AUSTIN ABRAMS BREAKS SILENCE AFTER EUPHORIA EXIT: “I WASN’T ASKED TO COME BACK” k2 💔

The “Resident Evil” star still feels affectionately toward Sam Levinson: “I just love him as a creator.”

Austin Abrams; Zendaya in ‘Euphoria’ season 3.Credit: VALERIE MACON/AFP via Getty; Eddy Chen/HBO

Austin Abrams never had the opportunity to appear in the final season of Euphoria.

The Dash & Lily star, who portrayed Ethan in the first two seasons of the HBO drama, reveals during an interview with Entertainment Weekly at EW’s 2026 San Diego Comic-Con Studio on Friday that he wasn’t asked to reprise his role in the recent third season of the show.

“That was a thing where it just seemed like maybe character-wise or something, it didn’t make sense,” Abrams says, noting his affection for the series’ showrunner, Sam Levinson. “But I love Sam. I just love him as a creator.”

Abrams also noted that he hasn’t seen Euphoria himself. “But granted, I haven’t watched the show in general,” he says.

Ethan was among the least-troubled teens at Euphoria High during the show’s first two seasons, and his presence on the series primarily came through his rocky romantic relationship with Kat (Barbie Ferreira). Since Ferreira also didn’t return for season 3, it logically follows that Abrams wouldn’t play a part in the final batch of episodes, as Levinson moved the action to Los Angeles after a significant time jump that took the characters out of high school and into early adulthood.

Abrams will next star in a new cinematic adaptation of Resident Evil, which reunites him with Weapons filmmaker Zach Cregger.

“Austin makes everything better, and he makes me look like I’m really good at my job,” Cregger tells EW at Comic-Con. “Your creative tuning fork needs to resonate, and you need to find people that make it resonate. And Austin really does that. We kind of realized really quick on Weapons that we saw the same movie, we kind of speak the same language and it was fun. So when it was time to put the next one together, it was just a done deal. There was no decision.”

Abrams concurs. “I remember the first week we did Weapons, I was like, ‘This is maybe my favorite week of work I’ve ever done,’” he says. “We just have a really fun creative back and forth where he knows what he wants, but he’s also open to suggestions, so coming into this was just more of that. And one of my favorite things about working with him on Resident Evil was just talking before a scene or talking [about] what was working, what wasn’t working.”

The Whalefall star also says that he didn’t have much experience with Resident Evil prior to signing on to the film because he was scared of the video game series’ horror elements. “I came on, definitely knowing Resident Evil and being scared of Resident Evil, but not having gone into it, playing it—mainly because I was too afraid to play it,” he says. “But since we started, I’ve played a bunch of ‘em.”

Resident Evil hits theaters on September 18.