Watch: Kep1er, Brave Girls, WJSN, And LOONA Perform Hit Tracks As "Queendom 2" Reveals Round 1 Rankings And Round 2 Mission

The competition has begun to heat up on “Queendom 2”!

On the April 7 broadcast of Mnet’s idol competition show “Queendom 2,” Kep1er, Brave Girls, and WJSN continued with Round 1 following VIVIZ and Hyolyn’s performances last week. Following all the performances, the Round 1 results were revealed.

Last week, VIVIZ and Hyolyn kicked off Round 1 of competition where they both performed their most representative tracks. Although LOONA was slated to perform too, the group sat out filming after 11 of 12 members tested positive for COVID-19.

As Kep1er only just made their debut earlier this year, the group revealed that this was their first-ever performance in front of an audience. During their performance preparations, Kep1er looked up responses to the lineup announcement of “Queendom 2.” Since Kep1er was formed on Mnet’s survival program “Girls Planet 999,” some viewers showed concern that Mnet had included them in the “Queendom 2” lineup to help promote them.

Mashiro commented, “I did predict that there’d be talk about our casting.” Choi Yu Jin added, “This is something where no matter how much we say that’s not true, it won’t work.” Responding to the members’ concerns, the producers also revealed that they worried a lot about casting Kep1er.

The group continued, “We can’t just do well. We have to do better than others.” Kim Da Yeon shared, “If we don’t do well in the first round, it’ll seem like we’ve come out [on the program] because we’re ‘Mnet’s daughters.’ We want to put in all our effort and show that we’re a group that’s come out because we’re skilled.”

Despite their struggles throughout rehearsals, Kep1er put on a powerful and energetic performance of their debut track “WA DA DA.”

Up next was Brave Girls, who expressed disappointment that none of the other groups had chosen them as their rivals. Yuna commented, “I think it’s because we haven’t shown them anything yet.”

For their most representative track, Brave Girls wanted to choose something that wasn’t as obvious as their hit song “Rollin’.” However, due to “Rollin'” inevitably being their most famous song, Minyoung shared, “I do think we have to do ‘Rollin’,’ but I want to show a bit of a different image.”

The group talked about wanting to emphasize performance and dance as Yuna added, “When you look at comments, they’re all like, ‘Aren’t Brave Girls all in their 30s?’ I want to break that stereotype.”

Watch Brave Girls’ performance of “Chi Mat Ba Ram” and “Rollin'” here!

During WJSN’s preparations, the group talked about not particularly having popular songs among the public, despite being well-known as a group. SeolA commented, “We’re not super successful idols that have won No. 1 on music shows for consecutive weeks or have representative songs. It’s frustrating to always be in the middle. I want to break that.”

The group decided to perform “As You Wish,” their song that takes over music charts as people ring in the new year. However, just a week before competition day, member Eunseo was diagnosed with COVID-19. Instead of leaving her out of the performance, leader Exy commented, “The picture that Eunseo has is so big, so we can’t do it without her.”

Watch WJSN’s performance here!

Following WJSN’s performance, the group broke out into tears from the unfortunate mishap on stage. While they had planned an extravagant performance with an hourglass, the prop shattered on stage at the beginning. Not only were they unable to properly execute specific moves they had planned with the hourglass, the stage had also become slippery because of all the sand that had fallen out from the broken prop.

After the five performances, the live audience began voting for their two favorite performances. Later, the groups also did self-evaluations and chose the groups that were one rank above and one rank below them. The winner of Round 1 would then be determined using live audience votes, global audience votes, and self-evaluation scores.

For the team below them, VIVIZ chose WJSN, who chose Kep1er. Hyolyn, Kep1er, and Brave Girls all chose VIVIZ as the group ranking below them, shocking the group.

Next, the global vote ranking was revealed. In first place was Hyolyn, followed by WJSN, VIVIZ, Kep1er, then Brave Girls.

Winning the audience vote, global vote, and self-evaluation, Hyolyn topped the rankings for Round 1. WJSN placed second, VIVIZ third, Kep1er fourth, and Brave Girls fifth. As they could not participate in the round, LOONA automatically placed sixth, but their performance of “PTT (Paint the Town)” was belatedly revealed.

At the end of the episode, the next mission for Round 2 was revealed to be a “Cover Competition,” where each group must interpret another artist’s song in their own way. In the order of their Round 1 rankings, the competitors chose which team they wanted to cover. Hyolyn picked LOONA, surprising the other groups who also wanted to choose them. On the other hand, WJSN chose VIVIZ, leaving Brave Girls and Kep1er to swap with each other.

The next episode of “Queendom 2” airs on April 14 at 9:20 p.m. KST.

Catch up with last week’s premiere episode here!

Watch Now

Source (1) (2)