Adult film star Maitland Ward has taken issue with one part of Sydney Sweeney’s storyline in the newest season of Euphoria.
The HBO series is known for graphic, often unsettling portrayals of sex, addiction, and trauma, but season three has faced a wave of backlash over one specific narrative choice.
While earlier seasons centered on the characters during high school, the new episodes jump ahead five years after season two, following them as they attempt to navigate adulthood and build independent lives.
Much of the criticism has focused on Cassie (played by Sydney Sweeney), particularly a plot point in which she launches an OnlyFans account to help fund her wedding.
The season includes scenes where Cassie is depicted in extreme roleplay scenarios: one shows her in a dog persona on a leash, and another features her styled like a baby with pigtails and a pacifier.
Those moments have already been widely debated online, and Ward has now added her voice—alongside other adult performers and real-life OnlyFans creators—raising concerns about how the show frames sex workers and sex work.
Ward runs a highly profitable OnlyFans account herself, reportedly earning six figures per month.
She argued that the baby-costume scene, in particular, leans into harmful assumptions by suggesting sex workers are inherently unethical or will do anything for money.
“In the climate we’re in, that they dressed her up as a baby to make pornographic OnlyFans content was beyond troubling and again serves to perpetuate stereotypes that sex workers have no moral compass and that they will do anything for money,” said Ward.
Ward also said the storyline reinforces other damaging misconceptions about the industry.
“And there’s always this untrue stigma that somehow sex work is synonymous with sex trafficking and abuse,” she said. “And they just said, let’s make a joke of it. That is so funny. I’m not laughing.”
She further suggested the scenes reflect more about the writers than about real experiences on creator platforms.
She added: “It’s just the guys in the writer’s room coming up with their fantasies. To take someone so traditionally blonde and beautiful with the biggest boobs and dress her up as a dog and baby is really bizarre, but at the same time so expected in Hollywood.”
Ward wasn’t alone in objecting to how OnlyFans and its creators are represented in Euphoria.
Another creator, Sydney Leathers—who has been active on the platform since 2017—also noted that parts of Cassie’s content as shown on-screen would not be allowed under the platform’s policies, adding that payment processors enforce restrictive compliance rules.
“There’s so much that they have her doing that is not even allowed on OnlyFans, and that alone is infuriating: the age-play stuff where she’s dressed as a baby in a diaper, for example,” she said.
Showrunner Sam Levinson has previously addressed the controversial storyline in comments to The Hollywood Reporter, explaining that the scenes were written to include a layer of absurdity that pulls viewers out of Cassie’s fantasy.
The show’s creator Sam Levinson has previously spoken about the plot line to The Hollywood Reporter, saying: “[Cassie] has got her dog house and her little dog ears and the nose, and that has its own humor, but what makes the scene is the fact that her housekeeper is the one filming it.
“What we wanted to always find is the other layer of absurdity that we’re able to tie into it so that we’re not too inside of her fantasy or illusion — the gag is to jump out, to break the wall.”