NewJeans are officially back as 4 for what could perhaps be the most messy comeback possible … or not

In what is something of a surprise, given … well, everything, the NewJeans comeback is actually happening despite (or perhaps because of) everything happening with HYBE, ADOR, Min Hee Jin, and now former member Danielle.

The 2026 Summer of NewJeans video features the four members in a nighttime setting, and then there are also four individual videos and teaser pictures to follow.

Obviously given everything that’s transpired, the noise that now surrounds them almost outweighs everything else and I’m among the interested parties to see how it goes. There’s not only questions about their musical and conceptual direction, but internal company drama with how serious ADOR is, how much support HYBE will give them, and their relationship with peers/staff in the company. Hell, it should be interesting how other idols react to them as well and what they think doing so might do to their PR (the industry tends to keep it moving … right?). The fan reaction should be just as interesting, as there’s almost constant fanwars involving their fans and other fandoms from the same company, there’s anti-HYBE groundswell that might hypothetically support them, but also without Danielle and with everything that’s happened at ADOR, I wonder how much it’ll fracture NewJeans’ own fandom on this issue. Probably about 10 other angles I’m missing that you can point out in the comments.

Either way, this will undoubtedly be a bit weird and messy, but if the song is in a similar public-friendly mode as their other offerings, it should also be interesting to see exactly how much having popular music or a hit song can pave over everything else. Personally, given all the potential angles to this, I think people might be surprised by the lack of industry drama regarding this particularly because their comeback does support a normalization of their position that they’re simply moving on. They might not get the same opportunities anymore, but I would be surprised if it wasn’t relatively smooth because of that. We shall see.