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'Queendom 2' Ep 1: Viviz performs GFriend songs, everyone including Hyuna tear up

GFriend disbanded quite suddenly and three of its members ended up redebuting as Viviz

‘Queendom 2’ has finally begun. The much-awaited K-pop survival show was the source of excitement and anticipation as we had iconic idols like Hyolyn and GFriend members to currently popular groups like Loona and Kep1er participating as contestants. More than a million people tuned in for the exclusive preview of episode 0 while the premiere of episode 1 had the highest rating among all of the editions of the ‘Queendom’/’Kingdom’ series.

Having premiered on March 31 on Mnet’s TV channel, as well as their YouTube channel for global fans, ‘Queendom 2’ had a huge audience for its first episode with a nationwide rating of 0.8% in South Korea. It also topped March last week’s list of the most buzzworthy TV programs without any premiere. And the hype was definitely worth it as we got the first introduction of all of the contestants, behind-the-scenes preparations of round 1 and performances by Hyolyn and Viviz.

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Viviz performs GFriend songs for mission 1

In episode 1 of ‘Queendom 2’, we saw how the performance order was decided with Viviz going first and WJSN aka Cosmic Girls going last. With mission 1 being ‘signature songs’, Hyolyn who was second, performed the summer hit ‘Touch My Body’ which was all the rage worldwide in the 2010s and definitely a signature song of her K-pop group Sistar. But before the audience was in awe of her energetic and tropical stage, tears were rolling down everyone’s eyes when Viviz first took to the stage.

While Viviz only debuted in February 2022, all three of its members were previously part of the legendary third-gen girl group GFriend. According to SinB, they did not even know GFriend was going to be disbanded. And so with no bad blood among the girls, they continue to identify themselves as GFriend as evident by Viviz stating that they missed their other members in the ‘Queendom 2’ premiere. They even ended up calling leader Sowon to ask her opinion on what songs they should perform for the signature song mission.

Well, Viviz ended up giving a beautiful rendition of GFriend’s 'Time for the Moon Light’ and ‘Rough’ that brought everyone to tears. There were constant easter eggs for GFriend fans with the glaring one in the end as Viviz ended their performance in front of the debut dates of Viviz and GFriend. While Eunha herself cried after the performance, we had idols like WJSN’s Eunseo, Kep1er’s Yeseo and even Hyuna who was watching from her home tearing up.

'Crying buckets right now'

Several Knetizens kept posting that they had teared up and that they missed GFriend. One fan tweeted, “That wasn't a queendom performance that was a whole tribute to GFRIEND.” Another fan posted, “I never thought viviz would get to perform a gfriend song on queendom bc of the copyright thing with sou/mu but holy f**k im crying buckets right now 😭 i literally got goosebumps i miss ot6 this is so beautiful.” One fan shared, “Hyuna crying after seeing VIVIZ Queendom performance 😭 Literally everybody and their mothers cried today.”

Another commented, “Queendom really making us not move on over gfriend.” One Buddy said, “Noo buddies cried after viviz performed and eunha felt like crying after seeing them but she doesn’t wanna cry infront of them so she cried backstage.” Another pointed out, “WJSN’s Eunseo & KEP1ER’s Yeseo crying while watching VIVIZ’s performance!” One was emotional over the ending, “Ended with 6 people and that 01160209, gfriend and viviz's debut dates.” Another noticed, “No because everyone's mouth was just opened the whole time during viviz' performance.”