Most critics like Euphoria, and nearly all of them like it for the same reason: Zendaya. Her performance as Rue, a teenager in the grip of addiction, is singled out in every review, with several calling it revelatory or haunting, and Hunter Schafer draws praise alongside her. The look of the thing is the other point of agreement; critics find the hazy, drug-trip style intoxicating and think Levinson uses it to show what the characters are hiding rather than to decorate. Several credit the series with handling sex, drugs and trauma candidly rather than merely graphically.
The reservations cluster around whether the darkness is earned. Vulture finds the bleakness and nudity gratuitous and not always justified, IndieWire calls the relentlessness exhausting to the point of dulling the warning, and The Ringer thinks the show cannot decide whether it takes its teenagers seriously or sensationalises them. Others note uneven pacing and a chaotic opening. The spread is fairly wide, from enthusiastic to lukewarm, though nobody dismisses it outright.