The Idol Episode 3 Was So Triggering, It Made People Stop Watching Entirely
The fans are done with Levinson and The Weeknd's show.
HBO's The Idol is definitely the most popular as well as the most controversial show of this summer. Even before the first episode aired on June 4, people were creeped out by reports of troubled production and excessive amounts of nudity that Sam Levinson and The Weeknd added to the script, so many refused to watch the highly anticipated series.
Still, the first three episodes of The Idol managed to bring in some pretty impressive ratings for HBO, indicating that the show had found its audience after all. But now, it looks like even those fans who liked Levinson's project have decided to stop watching it after seeing the horrible Episode 3 finale.
At the end of the episode, people were shocked to see The Weeknd's character Tedros beat Lily-Rose Depp's Jocelyn with a hairbrush in front of her friends — but that brutal scene isn't the reason why fans decided to cancel The Idol. It was actually the next scene that upset viewers the most.
Yes, when we thought that things couldn't get worse for The Idol characters, the creators found a way to make their show even more unbearable. The next morning after the attack, Jocelyn thanked Tedros for beating her up, making it clear The Weeknd and Sam Levinson were both completely detached from reality while working on the script.
People felt that the outcome of this horrific torture scene was too much to stomach and accused the creators of using excessive violence just for the sake of violence, not caring about fans' reaction at all. Also, many claim that The Weeknd's Tedros simply doesn't work as a character — especially as a powerful and charismatic cult leader that he's supposed to be.
Even halfway through the season, The Idol still lacks coherence, which makes viewers angry that they're wasting their time on the show. And with the final scene of Episode 3, it looks like the creators have no intention of fixing the series, sticking to their shocking storytelling approach instead of making the characters and story more compelling and believable.
The Idol Episode 4 is scheduled to release on June 25, 2023.