From the moment Abel Tesfaye dropped out of high school in Toronto and moved into a cramped Parkdale apartment with friends, he was crafting more than music but also inventing an alter ego. He wasn’t just making music when he dropped those eerie, genre-bending mixtapes back in 2010. He was building a mask, one stitched together with sex, sorrow, drugs and a sound no one had ever heard before.

Fast forward fifteen years, and that mask has sold out stadiums, shattered records, and haunted millions. But what happens when a persona becomes too powerful? When the stage version of yourself becomes the only version anyone wants?

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The Weeknd persona became synonymous with shadowy falsettos, candid explorations of excess, and an anti-hero mystique that reshaped R&B and pop culture at large. Yet fame exacted its toll. In September 2022, mid-song at SoFi Stadium, Tesfaye’s voice gave out, forcing him offstage and into a period of soul-searching. What followed was a candid admission of a mental breakdown and a looming question: what happens when your own creation overwhelms you?

His sixth studio album, Hurry Up Tomorrow was released in January. This body of work dropped breadcrumbs toward an answer. Its title embodies a yearning to fast-forward life’s next chapter, to close out this era and step into the sunlight as Abel Tesfaye. Hence, he co-wrote and stars in a feature film of the same name, playing a fictionalized version of himself: a sleep-deprived musician whose chance meeting with an enigmatic woman (Jenna Ortega) sparks a surreal journey that tests identity, sanity, and purpose.

Barry Keoghan joins as the manager, and director Trey Edward Shults to help Tesfaye translate personal traumas into dreamlike horror-thriller sequences. This collaboration resulted in a story that, while rooted in real events, remains a team-crafted work of fiction designed to probe universal themes of burnout and rebirth.

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Here’s where it gets more interesting: the album Hurry Up Tomorrow was actually born from the film, not the other way around. The movie came first, and the music came pouring out of the story. “The songs and the scenes grew together,” he told The New York Times. That explains the cinematic sweep of tracks like ‘Cry for Me’, which layers operatic synths over trap beats to convey a persona at its apex and on the verge of farewell.

But it’s not all despair. There’s clarity, too. This project, Tesfaye says, was “emotionally cathartic.” And when you zoom out, you see the arc: from mixtape recluse to global icon, to someone now publicly detangling himself from the mythology he built.

He’s not quitting music. That’s key. But he is retiring the name. The Weeknd will perform one last time in this film and after that, it’s just Abel. Maybe that’s why the movie feels more like a quiet self-eulogy than a curtain call. He’s mourning the mask before we can.

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Set to hit theaters May 16, 2025, this feature is the last time we’ll see The Weeknd persona inhabit the big screen. Yet Tesfaye remains tantalizingly vague about whether this marks an end or a reinvention: “It could also just be a rebirth,” he hinted at CinemaCon.

In the end, Hurry Up Tomorrow is a philosophy of bold endings and braver beginnings. As an iconic line from the trailer says, “Call me by the old familiar name”, whether this truly closes the book on The Weeknd or simply flips to a fresh chapter remains to be seen. Regardless, no era really ends until you decide what comes next and Abel Tesfaye has already made his mark.

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