When the discomfort gets excessive, Xander relents, confessing that he was lying about whatever. By completion of the episode, he is really indoctrinated into Tedros’s fold, having actually been moulded by abuse and adjustment to do his bidding.
HBO
On the face of it, Xander’s abuse scene (which, not for absolutely nothing, develops Sivan as a standout of the series), sits like another timeless example of the program stunning audiences into thinking the calculative power of Tedros. But it in fact opens something much more ominous and remarkable that the program has actually so far stopped working to develop – that Jocelyn may have been pulling the reins the whole time. In the preceding 3 episodes, Jocelyn is placed as a damaged and flexible doll, quickly led astray and mesmerised by Tedros’s appeals (still uncertain on what those precisely are, however we digress). Whatever intoxicating draw Tedros holds, we’re expected to think that, like the remainder of the cult he’s gotten along the method, Jocelyn is simply his latest fan. Although the most high profile of the lot, he can still manage her like a skeezy rat-tailed puppeteer.
Tesfaye has actually said in interviews about The Idol that his character is expected to seem like a fish out of water, somebody in over their head and gasping for air where he can. Whether by bad pacing, design over compound or lacklustre acting upon his part, up previously that hasn’t been absolutely obvious. Now, nevertheless, we’re beginning to see that Jocelyn might have a fair bit of villainy in her. More than simply a bruised star with the market pecking at the remains of her breakdown to see what they can build to safeguard their bottom line, we see peeks of somebody much more acutely in tune with her environments, a previous kid star who got aspiration and ruthlessness by osmosis from her mum. That Xander, devoid of airs and beautifies by discomfort, is so fast to toss insults at Jocelyn for her own coercive malevolence opens many concerns about what we have actually been viewing all along.
Finally, with one episode to go, The Idol may have simply shown itself to be more than simply exploitative abuse pornography, concealing its faults of not truly stating anything ingenious or smart under a shiny shine. It may in fact be the sort of 90s sexual thriller Tesfaye and Sam Levinson apparently took motivation from, with Depp its Sharon Stone-level ice queen. We’ve now discovered ourselves in a location we could not have actually anticipated at the start – sad that there’s not more of the program. It’s a pity its capacity for pleasing character advancement and twist-adjacent storytelling has actually been siphoned into the back half of its run. Knowing all of this, The Idol most likely might have been something excellent the whole time.
