Dreamcatcher’s 5th Anniversary Signals Changes And Future Content
K-Pop — Dreamcatcher Recall
The seven-member K-Pop group celebrated their fifth year since debut, with new content both obvious and hinted at for the future.
This past week saw Dreamcatcher celebrate their fifth year since debut, an accomplishment worthy of praise in a sometimes-volatile industry like K-Pop. I’ve reflected a lot on how Dreamcatcher has changed in the last five years, but seeing it go by and how happy everyone seemed was still a nice experience to have. While we didn’t hear of any obvious spoilers, it’s clear that with a few changes for the group, we’re likely to see quite a bit of content for the future.
Let's take a look at what happened with Dreamcatcher during their anniversary week!
[embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TthoPxinMg0[/embed]
We got a double-helping of Season’s Greetings content last week with two Dreamcatcher’s Notes dedicated to the filming and photoshoot that happened for both the Celestial Dreams and Sweet Dreams versions. It was nice to see the members of the group be delighted to do new things for this, from going to a more traditional, brightly-colored concept for Sweet Dreams and trying something new by exploring an ethereal, dream-like nightscape (with new photo settings/techniques) for Celestial Dreams. When you’ve been around as long as Dreamcatcher has, getting to do new things for these photoshoots can get a bit difficult, so to see them talk excitedly about things such as SuA going back to her younger days and Handong holding a moon model was nice.
[embed]https://twitter.com/hf_dreamcatcher/status/1481566748390621192[/embed]
As we found out a little later in the week, however, doing a loudly-colored photoshoot wasn’t the only new thing SuA would try. Her usual “commute to Young Street” photos showed off newly-dyed bright pink hair, a bit of a pivot from the red she’d had only a little while ago. SuA’s never appeared to stray very far from the dark-ish colors she’s had over the years, so this is a new and (from fans’ reactions) welcome change. SuA and her pink hair headed over to her usual radio gig, where her, Wendy, and Taehyun discussed the worst behaviors to witness during a blind date, with insincere talk, leaving part of the way into it, and showoffs being the three choices. None of these seemed particularly great, making it a bit of a tough one for me to decide, but the audience ultimately went with Taehyun’s choice, allowing him to spin a penalty for SuA and Wendy that landed on “ending fairy video”. That’ll definitely be interesting to see for the future.
[embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JEYvfpZLTdk[/embed]
The main attraction of this week, however, was celebrating Dreamcatcher’s 5th anniversary, and by all accounts, it delivered plenty of content. We got a peek into their 5th anniversary photoshoot, the results of which were available for the group’s official fan cafe event in Seoul, which was so popular at points that they reportedly had to stagger entry. Seeing the group in simple white shirts and blue jeans, looking both content and thankful at having reached this milestone, was great, not to mention how much fun they had with the self photo-taking button. At the time, the group’s somewhat consistent hair colors also allowed for some subunit hijinx, from a glasses mishap with “team blonde” to SuA, Siyeon, and Gahyeon treating their “team raven” photo like it was a family photoshoot. Overall this was a nice surprise — I hadn’t expected that they would have taken so many photos for their fifth anniversary, but in retrospect I’m glad they did.
[embed]https://twitter.com/hwang_eunbin/status/1481573183958691843[/embed]
But that wasn’t the only surprise that the group had in store for fans. After years of posts under unified platforms such as Dreamcatcher’s official Instagram and Weverse, Dreamcatcher members opened personal Instagram accounts for themselves. For those of you who are on the platform, here’s each member’s account:
Like when they first stepped onto Weverse, the group wasted no time dropping a number of personal pictures onto their accounts, causing a flurry of comments and kudos to the group for being able to get onto the platform. Personally, I have my concerns about this, as I work professionally in social media every day, so I know how difficult it can be to deal with random people on the internet with a high amount of accessibility to you. This is only heightened by my knowledge of what has happened to K-Pop idols on their social media platforms in the past. All that said, however, all of Dreamcatcher are adults and have proven plenty resilient to the internet and its dangers — they wouldn’t have chosen to sing about it during Dystopia if they weren’t. If the company, who have no doubt set up additional support structures for the group, believes this is the right time for personal Instagram, then that’s a decision I can respect and understand. Either way, I’ll be supportive and look forward to what individual flair each member decides to put on their accounts.
[embed]https://www.vlive.tv/post/1-27373611[/embed]
Of course, Dreamcatcher couldn’t let their 5th anniversary go by without being able to say hi to their fans over video, and the annual anniversary vLive this year was no exception. Filled with a table of food and a 5th anniversary cake, Dreamcatcher toasted yet another trip around the sun, reflected on some of their best memories from their time together, and made sure to express thankfulness to their fans, staff, and stylists for helping them get there. It was, overall, a pretty wholesome (and at times funny) broadcast, and one free of any direct spoilers. But the subtle changes were interesting — SuA talking about how she settled on her pink hair, Handong going back to her red hair from 2020, Gahyeon showing off her newly-short black bob cut, and more. These sorts of changes potentially signal that a comeback is in the works, with new styles and looks for what will be the beginning of a new Dreamcatcher story arc front and center to that. If Dreamcatcher is preparing, or has already done things in anticipation of their next album release, they weren’t saying it outright — but the visual implications will no doubt serve to fuel speculation until that first Mystery Code drops.
It was an exciting and heartwarming 5th anniversary for Dreamcatcher this past week, and with so much new that could potentially be seen moving forward for the group, I’ll be more than happy to report on it weekly for you all. Until then, be sure to clap, follow, and signal boost the weekly Dreamcatcher Recall if you like what you read, and I’ll be here at the same time next week with all the latest!
