Dreamcatcher Starts Their VillainouS Origin Story With Schedule, Pre-Orders, And Individual Teasers

A couple weeks of Alternate Reality Game-style mystery and hints from Dreamcatcher meant that the fandom was primed and ready to hear concrete news and happenings from the group’s inbound comeback, rumored up until this past week to be happening in late November. New music is always a welcome bit of excitement for both the group and their fans, and with this being Dreamcatcher’s first potential comeback past October in an already-crowded field meant that anticipation was at an all-time high.

Dreamcatcher and Dreamcatcher Company would oblige this past week and into this one, releasing a torrent of concrete details that officially put them on the road to their 2nd comeback of 2023. Let’s take a look at all of the news, updates, and other content we saw from the group as a result!

As always, Dreamcatcher kept pumping out the past and original content this past week in the midst of inbound comeback news. First was a video of new content from Main Dancer SuA, who debuted her new individual show “Do It With SuA”. With perhaps the end of SuA’s set of activity episodes with partner CeCi Korea, it seemed natural to bring the content underneath the official umbrella along with everyone else’s, which meant we got a fun treat with SuA deciding to watch horror movie “Smile” on Netflix with Yoohyeon along for the ride. It’s been a while since we had some true Tom and Jerry shenanigans and the duo delivered, with Yoohyeon getting jumpscared so badly she spilled iced tea on SuA’s clothes, SuA trying to convince herself she wasn’t scared, and the two of them filming a disturbing post-show credits “smille” scene for the camera. SuA’s a great host and has always been an entertaining, adventurous all-rounder, so I’ll be looking forward to more.

We also saw the beginning of the Dreamcatcher’s Note series for the latest tour in North American this past September, with the group’s first three cities covered. It does feel like these will be somewhat abbreviated as a result, with perhaps only one more Note incoming, but it was nice to hear and see the members talk about getting past some unfortunate but out-of-their-control luggage and makeup mishaps, practice their subunit and solo covers, and talk about some of the fun moments they intended to (or did) create for the tour, from JiU’s constant encouragement to do more “Silent NIght” drops to SuA wondering how they could make their stage performance of normally chill song “Jazz Bar” even more fanservice-y than ever. It was nice to see Dreamcatcher not be terribly bothered by (or at least adapt to) not having all their stuff, and, of course, to see that they were impressed and excited by all the fans in the new cities they visited (especially in Canada).

Speaking of the group’s travels, we also got news that Dreamcatcher landed a gig at the Harley-Davidson 120 Hong Kong Music Festival, celebrating 120 years of the company. Dreamcatcher’s coincidental wearing of fan-provided motorcyle jackets at the Dreamlantis/Dreamquest fansign a little while back may have just been a coincidental spoiler for this upcoming appearance. Checking off Hong Kong from their list of places where they’ve performed is just business as usual for Dreamcatcher, and for Handong it will perhaps be the closest thing to a performance in China to date, given that Hong Kong is a region of China. Adding to the AAA awards in the Philippines, it seems Dreamcatcher plans on keeping busy even with the holidays inbound.

All this said, the main attraction of this week was, of course, comeback news. First came domestic Dreamcatcher fans posting pictures of the limited (as in 99 of them) edition “Mirror With The Perfect Crown” items sold in the Dreamcatcher Official Store last week. A mysterious letter speaking cryptically about sacrificing for the crown and finding your own answers, a single dart, and a small hand mirror were the contents. Some received red darts and others green, but there have been no reports of a 99th person receiving anything different as of yet. Even though one fan went so far as to break the mirror to see if there was something underneath (there was not, oops), these just seemed at first glance to add to the intrigue of the comeback and the story surrounding it.

But as good as all of the ARG stuff has been, fans were hungry for actual details, and they got their wish as the Comeback Scheduler for Dreamcatcher’s newest album dropped this past week. Titled “VillainS”, but with a purposeful capital S to show the short form of the word “Versus” within it, the schedule showed a lead-up stretched out over the next couple weeks leading to release of the album on Wednesday, November 22nd. The album’s logo and text design were received quite well by fans, along with the confirmation of not just the date but the stylized crown that they’ve been seeing here and there in the ARG teasers to date.

Dreamcatcher Fans had only a couple days to wait before pre-order details dropped for the albums as well. Though only two versions of individual teasers seemed to be scheduled, the number of versions for pre-order will eventually be up to six, with one limited version, four normal versions, and a platform version with details to-be-announced. Additionally, and perhaps due to recent general news from South Korea’s environment ministry uncovering the mass amounts of plastic used in making K-Pop albums and resulting concern, Dreamcatcher Company appears to have made an interesting change to their normal version albums. Besides the obvious photographic cover images, the normal albums will not be hard cover, instead being more like a thinner magazine-type soft cover with inserts on the inside. Given that the inclusions this time around are mostly “card-like” (the usual photocards, postcards, and posters), this seems to be a conscious decision to both change up the look of some of Dreamcatcher’s albums while also being a bit more environmentally conscious. The normal versions will be taller as a result of this, so I’ll be looking forward to seeing how these new albums look and feel once fans get their hands on them.

Lastly, the lateness of this edition of the Dreamcatcher Recall (due to my charity livestream for Extra Life this past weekend) means that I can report on November 6th’s news and the fans also getting to see the group’s first individual teaser images, the first of two versions. These seem to show Dreamcatcher in an apparent start to their villain arc, having appeared to have overtaken a police office or other office space to plan. There’s a rebellious, badass vibe to all of the individual images posted on the group’s X/Twitter account and on Instagram.

We still have one more version’s teasers and the group images to go, but I would have to say after all this time with Dreamcatcher playing both innocent humans-turned-nightmares, spirits speaking out against hateful language, and fighters for the planet, I’m ready for Dreamcatcher to start their villain arc. It’s a fresh look for them while seemingly bringing back the serious and somewhat dark concept that took a brief break in what we ultimately saw in “BONVOYAGE” era, although the half-crazed imagery of those teasers ultimately did not pan out in the video. We’ll have to see how things go, but this is a great start so far! As always, you can count on me being here for all the latest news and updates on the group as we head towards a now-confirmed late November comeback! So for all that, and more, I’ll see you then!

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