BTS have unveiled the trailer for BTS: The Return, which chronicles the making of their highly anticipated pop comeback, Arirang.
The album, arriving March 20, is their first LP since every member completed mandatory military service in South Korea. The behind-the-scenes documentary will debut on March 27 on Netflix. In the new preview dropped on Monday, all seven members — RM, Jin, Jimin, V, Suga, J-Hope and Jung Kook — are captured reflecting on their time apart. As clips of the group performing onstage in front of thousands of fans flash across the screen, one member says in a voiceover, “We are finally back where we’re meant to be.”
The clip also shows the group in Los Angeles, where they reunited to create their first album in more than five years. “In the military, time just passed by, but here in L.A., you really feel the impermanence of time. And we’re trying to find out what makes us BTS,” says RM while passing through the city.
Once the last member finished service, all seven members relocated to Los Angeles in mid-2025 and shared a house for two months. It was the first time they had all been in the same place since 2015. Mornings were dedicated to physical training and after lunch at home, they’d head to the studio and write and record with rotating teams of collaborators until the evening. RM discussed the rigid schedule with GQ: “We’d do six days a week, like businessmen.” RM said it felt like being trainees again, except this time they had years of stadium tours and billions of streams behind them.
A press release touts the upcoming doc as a “portrait of resilience, brotherhood, and reinvention” that will see the group battling with “how to begin again, how to honor the past without being bound by it, and how to move forward together.”
There’s no immediate resolution in any of this. There’s no surrender either — and a lot of great escape. White’s slide guitar in “Dollar Bill” sounds like a National Steel on steroids until the solo, when it turns into what seems like a theremin gone postal. “I Can’t Believe What I’m Hearing” has a great pop-wise chorus closer to the Pretty Things than Son House. And don’t miss White’s wry aside to the White Stripes’ old creation myth in the second verse of “G.O.D.,” on the way to the real business at hand. “Well, it’s the beginning of the world now,” he declares at the song’s end. “Let’s do it all over again.”
