Eli Roth's Bizarre Euphoria Season 3 Cameo, Explained

Don't pick up any side hustles if you haven't watched the season 3 premiere of "Euphoria." Spoilers ahead!

The third season of "Euphoria" is here, and as fans catch up with familiar characters like Rue Bennett (Zendaya), Maddy Perez (Alexia Demie), and Nate Jacobs (recently-minted Oscar nominee Jacob Elordi), they should prepare for some cameos. One of them happens pretty early in the season 3 premiere — and as the credits tell us, the person behind this frankly strange cameo is filmmaker and actor Eli Roth.

So how, specifically, does Roth show up? Right away, we learn that Rue is a drug mule for Laurie (Martha Kelly), the drug dealer she seemed to evade back in season 2. She owes Laurie a truly staggering amount of money and is currently bringing back bags of illicit substances from Mexico for Laurie to sell to her customers. (The sequence where Rue ... ingests these bags is one of the grossest things I've seen on "Euphoria," which is saying something given that this is a pretty vomit-soaked show across the board.) Rue's side hustle, though, is working as an Uber driver. In the season 3 premiere, we see her driving around a rideshare customer in a full Batman mask who complains, in a deep voice, about how Los Angeles is experiencing a crime boom. He then exits the car and joins a few other costumed superheroes, including Wonder Woman and Robin, on a busy Hollywood street.

According to the credits, "Batman" is played by Roth. Reports did surface that he'd be joining the cast, but it definitely seems like he's keeping his appearance small and strange. 

Again, we learned back in October 2025 that Eli Roth would show up in the third (and maybe final?) season of "Euphoria" alongside other stars like Natasha Lyonne, Danielle Deadwyler, and Sharon Stone, but this brief and frankly bizarre cameo might be all we get from him — which makes sense, considering that Roth primarily works behind the camera. I described him as an "actor" before because, on a very technical level, he is; besides "Euphoria," he's made cameos in his own movies like "Hostel" and ones directed by his buddy Quentin Tarantino. His most notable role was in Tarantino's "Inglourious Basterds," where Roth plays a vigilante known as the "Bear Jew" who attacks Nazis with a baseball bat).

Roth is best known, though, for writing, directing, and producing slasher and horror movies like  "Cabin Fever," "Thanksgiving," and "The Green Inferno." Most recently he co-write and directed the 2024 adaptation of the massively popular video game "Borderlands," which was a critical and commercial flop (though Roth has some ideas about what went wrong with it).

Speaking to Deadline about his appearance in "Euphoria" season 3, Roth said that creator and showrunner Sam Levinson is a friend of his and he'd had "an incredible experience" working with Levinson on his drama series "The Idol." The Batman cameo came about in a fairly straightforward way: "[Levinson] called me and he said, 'I've got something for you,' so of course I said yes," Roth explained. "I love acting for directors that I really respect."

New episodes of "Euphoria" air Sundays on HBO and HBO Max at 9 P.M. EST.