So… that was it? Really? The showrunners and cast behind The Idol have been imploring us to stick it out to the end, that there was a twist coming that would really blow our heads off. But while there were scenes that had us gawping at the screens in astonishment, it was probably not in the way Abel Tesfaye and Sam Levinson envisioned.
Jocelyn was in control all along! And Tedros was unmasked as the bad guy, but the real villain in all of this is the music industry! Maybe?! But then Jocelyn realised she was actually in love with the man abusing her, so that made it all okay, actually! Confused? Us too! Nothing makes sense! However, let’s try and break it down all the same, shall we?
The finale
We join Jocelyn (Lily-Rose Depp) and “the family” (Mike Dean’s still inexplicably there, hilariously jamming away on a sax). It turns out that Joss has got a brand new beat: a song in which she reveals how much she likes being choked. If you ignore the lyrics, it is something of a bop, and she feels that it – alongside another track she’s been cooking up – is worth showcasing to her managers, who are handily due to arrive at 1pm.
But she’s finally seen through Tedros (Abel Tesfaye) and tells him she’s done with him; that he’s “a con man and a fraud” (correct) after revealing that he had planned all along to get to her through Dyanne (Jennie Kim, who ended up being wasted in this role, despite all the pre-show publicity hype). She tells him to sling his hook, and he’s emotionally unravelling – we know this because it's echoed by the unravelling of his cherished rat tail. See! These people understand symbolism!
Then: the showcase. Jocelyn has told her people – they’re her people now, not Tedros’s – that they need to put on the greatest show of their lives, and if they land it, they can all become part of her stadium tour support act. Tedros is still hanging about, so she tells him to piss off again, calling him a “a sweaty, drunken fucking pathetic mess” (also correct!)
As for the lowlights of this sweaty, Gen Z version of Burlesque: is it the bleached eyebrowed Izaak (Moses Sumney) dry humping Nikki’s (Jane Adams) face? The group performance, rivalling The X Factor All Star Rejects song ‘n’ dance routines of yore? Xander’s (Troye Sivan) unholy version of George Harrison’s "My Sweet Lord"? Tedros telling Nikki she’s a "TikTok obsessed algorithm cunt”, which is met by the response, “I’m your cunt”?
But it's all leading up Jocelyn's new song, "Dollhouse", which sees her go full Lana Del Rey (not the worst thing in the world) albeit she’s singing about being choked, again, and being “dirty”, again, and it ends in the refrain, “Am I playing' all right now, daddy?” Then, there’s the demented dancing. Remember M3GAN the robot doll? Not too far off.
Security turns up to cart off Tedros, who has violently refused to take a $500k payoff. As a side note: it turns out Tedros and Xander used that photo op with Heartthrob Rob to accuse him of rape, so he gets digitally replaced in his superhero movie. This is a truly tawdry part of the episode, which seems to imply that it’s commonplace for women to falsely accuse men in the public eye of sexual assault, especially when it’s then insinuated later that Jocelyn also concocted tales of abuse from her late mum. Any notion from the showrunners that this is a series that ultimately promotes female empowerment is forever undermined by these storylines.
So, where are we at? Oh yes. Finklestein green lights the tour with all the kids (and is off to “change his shorts”), Leia (Rachel Sennott) quits after the Rob set-up is revealed, and Dyanne’s version of "World Class Sinner / I’m A Freak" is shelved.
Then, when a simple phone call would have sufficed, the Vanity Fair journalist (Hari Nef) meets Chaim (Hank Azaria) in a car park where he pitches her a new idea: do an expose on Tedros, rather than the cover feature her editor wanted on Jocelyn. Sure!
We jump forward six weeks later to the opening night of Jocelyn’s tour and all the muso guys are congratulating themselves on getting rid of Tedros, thanks to the killer Vanity Fair article. The power of the pen: we love to see it. But they would have got away with it, if it wasn’t for that pesky Jocelyn… still being in love with Tedros? The “big” reveal, stretched out unnecessarily for a good 10 minutes, was that Tedros – now going by his real name, Mauricio Jackson – is given an AAA pass from Jocelyn.
Even her team is beginning to accept him. Joss tells him that she missed him and that, “none of this means as much without you. I don’t like being apart.” But when Tedros asks Joss again about the hairbrush that her mother allegedly used to beat her with, it turns out it’s… new. This is not the whiplash-worthy twist that the creators assumed it would be, but suggests that maybe Jocelyn hasn’t been entirely honest.
Anyway, extremely problematic plot revelations aside: Jocelyn heads out on stage (filmed at a real life The Weeknd concert, fact fans) and introduces Tedros as “the man who pulled me through the darkest hours and into the light… the love of my life”. She kisses him and tells him “you’re mine, forever”. Then, in a final line of dialogue that feels jammed in to push home the fact that she’s actually the one in control, she says: “Now go and stand over there.”
