In 2018, a vibrant, visually arresting movie trailer came across my Instagram feed. It was posted by Disney Channel actress-turned-social media provocateur Bella Thorne, who appeared in it as a cheerleader in a crop top. The movie was called Assassination Nation, and it checked all my boxes: an edgy, internet-driven plot line, Tumblr aesthetics, and foreboding shots of the American flag. To be fair, I was a college junior.

But after watching it, my friends and I concluded it was the worst movie we’d ever seen, an exploitative, pointless, and pseudo-intellectual take on Gen Z culture. I looked up the writer/director online and saw he was a fledgling nepo baby. Well, that’s the end of his career, I thought.

That guy’s name was Sam Levinson, and the following year, he released the HBO teen drama Euphoria. It became the network’s second highest-watched show behind Game of Thrones, defined cultural trends, and exploded the careers of young actors like Zendaya, Jacob Elordi, Sydney Sweeney, and Hunter Schafer.

Euphoria ended this past weekend, and for the first time in the show’s history, a majority of critics and viewers gave it a thumbs down. But as someone who has hated Levinson this entire time, let me spell out exactly why his reactionary, misogynistic characterization of Gen Z women is so wrong—and why he should never be handed another blank check from HBO again.