'The Idol' Ending Explained - Finale Recap, Spoilers

HBO's controversial miniseries The Idol is over, with five hours of viewing time and weeks of viral discourse culminating in...confusion. That's the best word I can think of to sum up this journey; disappointment may be an option for anyone who kept up hope for Sam Levinson and The Weeknd's series past that Rolling Stone exposé and the initial reviews out of Cannes. However, that initial let down probably happened with the first episode, when the show began its season-long trend of teasing what the show could have been—an incisive look at the sexist dynamics that power the music industry—before descending into a lurid show of sensationalism, via wholly un-sexy sex scenes and the damaging myth that truly great art stems from abuse and pain. Five installments later, The Idol ends with the image of Jocelyn as an empowered world star with a "menacing" cult leader under her thumb, and viewers are left to figure out how the hell she got there.

The finale starts with Jocelyn (Lily-Rose Depp) recording with Mike Dean (the real-life producer and friend of The Weeknd playing himself), as she completes the song with lyrics about her relationship with Tedros (The Weeknd, real name Abel Tesfaye). When the man himself comes in, looking very worse for the wear, he tries to take over the session in his usual manner, but Jocelyn stops him. He calls himself her "only form of inspiration," and she responds by saying he's "served his purpose" and needs to get out of her house. "I'm done with you," she says, before laying out his whole scheme, that he'd been obsessed with her since his prison days and got to her through Dyanne (Jennie Ruby Jane). Her assistant/bestie Leia (Rachel Sennott) and former co-star/frenemy Xander (Troye Sivan) are wearing smug smiles and nodding as Joss finally calls Tedros a "con man and fraud."

The seeds of this twist were sown in episode 4, when Jocelyn learned from sweet, sweet Chloe (Suzanne Son) that Tedros and Dyanne were a thing. The pop star's immediate response was to call up her actor ex Rob (Karl Glusman) and sleep with him while Tedros was listening at the door. It's unclear whether the start of episode 4 is the day after the party, or a week after, but either way Jocelyn's done such a rapid 180 that her turning on Tedros doesn't really land. It just feels like a scene is missing, and makes me wonder what else was left on the cutting room floor when the show was reworked from six episodes to five. Questions aside, Jocelyn now wants nothing to do with Tedros; his artists, however, can stay.

When Jocelyn gets a call from Live Nation exec Andrew Finkelstein (Eli Roth) setting up a meeting about her big tour, she rushes down to the basement where Tedros and the cult are staying. She wants Chloe, Izaak (Moses Summey), and Ramsey (singer-songwriter Ramsey) to open for the tour, and they have to put on a show for her team to convince them on her vision, or else they may cancel the tour all together. Joss is now the leader of the fledgling stars, usurping Tedros, the "sweaty, drunken, f--king pathetic mess." However, Tedros can still control Xander, who has a years-long beef with Joss that the show never properly explained, and wants to resume his own singing career.

Soon, Fink, record label exec Nikki (Jane Adams), and Joss's co-managers Chaim (Hank Azaria) and Destiny (Da'Vine Joy Randolph) arrive to the house for the truly bizarre meeting/showcase, where Tedros has instructed all of the cult members to keep the industry people there through pure sex appeal. Joss is still upstairs, and the team acknowledges how weird the vibe is, as Bianca (Bianca Ghezzi) makes Fink squirm and Tedros curses at Nikki and calls her a "Judas" for signing Dyanne without consulting him first. However, Destiny (who has seemingly drunk a bit of the Tedros Kool-Aid) convinces them all to stay and hear all of the undeniably talented singers. (If Red Rocket actress Son ever wants to transition into the music industry, I will be on the look out.)

As Jocelyn joins the showcase, Leia is outside on the phone with Rob, who says that Joss has been ignoring his calls. At the end of episode 4, Xander and one of the cult members tricked Rob into taking a compromising photo, with the bikini-clad girl saying she was the actor's fan and then crawling straight into his lap. Rob has now been accused of raping the girl at the party, and he needs Joss to back him up. A shocked Leia, who's convinced of Rob's innocence, returns to the room and tries to confront Xander throughout the showcase. He just deflects, saying that Joss is probably avoiding Rob's calls because she already knows. He asks if Leia's really sure what people are capable of, which shakes the assistant's already cracking faith in Joss.

Eddy Chen/HBO

After all of Joss's picks perform, Nikki reads the Rob news and brings it up to the room, saying that he's going to be digitally rendered out of the five percent of the superhero film that shows his face. Joss immediately knows Tedros set Rob up, and a single tear streams down her face as Tedros claims he's heard things about Rob and cues Xander to join the showcase, all while wearing a barely concealed grin. As Xander makes his return to singing after Jocelyn's mother (and maybe Jocelyn herself) sidelined his career, Joss drags Tedros out of the room and confronts him about Rob. As she tells him to get out for the umpteenth time, he taunts her with how much everyone in the room loves Xander's performance, hinting that he may keep the upper hand.

While all this has been going on, Joss's team has been strategizing on two separate sides of the couch. On one end, Chaim and Destiny whisper about how they can monetize Chloe, Izaak and Ramsey’s talents, and try to convince Fink that Joss was just as much of a mentor to them as Tedros. Then there's Nikki, who's praising Tedros for finding all the unknown talents and trying to convince him (through a possible withdrawal state?) to stick with her and bring her more of his artists. Nikki has been a fascinating, problematic boss throughout the season, and it would've been nice to have spent more time with her industry machinations, but instead the Rob news breaks. After Joss confronts Tedros, she tell Chaim to pay however much he wants to get out of her life, and Hank Azaria gets a nice moment where he threatens Tedros with a Little Red Riding Hood allegory.

Jocelyn's new song and performance is supposed to carry a tour that will sell out 70,000-seat stadiums. (That's the capacity for SoFi, where the show filmed the episodes final scenes.) The song itself sounds like a Weeknd hit (I hate that it's objectively good, minus the cringier lyrics), and Joss sells it by freestyle(?)-dancing in front of Fink, who sits in a chair in the middle of the room. The record exec had been wondering minutes later whether Joss was mentally sound, but after the performance that's essentially a lap dance, he's all in on the tour and the four opening acts: Chloe, Izaak, Ramsey, and Xander. (Joss doesn't object to Xander.)

While the cult all celebrates, three main characters are booted from the island (a.k.a. the music industry). Leia leaves willingly, finally quitting and leaving a note for Joss. Dyanne, who was supposed to release Jocelyn's old song "World Class Sinner" as her debut, is told by Nikki that the song's been tied up in "legal drama" and knows that it's really Jocelyn killing her big break. Tedros is escorted out by security (who unfortunately don't punch him) during Joss's performance, and Chaim offers him $500k to leave Joss alone forever. Tedros rips up the check (out of love? or something?), and Chaim initiates Plan B: getting Vanity Fair reporter Talia (Hari Nef) to write an exposé about Tedros's history of domestic abuse and sex trafficking. (By the way, remember that one Rolling Stone clip? Yeah, that was seemingly left on the cutting room floor.)

Eddy Chen/HBO

Fast forward six weeks: Joss and her artists are doing a soundcheck to play SoFi, after she released three hit singles and sold out the tour in three weeks. Chaim, Nikki, and Fink are bragging about Joss's success (bringing up the power of mental illness again, which yikes) and Tedros's downfall. The exposition dump also includes news that Tedros lost his club (and presumably the rest of his cult) and that some Live Nation employees and journalists staged a walkout over Joss's misogynistic lyrics, which just got the song more streams. But then, a timid Tedros walks up to will call, and checks into the stadium with a pass Jocelyn left under his real name, Mauricio Jackson.

After a tense moment where the guards mess with him, they let Tedros into Joss's green room, where Destiny warns him that she doesn’t care about his past but that she’ll kill him if he hurts Jocelyn. The couple reunites with Jocelyn telling him that "none of this means as much without you." After they embrace and Joss touches up her makeup, Tedros picks up a brush on the counter: "Did you say this was the brush your mom beat you with? It's brand new." Jocelyn says nothing and smiles. The implication seems to be that her claims of her mother's abuse weren't completely true, and that she's been manipulating everyone this whole time... Again, confusion.

The final scene, filmed during two of The Weeknd's concerts at SoFi in front of a packed house, shows Joss begin her concert by thanking her fans for their support during her "tough year" and introducing them to "the love of [her] life." As her team's jaws drop, Tedros walks on stage. The couple kisses, and Joss tells him, "You're mine forever. Now go stand over there." Tedros, defeated, follows her command.

Eddy Chen/HBO

Was Jocelyn manipulating Tedros the whole time?

The Idol's finale seems to make the argument that Jocelyn has been this master manipulator this whole time, who on the surface was succumbing to this "dangerous" cult leader but really was pulling his strings the whole time. Which, sure, that's the story the show set out to tell. The question now is whether it accomplished in telling that story, and it's pretty clear that critical and audience consensus is that the answer is no. Jocelyn coming into her full power in the final episode didn't hit from a storytelling perspective. The show still has numerous plot holes, and Tedros never seemed like more than "just A Guy" who somehow had all these incredibly talented artists at his beck and call. Viewers are left with an ending image that sums up the show as a whole: aesthetically extravagant, narratively empty.

Quinci LeGardye is an LA-based freelance writer who covers culture, politics, and mental health through a Black feminist lens. When she isn’t writing or checking Twitter, she’s probably watching the latest K-drama or giving a concert performance in her car.

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