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Sunday night's seventh episode of the HBO drama's third season delivered one of the most shocking moments in the show's history, killing off Nate Jacobs, the manipulative and volatile character played by Jacob Elordi, in a death scene so extreme it left viewers reeling across social media.
Nate met his end while buried alive in a coffin by Naz, a gangster to whom he owed approximately one million dollars. Naz intended to leave him underground for 72 hours, breathing through a pipe, while his wife Cassie, played by Sydney Sweeney, scrambled to pull the money together. A rattlesnake slithered down the pipe and bit him before she could.
Cassie and Maddy, played by Alexa Demie, managed to get the money, but arrived too late. They found Nate's body already dug up.
The reaction online was immediate and visceral. "That whole sequence with Nate and the snake in the coffin is like my worst nightmare," one viewer wrote on X. Another said they were "actually traumatized." A third called it "the most horrific way possible" to die, even for a character they admitted to disliking.
Others expressed frustration that the show had spent years building Nate into a complex, layered figure only to dispose of him so abruptly before the season finale.
Elordi, 28, addressed his exit in an inside-the-episode segment, calling the death a "bittersweet thing." He said Nate was "somebody who's made so many mistakes and so many dark choices" and described being part of Euphoria as a "massive" chapter of his career.
Creator Sam Levinson defended the scene to Esquire, saying he deliberately wanted it to feel "horrific and anxiety-inducing."
With only the season finale remaining, and possibly the series finale, the deaths and unanswered questions have left fans bracing for whatever Levinson has planned next.
