For as much talk as there is of late about how “terrible” and “harrowing” it is to be a celebrity, perhaps the worst fate in the present climate is being someone who “dares” to speak “ill” (a.k.a. point out certain flaws and hypocrisies in the work compared to the lifestyle) of a celebrity. With all the tools available at a fan’s disposal to “end” the person who says something they don’t like about their “god” in the twenty-first century, it truly has never been a scarier time for the mere expression of an opinion.
Perhaps the biggest mistake one can make about Swarm is assuming it’s a satire. As though someone in a particularly “passionate” fanbase wouldn’t do something that unhinged. That someone, in this “fictional” case, being Andrea “Dre” Greene (Dominique Fishback). An “awkward, gawky” girl who, as it becomes immediately clear, has a very unhealthy relationship with her “bestie”/“sister” (Dre, we later find out, was adopted by Marissa’s parents), Marissa Jackson (Chloe Bailey, adding another meta element to the show for being Beyoncé’s protégée). The two “share” an apartment in Houston (meaning Marissa pays the rent, often by asking for supplemental support from her parents, who aren’t ware of Dre’s presence in her life…or, at least, they pretend not to be). Again, not a coincidence, considering Beyoncé hails from “H-Town.” Nor is it a coincidence that the show is called Swarm to echo the fanbase name of the Beyhive. Or that the show’s creator, Donald Glover, worked with Beyoncé on The Lion King, and that proximity to her perhaps gave a new level of insight into the obsessiveness her level of stardom encounters. Glover’s co-creator, Janine Nabers, also has plenty of experience in playing up the surreal nature of fandom, with a show like UnREAL also tapping into a form of celebrity culture (even if “reality star”-based) and how it “feeds” fans. Most of whom are looking to be fed because it fills some kind of void within them. A void everyone has to fill, one way or another.
In Dre’s situation, worshipping Ni’Jah (Nirine S. Brown)—the obvious Beyoncé stand-in—and deluding herself into thinking she’s part of The Swarm “family” is a way to tell herself that she is loved, that she belongs to a “tribe.” Case in point, her insistence to Marissa, “They’re my friends.” Marissa has to remind, “They are not your friends. Those are some crazy-ass fans. They don’t give a fuck about you, you know that, right? It’s not real.” But it’s the “realest” thing Dre has in terms of a source of “community” and “common ground.” As a foster child, she was clearly cast out from her own original tribe early on, the sting of abandonment not quite as sweet as being part of the bees of Ni’Jah’s hive. Therefore being the one to sting instead of getting stung. The protective bubble of “love” that Ni’Jah fills Dre with is matched only by the one that Marissa fills her with (and yes, it’s as “big lesbian crush,” to quote Janis Ian, as it sounds). But, as far as Dre is concerned, their rapport is being poisoned by the presence of another one of Marissa’s new boyfriends, Khalid (Damson Idris). Who Dre freely watches fucking her sister without Marissa knowing. At first, when Khalid catches her, his reaction is creeped out before giving way to being slightly turned on as he performs with even more gusto.
Later, he calls her out for being such an obvious virgin (nicknaming her “Cherry Pie”) as Marissa finds out that Dre is short on rent. A recurring theme that will come full-circle in the final episode in that Dre still “miraculously” finds a way to afford Ni’Jah concert tickets even when she can’t afford rent (this being the “magic” of a credit card). Notably, all episodes (except for number six) start out with, “This is not a work of fiction. Any similarity to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events, is intentional.” A tongue-in-cheek “disclaimer” from Glover and Nabers that becomes ultra-meta in episode six. The first episode, “Stung,” begins in April 2016, better known to the Beyhive as: the month that Beyoncé released Lemonade. Still her most acclaimed album to date. Viewers are also introduced to the loud buzzing sound they’ll become accustomed to hearing whenever some crazy behavior is about to ensue. This includes Dre applying for a Discover card and using it to buy $1,800 concert tickets for Ni’Jah, the obvious fictionalized version of Beyoncé described in a bio as: “Texas native Ni’Jah is no stranger to fame. After being discovered on talent competition Star Seek, she led 90s icon R&B group XLLENT. Her solo career began with smash hit ‘Love on a Cloud,’ which helped her debut solo album, Loveli Days, go double platinum.” Yes, it’s a familiar mirror of Bey’s own come-up story.
We’re given further insight into how some forms of obsession are more acceptable than others in that having multiple article clippings and photos up on one’s wall is deemed “enthusiasm.” This barrage of mass media being what we see in Dre’s room. And yet, enthusiasm gives way to psychopathy when a person feels the need to bludgeon anyone who says something disparaging about Dre’s idol. The only other person she defends so violently is Marissa, who kills herself at the end of the first episode.
In episode two, “Honey,” Dre finds herself further avenging (after already killing Khalid) Marissa’s death in Fayetteville, Tennessee. By this time, it’s August of 2017, and she’s working at a strip club called The Lure. It’s there that fellow stripper “Halsey” (real name: Hailey) is given life by Paris Jackson, playing up the “I’m Black” dialogue with perfect irony-drenched poise. But Dre—presently going by “Carmen”—has no place for new friends in her life, determined to kill Reggie a.k.a. Tonk (Atkins Estimond), the person who commented of Marissa’s death, “That nigga got what she deserved. Stupid AF.” This in response to someone else saying, “I heard she killed herself to Festival.” A Ni’Jah single from Evolution (a title not unlike Renaissance).
When Dre confronts Reggie about another comment in which he says Ni’Jah could die and he wouldn’t miss one song of hers, he proves to be a salient example of the online troll who would never stand by his statements in real life out of shame (“I don’t remember sayin’ all that”—as though posting in a fugue state of arbitrary contempt that needs to be funneled into the vessel of a pop star. Dre is happy to remind, “But you did”). In what will prove to be one of many in a series of dumb luck instances that allows her to keep killing without being detected (what will later be called “fallin’ through the cracks”), she is aided in the murder of Tonk by her fellow strippers, who assume he’s trying to sexually assault her. In thanks, Dre leaves them in the lurch by driving away from the house and disappearing into her next new identity.
Episode three, “Taste,” shows us a throwback clip of Marissa talking up Ni’Jah (“We gotta protect her at all costs”) before the title card prompts us with the place and time, “Seattle, Washington, December 2017.” Dre has broken into someone’s house and continues her running script of asking, “Who’s your favorite artist?” When the person in question answers “Lil Gibble,” Dre demands, “How many Grammys does Lil Gibble have?” “I don’t know.” “None. Ni’Jah has twenty-six.” This a clear allusion to Bey’s thirty-two. Indeed, Glover and Nabers are meticulous about their references, from Solange attacking Jay-Z in an elevator to Beyoncé getting bitten at a party where Sanaa Lathan was rumored to be the culprit (which will soon be heavily parodied in the episode).
The next scene in “Taste” after Dre’s Grammy question finds her channeling Patrick Bateman as she mops up the blood to a Ni’Jah tune called “Agatha” that goes, “Avant-garde coochy/You been used to the civilians/Eat the peach right/We ain’t shoppin’ at Pavilions.” In the car she’s about to steal from her dead victim, Dre opens a phantom text from Marissa (she’s been keeping the ghost alive by texting herself from Marissa’s phone) that asks the size of Alice Dudley’s (Ashley Dougherty) casket for commenting of the Bey and Jay (recreated as Ni’Jah and Caché) elevator scene, “I thought you were a feminist and then you’re with this man.” But her plans to kill Alice at her gym (which she’s allowed access to via more dumb luck) are foiled by the sight of someone wearing a Caché tour jacket and a prominently displayed backstage pass attached to his person. This vision has her chasing a new butterfly altogether. Using him and preying on his vulnerabilities (food) to get what she wants—access to Caché’s tour after-party—eventually, viewers find that the episode is called “Taste” because Dre does end up tasting of the “forbidden fruit” that is Ni’Jah by literally biting her at said party.
This fittingly leads into an episode called “Running Scared,” wherein we find Dre, appropriately, even more on the run than usual after Bitegate. Ironically, after news of the bite leaks, The Swarm finds her to be the greatest threat to Ni’Jah of all …instead of her, let’s say, “fiercest” defender. The time and location has jumped to April 2018 in Manchester, Tennessee. Where Bonnaroo famously takes place (this being a nod to Bey’s Coachella performance in 2018, branded “Beychella,” and rescheduled from her plans to headline in 2017). It’s also where Billie Eilish (who has a slightly less intense fanbase) makes her grand entrance as motherly Eva, a cult leader who takes “Kayla” under her wing, insisting she’s drawn to women with names similar-sounding to her own: “Kayla, Clarissa—” “Marissa?” Dre chimes in hopefully. Inside the too-good-to-be-true compound, the “tribe” (that’s actually the word Eva uses) offers to get her an artist pass into Bonnaroo, prompting Dre to open up about how she’s “friends” with Ni’Jah, but that the last time they saw each other, they had a “misunderstanding.” Eva and the others play along with whatever Dre wants to believe, with Eva knowing that she’ll soon get her under her spell through the wonders of hypnosis, leading Dre to confess not only her real name, but some of the murderous things she’s done.
Despite the theoretical bond that such honesty might create between her and Eva, who kisses Dre to cinch the deal, it’s no match for Dre’s loyalty to Ni’Jah, for whom she will always literally kill for. Especially when she finds out the cult bitches were lying and they’ve had her head so inside out that she didn’t realize it was already Saturday. Ni’Jah’s headlining day. And lo and behold, no “artist pass” to allow her entry into the festival. After dealing with the cult (read: killing most of them) she gets in her stolen car and speeds to the venue. “Tragically,” it’s too late. The show is already over, forcing Dre to watch the streaming version of it while crying.
It’s perhaps long before this point in the limited series that some might be wondering, “Why am I watching this if I feel absolutely no empathy for this character? That, in fact, they make me as murderous toward them as they are toward anyone who dislikes Ni’Jah?” Because, even with all the bids to render Dre as “winsome” with her sad background, societal ostracism, etc., one tends to feel as much bristling by being around her as anyone else in the series. And so, the answer to the aforementioned question lies in the reality that, despite being hard to watch, it’s nonetheless a study in the horror show that is celebrity worship syndrome. In Dre’s scenario, it’s the worst strain of it: borderline-pathological. A willingness to commit crimes “for” said celebrity. And, like most who are down the cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs rabbit hole, Dre can never see just how much of a bottom-feeding parasite she’s become in the process. For not only does she kill at the drop of a comment that rubs her the wrong way, she also attaches to any source that shows her enough of the right kind of affection.
Affection she certainly never got in her foster home (apart from Marissa). We’re taken back to the trauma of this household in episode five, “Girl, Bye.” A teleplay, it seems worth noting, that was co-written by none other than Malia Obama (one will do their best to refrain from coughing the words “nepo baby”). Considering the Obamas’ well-documented love for Bey and Jay, it lends another spine-chilling uncanniness to the overall product and its meta nature. “Girl, Bye” jumps us forward in the timeline to May 2018 in Houston, Texas. At the mall trying to get Marissa’s phone turned back on, Dre clocks a poster for the Running Scared II poster (meant to allude to the On the Run II Tour that Jay-Z and Beyoncé embarked upon the same year). She’s spotted by Marissa’s former boss while salivating over the ad and obliged to have lunch with her in the food court, making up a story about how she met Ni’Jah and they’ve become really close.
Dre is, obviously, more out of options than ever and feeling pushed to the edge because Marissa’s father, Harris (Leon a.k.a. the saint in the “Like A Prayer” video), is the one who disconnected Marissa’s phone. Which serves as one of Dre’s primary delusion lifelines. Thus, she goes back to the Jacksons’ house with the intention of threatening her former parents with a gun to get them to turn the phone on again. All she’s met with, however, is venomous rage that perhaps even transcends her own as Harris chases her out with a shotgun after pronouncing, “This is Texas. I’ll shoot your ass and have a beer over your dead body.”
To layer on more meta cachet, Chloe x Halle’s “All I Ever Wanted” plays as Dre runs from Harris and finds herself in Marissa’s old room. Cast out of the house once again, Dre suffers anew from the pain of being unwanted. With only The Swarm to turn to online for something resembling “kinship.” The episode is humorously ended with Erykah Badu’s “Caint Use My Phone” (a riff on “Tyrone”) playing during the credits.
Episode six, “Fallin’ Through the Cracks,” subsequently turns expectations upside down as it plays out like a true crime documentary that flashes ostensibly way forward into the future. One wherein Loretta Greene (Heather Simms), the Black female detective who linked all the murders Dre committed together, rehashes how she unearthed the killer behind all these cold cases through one glaring motive: Ni’Jah. Loretta notes of how no one put the pieces together for so long about Dre, “I’ve seen this before.” The director asks, “Seen what?” “Black women, fallin’ through the cracks.” To warp the meaning behind the previous disclaimer at the beginning of every episode, none of the same actors appear to play who are now the “real” people in the story, being played by “themselves.” Nabers and Glover prompt things to get meta once again at the end of the episode, when Glover is interviewed about his next project, based on Dre’s story, commenting “I’m directing this show that I’m working on right now with like, uh, Chloe and Damson and Dom Fishback. It’s in the works, it’s going well.”
While “Fallin’ Through the Cracks” might have shown us “Tony’s” true fate (getting arrested for jumping onstage at a Ni’Jah concert), the final episode, given the fit-for-a-delusional-person title of “God Only Makes Happy Endings,” takes viewers to Glover’s beloved Atlanta in June of 2018. Here we’re given a sense of how Dre-as-Tony’s life briefly took a turn for the better before they finally surrendered to their Ni’Jah “protecting” methods again. For Tony meets Rashida Thompson (Kiersey Clemons), a college student who is surprisingly drawn to Dre. And has no idea how eerie it is for her to ask, after inviting Dre back to her house, “How are you so chill? You should be like a med student or a serial killer.” Alas, we’ll never know if Dre was a Pisces or a Virgo (these being the signs most closely aligned with serial killing). Probably the latter…you know, with its Beyoncé connection and all.
In an interview with Elle before Lemonade’s release, Beyoncé stated, “I hope I can create art that helps people heal [for Dre, that “healing” comes in the form of mass murder]. Art that makes people feel proud of their struggle. Everyone experiences pain, but sometimes you need to be uncomfortable to transform.” Dre was uncomfortable and she did transform…into Tony (this name being an homage to Tony Soprano, as both he and Don Draper were inspirations in the creation of this character). But transformation doesn’t always necessarily mean “improvement” or “leveling up.” The very thing that celebrities want to believe they’re encouraging with their work. This done while condemning and being freaked out by the potential for Dre’s mutant strain of “fandom.” Yet celebrities simultaneously feed off such shades of ardor via their ever-burgeoning bank accounts. Begging the question of who the real “antagonist” is in this dynamic. Like the fat cat industrialist or the tabloid journalist claiming they wouldn’t be in business if there wasn’t a public demand, we sometimes have to wonder if that’s really true. If the existence actually creates the demand, not the other way around.
On 2019’s “Black Parade,” Beyoncé brags, “Hear ‘em swarmin’ right? Bees is known to bite,” as though encouraging the type of drone army behavior fandoms have become known for. Each one sharing its own unique celebrity worship syndrome. And, should Glover and Nabers decide to approach another fandom in a series format, they might consider one that’s far likelier to be even more murderous than the Beyhive: the Barbz.
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