One ‘The Idol’ Scene Appears To Have Racked Up More Views On YouTube Than The Series Premiere On HBO

By now, most pop culturally obsessed people are familiar with the controversy regarding The Idol, the intentionally controversial new show from Euphoria creator Sam Levinson and Abel “The Weeknd” Tesfaye. The series premiere was as provocative as Cannes reviews indicated, in which Tedros begins to take control of Lily-Rose Depp’s pop star, Jocelyn, during a confusing sex scene. Of course, most critics have only seen one episode thus far, so they’re on the same page as the audience, but I didn’t see as much social media buzz during the premiere as one would expect.

Tesfaye’s performance as Tedros was certainly unsettling, but it doesn’t burn down any barns. I’m admittedly struck by how his character managed to rehearse saying “Hello, Angel” three times in different ways, yet the delivery was the same in all three instances. Was this purposeful Only Tesfaye knows, but plenty of viewers agree that there’s a standout performer among the cast, and she stole the pilot episode.

That would be K-pop star Jennie Kim of Blackpink. Jennie has been singled out by The New York Times as “the only reason to watch” the show. She portrays a party-time friend of Jocelyn and, more importantly (for the purposes of Jocelyn’s character development), the backup dancer who nails the choreography so well that we get to see her perform as a Jocelyn stand-in. And that particular scene took off on the Internet with this tweet capturing 2 million views over a few days.

Over on YouTube, the full dance has already nabbed over 1.5 million views and counting. A star is further reborn, it seems. And here’s The Hollywood Reporter‘s summation of The Idol‘s combined HBO and Max numbers on Sunday, which are considerably lower:

The Idol, which courted controversy with provocative trailers and was met with mostly negative reviews, drew 913,000 viewers across HBO (for the premiere and three replays) and Max on Sunday — with the majority of that likely coming via streaming on Max.

As THR notes, those HBO numbers will be firmed up on Tuesday at some point, so no conclusions can be drawn as of yet. However, it remains clear that audiences wouldn’t be mad to see a lot more of Jennie, either on The Idol or elsewhere. Fingers crossed.