Tedros Was The Victim All Along: Lily-Rose Depp Explains The Idol Finale

HBO's The Idol has been one of the most popular shows this summer, but Sam Levinson and The Weeknd can't be happy about it, as millions of fans have been waging a hate war against the show since the first episode was released. People hated the excessive amount of nudity the creators filled the show and the sensitive violent content they chose to include. Accusations of predatory behaviour were levelled at Levinson and The Weeknd.

On paper, the story of pop star Jocelyn being corrupted by sleazy cult leader Tedros looked like a perfect exploration of how the music industry treats rising stars, but the final product looked more like a 'hard-core soft porn' series rather than an honest exploration of the sensitive subject matter.

And while throughout most of the series, a majority of fans were convinced Tedros was taking advantage of the naive Jocelyn, the finale revealed it was the other way around all along, and Jocelyn was the real villain of the story.

The final episode sees Jocelyn ban Tedros from her inner circle and seemingly sever all ties with him. However, it then ends with her inviting Tedros to her concert and introducing him on stage as her true love. It was at that moment that fans were supposed to realise that she'd been using Tedros the whole time as a personal muse and that she had never been under his spell.

‘I think a lot of the audience will watch maybe the first few episodes and think that this guy is taking advantage of her. By the end he realises that she knows exactly what he’s doing and she knows exactly what she’s doing. Jocelyn is a very calculated and strategic person. She knows exactly what she wants and she’ll stop at nothing to get it. Tedros was her muse and that she got what she needed out of him,’ Lily-Rose Depp, the actress portraying Jocelyn, told Deadline.

Yes, in hindsight, it seems like all the previous episodes were a buildup to this unexpected yet inevitable reveal. However, few fans saw it coming. Ultimately, The Idol is not a tale about a pop star being corrupted by the music industry but a tale about the music industry attracting corrupt individuals who will stop at nothing to get what they want.

Source: Deadline.