Things are in the world of HBO’s hit “teen” drama , per . The high school series, one of the semi-recent crown jewels of the network’s prestige TV offerings, hasn’t released new episodes since February 2022—a.k.a., enough time for even more of its less-young-by-the-minute leads to become massively huge stars, for multiple people associated with the production to outright die, for creator Sam Levinson to make that was, by all accounts, a huge, expensive, and embarrassing mess. This week,
HBO announced it (while still reassuring audiences that said third season be made), and now there’s this report, which says that both HBO, and series star Zendaya, have expressed unhappiness with some of Levinson’s proposed story ideas for a third season, forcing him back to the drawing board multiple times as he works to find something that’ll make everybody happy (in a provocative, genre-defining TV sort of way). According to the report, Levinson has largely worked out “compelling” arcs for
Sydney Sweeney’s Cassie and Jacob Elordi’s Nate (fulfilling at least two-thirds of ’s “ movie now” quota). But he hasn’t been able to crack a plotline that everybody likes for Zendaya’s lead character Rue, having apparently pitched both HBO and Zendaya on arcs like “Maybe there’s a time jump and Rue is now a private detective?” which nobody apparently liked. ( is quick to note, by the way, that Zendaya has no official veto powers on the show’s scripts, all of which Levinson writes—but also notes that she and Levinson have always had a collaborative relationship that fueled ’s early success, so her buy-in is kind of essential.) At least some elements, suggested to include a Zendaya pitch where a now-sober Rue is a pregnancy surrogate, were reportedly rejected for “not feeling like the show”—a tricky prospect to deal with for a high-school-set series whose leads are now all in their mid-to-late 20s, and who are supposedly at least to mature as people. Meanwhile, has an enormous number of tensions hanging over its head: The , whose character Fez was central to some of Levinson’s early drafts for the third season; of long-time producer Kevin Turan, also in 2023, further slowing the creative process; the dismal production and reception of Levinson’s , which has apparently convinced HBO that they finished scripts from him before they send him off to start filming. And hanging over it all, the sheer, almost stultifying the series carries at this points: How many times has a network had a contract on its hand to make a new season of a highly successful TV show starring multiple highly bankable movie stars, ? And all of it is resting on Levinson’s would-be auteur shoulders: No wonder the cracks are starting to show.