Euphoria Star Breaks Silence: The Truth Behind [Spoiler]'s Onscreen Death

Well, that escalated quickly. After Sunday night’s episode, Nate Jacobs is gone for good, and Jacob Elordi finally talked about the whole brutal send-off. Short version: he’s weirdly at peace with it, and the way they filmed it was even more intense than it looked.

Elordi speaks after the May 24 episode

Right after the Sunday, May 24 installment aired, the original cast member broke his silence on Nate’s exit and didn’t sugarcoat it.

"That was a cool way to go. Nate was someone who has made so many mistakes and made so many dark choices. It’s cool to see it all come to what it’s come to."

Then he got into the nuts and bolts of shooting his own death. He had to climb into a coffin so tight his shoulders touched both sides. They literally drilled the lid shut. No arm movement, total darkness. And somehow, he loved it: he called the whole thing peaceful.

The part you probably didn’t expect: real snakes

The stunt team made a point of monitoring his oxygen and praised him for agreeing to be in the coffin for as little time as humanly possible. Meanwhile, creator Sam Levinson pushed for the most old-school practical choice possible: actual snakes. A rattlesnake and a boa constrictor both ended up in the scene.

Elordi said the rattling was genuinely alarming when you’re, you know, locked in a box. The boa was less horror, more nap time. Production even attached a fake rattle to the boa’s tail for the shot. Elordi’s read on his scene partner: cute, cuddly, and extremely sleepy. He had to nudge the snake to get it to hit its marks.

So how did Nate die in the story?

• All season, Nate was ducking people he owed money to.
• By his final episode, things got gruesome: multiple body parts were cut off, and he was literally boxed up until Cassie (Sydney Sweeney ) could pay off his debt.
• Cassie started putting a plan together to get him out.
• Too late: Nate died from a snakebite before she could pull it off.
• The death lands one week before the season finale.

Looking back, and what he said before the season

Elordi has been Nate since the show launched in 2019, and he didn’t pretend leaving was easy.

"It’s a bittersweet thing. This show is a massive part of — not just my career — but my life. It’s been amazing and I’m so proud of being a part of this."

Before cameras rolled on this season (and before we knew how dark it would get), Elordi teased a shift on a December 2025 episode of Variety’s Actors on Actors, calling it a completely different thing and even suggesting Nate might come off nicer this time. He undercut that immediately with a shrug: whether it works or not, he didn’t know, and there was a chance what he did was not good. Given the way things ended, he wasn’t kidding about it being different.

Euphoria airs Sundays at 9 p.m. ET on HBO. Finale is next week.