Fyre II: The resurrection of the festival that never happened

2017 feels like a different era, but the Fyre Festival remains the epicenter of our pop culture with its indelible legacy. A school bus, mattresses without sheets set up in emergency tents, and a sandwich of bread with a slice of cheese was the reality of arriving at a private island in the Bahamas. These moments are etched in our memories. Although the original attendees lived through an apocalypse of conditions, perhaps they were lucky enough to experience the modern version of Woodstock. Now, seven years later, the nightmare repeats itself: the Fyre Festival is back.

Despite being sentenced to four years and paying his investors more than 20 million euros, Billy McFarland is determined to try again. McFarland posted an ad on YouTube in August 2023 announcing Fyre II, “a revamped festival based on a 50-page plan he says he drew up while serving time,” the Wall Street Journal reports, indicating that the possible locations: Honduras, Belize, Turks and Caicos Islands, Jamaica and Panama. The ex-convict has already sold out all the tickets with prices ranging from 400 to 5,000 euros.

McFarland promises that this time it will be different: he is teaming up with experienced companies that are supposed to minimize the chaos. But if everything goes well, will attendees really be happy? Fyre Festival is now a brand that screams scam and disaster. McFarland’s offerings of stand-up comedy and “Karate Combat on the Beach” sound more like total bores. Why would anyone pay to attend Fyre II unless they were expecting the most chaos possible? It’s hard to imagine which influencers, celebrities and musicians will risk getting involved this time around.

Kendall Jenner, Bella Hadid, Hailey Baldwin and Emily Ratajkowski promoted the first festival and saw their reputations plummet when the scam was exposed. No one of their caliber is going to partner with McFarland now, and he’ll likely have trouble booking artists after the Blink-182 fiasco. The only solution would be to deliver an experience that goes beyond insanity: turning the event into an even more insane “Fyre Festival experience” by adding contaminated water, spraying attendees with poison and releasing some dangerous animal on the island.

Kendall Jenner has agreed to a $90,000 settlement in the lawsuit over the 2017 Fyre Festival fiasco.