Entertainment

Attention Blake Lively Fans: The Actor Returned Instagram & You Need To See Her First Post Back

by Sophy Ziss
Ethan Miller/Getty Images Entertainment/Getty Images

From the moment she arrived on social media, Blake Lively's Instagram presence has been delightful. On May 1, she wiped her account clean, replacing everything with vague information about her next movie role. But fans can breathe deeply again: Blake Lively returned to Instagram as of Saturday, May 5, and she's following Ryan Reynolds, her husband and the Deadpool 2. For real.

Lively's return to Instagram has fans celebrating. Her account has long been a source of joy, where the actor posted amazing throwbacks, hints about upcoming work outside of acting, and teased her husband Reynolds. The sudden disappearance and bizarre reappearance as an Emily Nelson fan account was enough to leave folks scratching their heads. By the time Lively returned to Instagram on May 5, though, she had an explanation. Well, kind of.

Lively posted side-by-side photos of herself rocking an incredible look with the following caption:

Reuploading my page and loving this excuse to post this [100 emoji] outfit from last month that I forgot to post the next day. Because after a couple days it’s strange to post, like you’re hung up on how awesome you were 2 days ago. Which highlights how lame you are now by comparison to how cool you were when you wore that amazing outfit. So you wait a week or so for a #tbt. But then you realize it’s way too soon for a #tbt, what were you thinking??! You should’ve just posted the next day! [poop emoji]! What are you gonna do now?!? You can’t let that outfit go unposted! And then you realize something even more important— you’ve lost your cool entirely. Thanks social media. You’ve officially taken my chill.

Sounds like Lively is happy to be back on Instagram.

Her full page is back up — with all of her previous photos restored — and the mysterious bio "What happened to Emily?..." is gone. She's only following two accounts, now — and one is her husband. Lively stars in the upcoming film A Simple Favor, a black comedy-slash-mystery from director Paul Feig. The teaser for the film reveals it stars Lively as Emily Nelson, a fabulous, enigmatic person about whom little is known — even to her husband, or self-proclaimed best friend. A Simple Favor also stars Anna Kendrick as the supposed best friend, Linda Cardellini, Rupert Friend, and more in addition to Lively.

The central question of "What happened to Emily Nelson?" appears to drive the film. The teaser trailer, much like Lively's resurrected Instagram presence, will leave fans with more questions than answers, though. That said, a hot, martini-swilling, tailored-suit-wearing, coyly unknowable woman feels like the slightly campy role Lively was born to play. The trailer sets up Emily Nelson to be larger-than-life, even untouchable, and Lively plays into it well. But what is A Simple Favor, exactly? Why does Lively's hair change colors at the end of the trailer — and why is her character all sultriness and no dialogue? Lively's ominous hangman tweet certainly doesn't clear anything up. It probably wasn't intended to, though. Darn it, you queen of intrigue.

In the end, it seems like Blake Lively leaving Instagram and then returning to Instagram definitely garnered interest in her new film. The Emily Nelson character is described as "wonderful" and "elegant" by Kendrick's character, and an "enigma" by Friend's, who plays Lively's husband. The disappearance-then-emergence-new-bio-no-bio-following-unfollowing cycle on Instagram is definitely odd — so, perhaps, the mystery is intentional.

No one in A Simple Favor really knows what goes on with Emily Nelson, it seems, so it's possible that Lively is doing some method acting. It's also a possibility, of course, that she has a complicated relationship to Instagram, just like the rest of the world. Or maybe that's what she wants people to think.