Sometimes, the littlest of actions can have the greatest of meanings. Take, for instance, clicking the “Follow” button on Twitter. Over this past weekend, fans of One Direction spotted that the band – Liam Payne, 26, Niall Horan, 26, Louis Tomlinson, 28, and Harry Styles, 26 – all had begun following ex-member Zayn Malik, 27, on Twitter again. The official One Direction Twitter account was following the “Pillow Talk” singer as well. On top of all of that, Zayn had gone from being listed as an “ex-member” to being on “vocal” when you searched him on Google. With all the sudden talk of a possible 1D reunion, the timing of these re-following has raised a few eyebrows.
Ever since the band went on hiatus in 2016, Directioners have been eager to see them all back on stage together. Recently, Liam added more fuel to the “One Direction Reunion” rumors. “We’ve got a ten-year anniversary coming up, so we’ve all been speaking together a lot over the last few weeks, which has been really nice,” Liam said in an Apr. 9 interview with The Sun. “To hear a lot of people’s voices and seeing old content and different things that we haven’t seen for a long time or never seen before, it’s very interesting. … There’s a number of different things that we are all working on to try and make happen and people are forwarding emails around.”
Niall also hinted that the 1D hiatus was coming to an end. During his Mar. 12 edition of Carpool Karaoke on The Late Late Show, James Corden asked Niall if he thought that the band would actually get back together one day. Without missing a beat, Niall responded, “Yes.” He didn’t say that the group would reunite anytime soon or if Zayn would be a part of the reunion, but after so long apart, a simple “Yes” was all that Directioners wanted to hear.
One year after Zayn’s 2015 departure, the remaining four members went their separate ways. Since then, they’ve all released solo music, to differing degrees of success. Arguably Harry has fared the best, with his 2019 album Fine Line currently sitting at 76 on MetaCritic (the highest score earned by any ex-1D members, so far.) But, even he seemed game — sorta — to a reunion. When SiriusXM’s The Morning Mash Up asked Harry about possibly “hopping on a Zoom” with the rest of the band for a quick performance, he balked. “I don’t know if that’s the reunion that we’ve had in mind. Uhh, I don’t know if that’s how, if that would be the way to do it, but I’ll have a quick whip-round.”