Last Thursday, the K-pop survival show Boys Planet, finally came to an end. And, this season finale has left me with way too many emotions.
Boys Planet is a competition show in which 98 candidates: 49 trainees from Korea (called the K-group) and 49 trainees from countries all over the world (called the G-group) compete to be a part of a nine member K-pop group that will make music for two and a half years.
However, rather than company executives choosing the members, fans from all over the world were able to vote in their favorite member, or otherwise known as a one pick, into the group. Then, the 9 members with the most votes from fans would end up as members of the final group, named ZERO BASE ONE (ZB1).
The concept of this show is not unique if you are familiar with K-pop survival shows. Boys Planet is a show created by the Korean television network MNET. It was designed to be a sequel to Girls Planet 999, which ended up creating the K-pop girl group Kep1er.
Now, when I first started Boys Planet, I did not expect to become this deeply invested, mainly because of my past with K-pop survival shows. I have watched many coming from MNET themselves including multiple seasons of Produce 101 and I-land, all of which had similar concepts to Boys Planet. To be honest, I became way too invested with these shows for my own good. Hence, I wanted to keep my guard up when watching Boys Planet.
However, there were many things throughout the course of the show that just turned me into a whole emotional mess.
The first were just the amazing covers that came out of the show. Some of my favorites include covers of Kill This Love by BLACKPINK, Tomboy by G-IDLE, Limousine by B’EO, Zoom by Jessi, and Law by BIBI and Yoon Mirae.
The second thing that dragged me even deeper into the show were the original songs that were performed by small groups of contestants on the show. My personal favorites ended up being Over Me (a perfect blend of K-pop and RnB plus everyone killed it on stage) and Say My Name (a total earworm plus the performance was just way too cute). I even ended up adding these to my Spotify playlists, which is a pretty rare thing for me to do when I watch survival shows.
I had also became attached to so many different trainees throughout the show and their friendships on screen. One of the things that are really nice about K-pop survival shows is that they not only provide us with good performances, but they also allow us to see what the contestants are like in other situations, such as games and downtime at their shared dorms. Through seeing these, I became quite attached to many different contestants and their friendships. This led me to giggling with joy whenever I got to see some of my favorite pairs together (I hope readers who have watched the show can agree with me that the friendship between the contestants Sung Hanbin and Zhang Hao was absolute goals!) but also crying straight buckets of tears whenever my favorite contestants (and friendship pairs) would be eliminated and/or broken up.
Finally, the biggest thing that definitely signified my over attachment to this season was the fact that I lowkey became a campaign manager for my “one pick,” Zhang Hao, a 23 year old contestant from China who came to this show to give becoming an idol one more shot. I instantly became attached due to his charismatic personality on stage and his insane talent. I even texted all of my family and friends not watching the show to vote for him and I made sure to submit my votes daily in order to ensure a better chance for him to make it into the group.
Ultimately, because of all these factors, the final left me an entire emotional mess. I cried hearing the final ballad that the contestants performed before the winners were announced. I was even more of a mess when it came to the announcement of the final lineup. On one hand, I was especially sad when some of my favorite candidates did not make it (#justiceforkeita). However, I also shed many tears and hugged my friends watching with me when our favorites ended up making it into the final group.
But, the cherry on top for me (emotions wise) was when it was announced that my one pick, Zhang Hao, ended up winning first place, making him the first foreign contestant of any K-pop survival show produced by MNET to win the entire thing! This moment was just truly iconic, as his win was the first ever win for a contestant from a foreign country ever won first place on a K-pop show.
Overall, I guess I can say that watching Boys Planet was definitely worth the emotional ride. Moreover, I am so excited to see what kind of music the boys debuting in ZB1 will create.