoria carries major weight for HBO. The series, centered on Rue — Zendaya’s troubled teenage protagonist battling addiction, recovery, and the emotional wreckage around her — became one of the network’s most talked-about hits. Across its first two seasons, the show earned 25 Emmy nominations and won nine awards, proving that even amid controversy and divided reactions, it remained a cultural force.

Season 2 aired back in 2022, meaning the gap between installments has been unusually long. That delay has only intensified expectations, with fans closely watching every casting announcement and production update.

Several familiar faces are confirmed to return, including Zendaya, Hunter Schafer, Eric Dane, Sydney Sweeney, Alexa Demie, Maude Apatow, Martha Kelly, Chloe Cherry, Dominic Fike, Colman Domingo, and Kika King. At the same time, the cast is expanding with an eclectic group of new additions such as Trisha Paytas, Natasha Lyonne, Danielle Deadwyler, Eli Roth, Bella Podaras, Bill Bodner, Cailyn Rice, Colleen Camp, Gideon Adlon, Hemky Madera, Homer Gere, Jack Topalian, Jessica Blair Herman, Kwame Patterson, Madison Thompson, Matthew Willig, Rebecca Pidgeon, and Sam Trammell.

That mix of returning stars and unexpected newcomers suggests Season 3 may be widening its world in significant ways, potentially shifting the balance of the ensemble and introducing fresh tension into an already combustible universe.

Outside of Euphoria, Elordi is also deep into another major moment in his career: the awards-season and promotional push for Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein. In the Netflix film, he plays the monster opposite Oscar Isaac as Victor Frankenstein, a collaboration he described with obvious admiration.

“[Netflix CEO] Ted Sarandos said to me before I started the film, ‘You’re so lucky you’re going to get to work with a kind genius and that’s a rare thing,’” Elordi recalled. “A kind genius is a rare thing. He is the kindest of geniuses.”

Still, for many viewers, it is Euphoria that remains the biggest question mark — and the biggest obsession. Elordi may not know the full map of Season 3, but his words point to a version of the show that is secretive, visually rich, and daring enough to pull its own stars into the mystery. And after such a long silence, that may be exactly what makes this return feel dangerous again.