BTS: The Return

Mandatory military service now complete, BTS are back. Their new album Arirang was released on March 20th, their first album since 2022. Netflix, longtime proponents of the Korean Wave (Squid Game, K-Pop Demon Hunters, etc.), are releasing a documentary about this historic comeback.

So let’s unpack the trailer for BTS: THE RETURN. From the start we can tell that this film is packaged as a dramatic, heartwarming, epic story of friendship, success, and overcoming adversity. Seven young men, having reached the pinnacle of global music superstardom, put their careers on hold to complete compulsory military service. Now they’re back, and they’re recalibrating themselves for the world and pop culture of 2026.

Interestingly, instead of using BTS’s own music as the soundtrack for this trailer, we have a relaxing (though slowly building) groove reminiscent of lo-fi hip-hop. The trailer opens with shots of BTS performing in stadiums, and then shows footage from their members’ time in the Korean military.

The music in the trailer also features the sound of a ticking metronome. We see a metronome in extreme close up at 0:26, 0:31 and 0:37. The ticking sound is reminiscent of the ticking clock trope in trailer music, which we’ve been commenting on since at least the 2017 trailer for Dunkirk. In addition to the metronome’s ticking tone, the trailer’s music also features a bass drum throbbing in the background from 0:51 to 1:27, gradually shifting to double time. It evokes a pulsing heartbeat, while also taking the rhythm of an EDM buildup and dragging it out over 36 seconds. All the while, the harmonies are gradually rising upwards, a musically metaphorical nod to the band’s continued meteoric rise. At 1:19 we hear the sound of a crowd chanting “BTS” - and it is loosely in time with the trailer’s soundtrack.

This album takes its title, Arirang, from a song considered Korean’s unofficial national anthem, a song that was recorded by young Korean students in 1896 who had travelled to America to study at Howard University. BTS has drawn criticism for their whitewashed portrayal of a historically Black university in their animated video created for the album’s release.

At the end of the BTS: The Return trailer from 1:33-1:38 we hear the faint strains of what sounds like a wax recording of a young Korean male singer, a reference to the wax cylinder recording of Arirang at Howard University in 1896.

While arguably an underwhelming, safe, and predictable trailer soundtrack musically, there is no doubt that the BTS music in the actual film BTS: The Return will be strong.

BTS: The Return streams on Netflix on March 27.

— Jack Hui Litster