How to Fill the Hole in Your Heart Where Euphoria Used to Be

Graphic: Elena Scotti (Photos: Screenshots via YouTube, Shutterstock)

It’s torture to know just how close Euphoria was to filming its highly-anticipated second season before covid-19 shuttered production. “Literally, three or four days before that, they were shut down,” Zendaya told Variety. “I was like, ‘I was so close.’” The sets had been built, the ornate makeup looks had been tested, and the cast did table reads.

But it’s unclear when Euphoria stans will get to see their favorite masochistic, highly bedazzled teens again. For fans, there’s now a hole in our hearts where Season 2 should be. Luckily, Euphoria was not the first or last TV show or movie to depict teens as the demonic creatures they often are when their parents aren’t watching. Here’s what to watch if you miss Euphoria as much as we do.

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Skins

Perhaps it’s a touch histrionic to say that there would be no Euphoria without Skins, but the legendary coming-of-age British television series really set the standard on how to depict teen debauchery with heart and humor. The show follows a group of teenagers and their struggles with family, friends, sex, substance abuse, mental health, body image… you know, the typical teen fare, but without coming across like Very Special Episode. Each season provides a killer soundtrack, and the first season features some familiar faces like Dev Patel, Hannah Murray, Joe Dempsie, Nicholas Hoult, and Kaya Scodelario. Bonus points: The characters actually look like they’re teenagers, not 29-year-old hotties made in a lab in the basement of the CW. —Ashley Reese

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Ginger Snaps

Goth girls, menstrual blood, werewolves… I mean, if you want a freaky coming-of-age movie with a dash of macabre, look no further than Ginger Snaps, a Canadian horror movie about a teen girl who gets transformed into a werewolf while on her period. This isn’t for everyone, but it’s worth a shot if you’re into watching a weird low-budget cult classic about sisterhood… and murder. —A

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Kids

Enter this 1995 Larry Clark-directed coming-of-age movie, which makes Euphoria look like High School Musical, at your own risk. Written by a then-teenaged Harmony Korine, the graphic movie follows a group of wild New York City teenagers, including a baby-faced Rosario Dawson and Chloë Sevigny in career-making roles. —Hazel Cills

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Brick

A murder mystery that scratches the same itch that Euphoria’s twistier storylines do, Brick features Joseph Gordon-Levitt as a high-schooler trying to figure out who murdered his ex-girlfriend, leading him into a suburban drug ring. —HC

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Minding the Gap

One of the best documentaries of the last few years, Bing Liu’s intimate Minding the Gap centers on Liu’s teenaged skater friends growing up together in Illinois and how they each struggle to overcome living in abusive homes and perpetuating a toxic cycle of abuse. —HC

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Thirteen

Thirteen follows the life of Tracy (Evan Rachel Wood), a straight-laced student in Los Angeles who starts experimenting with sex, drugs, alcohol, and petty crime after befriending her wild classmate, Evie (Nikki Reed). This movie came out the same year that I—a straight-laced L.A. kid—turned 13-years-old, and while I did not follow the same path as the movie’s protagonist, it definitely reflected the lifestyle of a very specific brand of city kid raised on benign neglect. Come for Evan Rachel Wood’s killer performance, stay for the ridiculous “NO BRA, NO PANTIES!” scene. —AR

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Nowhere

The third installment of director Gregg Araki’s “Teenage Apocalypse Trilogy” is a deeply trippy, hard-to-find masterpiece about a group of horny teenagers living in Los Angeles as alien invaders lurk in the background. It may or may not be streaming for free right now on YouTube, just don’t tell anyone I told you so. —HC

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Paranoid Park

Gus Van Sant cast his gloomy adaptation of Blake Nelson’s novel Paranoid Park by casting non-professional teen actors via MySpace in a similar fashion to how Euphoria cast a lot of its stars via Instagram. While Paranoid Park doesn’t have the ensemble energy of Euphoria, its dark portrayal of disaffected suburban teens fits the bill. —HC

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Assassination Nation

Euphoria creator Sam Levinson’s Assassination Nation is sort of the blueprint for the TV series that would come after. Like a modern-day The Crucible, the movie delves into the petty horrors of the internet and social media not unlike Euphoria, telling the story of a massive hacking scandal that takes over a small-town and causes pure chaos. —HC