Was “Queendom 2” Cursed? The Sad Fates Of All The K-Pop Girl Groups That Participated

It has been almost a year since the K-Pop competition show Queendom 2 first aired last March. At the time, the girl groups that participated on the show — LOONA, Cosmic Girls (WJSN), Kep1er, VIVIZ, and Brave Girls (as well as soloist Hyolyn) — were all doing fairly well in their careers with varying levels of success.

With shows like Queendom and Kingdom, the groups that participate on them are usually hoping to get more well-established in the K-Pop industry by showing their performance prowess on a large platform. Therefore, the groups that participated on Queendom 2 were all expected to see a positive impact from their hard work!

But now, nearly a year later, it seems like pretty much the exact opposite has happened.

Starting with the obvious, as it’s the most recent, is the fate of Brave Girls. Just days ago, it was announced that all four members would be leaving their label, Brave Entertainment, after the expiration of their contracts.

Despite their boom in popularity in 2021 with the sudden success of their 2017 hit “Rollin'”, Brave Girls wasn’t able to ride on the unexpected opportunity, seemingly due to poor management on their label’s part. And though they were praised for their performances on Queendom 2, it just wasn’t enough to make a huge positive impact. We only hope that maybe they join a new label together and have a comeback that way!

Another group that participated on the show that has had trouble in recent times is LOONA. Between Chuu being suddenly removed from the group and several members filing to suspend their contracts with their label, BlockBerry Entertainment, among other issues, the future for LOONA as a group seems bleak.

At this point, with some members successfully getting their contracts suspended and others not, it’s hard to say what LOONA’s next moves will be. We only hope that the members are able to pursue whatever passions each of them has without being limited or troubled by BlockBerry Entertainment.

Out of all of the groups that participated on Queendom 2, it seemed like Cosmic Girls, who placed first overall, should see a drastic rise in their popularity after their time on the show. However, while they did have higher album sales for Sequence, which came out in July last year, fans of the group think that Starship Entertainment hasn’t taken advantage of their win as much as they could have.

In fact, with the group’s contracts set to expire within the month, there haven’t been any indications that the members will renew. Apparently during recent concerts, there were moments that seemed like the members were saying goodbye to their fans, making many worry that they’ll be disbanding soon. We’ll have to wait and see whether or not that does happen in the next couple of weeks.

Kep1er is a bit of a different story, given that they were already a temporary group to begin with. Their disbandment is set for July 2024, so they do have a year and a half left until then.

However, it seems that their time on Queendom 2 might not have had a huge impact on their career, at least not positively. With each of the three albums they’ve released, their sales numbers have gone down: First Impact, released before the show, sold around 396k units; Doublast, their first album after Queendom 2, sold about 353k; and Troubleshooter, their most recent album, made about 267k sales. It will be interesting to see if this trend continues, or if they end up having a delayed rise in popularity and success.

VIVIZ seems to be the only group that came out of Queendom 2 unscathed. Their most recent album, Various, which came out on January 31, did fairly well, and the group seems to be going strong with no signs of disbandment. Of course, they did already go through the sudden and unexpected disbandment of their former group, GFRIEND, before they went on Queendom 2, so hopefully they’ve already had their share of that kind of heartbreak!

The topic of the fates of the former contestants from Queendom 2 was discussed on Reddit recently, and here are what some people are saying about it.

We hope that all of these girls end up finding happiness and success in whatever they end up pursuing!