Alarm bells should have started ringing when Jared Leto’s Thirty Seconds To Mars announced their new single was named ‘Walk On Water’.

Actually, alarms should have been ringing at this point.

The ’60s warned us that the revolution would not be televised, but the darker truth is that Jared Leto’s own revolution was televised, mid-afternoon on the Ellen show, a setting so seemingly safe and placid that few were aware of the horrors Leto was about to unleash.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jU5izXm5DzQ

It starts with the band performing from within the audience: drummer dressed like a dispossessed ‘Nam veteran, banging a drum soullessly, while the guitarist picks out notes on an acoustic guitar.

There’s a brief wordless chant and there is Jared Leto: draped in a poncho of dubious geographic origin which nevertheless gives him the mystical shamanic look he is going for. He is shaggy, ragged, wounded. He is Jesus and Jim Morrison. He is seated in the Ellen studio audience, which is now darkly lit in an Oliver Stone movie way, surrounded by women who came to watch the Ellen show. This is not the Ellen show now. He is freaking out the squares.

“Can you even see what you’re fighting for?” Leto growls.

“Blood lost in a holy war.”

Ellen is no longer dancing.

Seconds later, a gospel choir bursts in like it’s Sister Act or something and belts “times are changing” or “chimes of change” or something vaguely positive and righteous. Everyone seems confused. It’s like the Manson Family had the hall booked until 10:30am, and lost track of time and bled into Sunday School.

65 seconds in, the song vaguely kicks into gear, and the audience all rise to their feet in a manner best described as “sensible.”

This quick and un-enthused rising is hilariously wooden, but again, these people are here to watch the Ellen show, not to be indoctrinated into the Church of Leto.

Again, this song is called ‘Walk On Water.’

Here’s the video again, so you don’t need to scroll up.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jU5izXm5DzQ

What follows is the first full-on Hillsong-level singalong moment. Here’s Ellen, realising the full extent of the horror she is tacitly endorsing.

Ellen, realising...

Then, everyone sits down, sensibly. Like church. Because this is church.

It only takes Leto another thirty seconds (this numeric value is important in the Church of Leto, as you’ll learn, as we’ll all learn) until he is striding through a parted sea of women, arms stretched (kinda), as “Do you believe? Walk on water” is being chanted by a gospel choir. Everybody is standing.

At 2:24 he peers up into the sky as a beam of light hits his eyes. It’s… biblical.

The three band members/cult leaders then join the choir — and an assembled throng of women seated at the foot of the pulpit —  and lead a chant/clap-along/we’re-all-just-atoms type moment.

It’s so Hillsong.

It’s so Manson.

It’s the most interesting and best thing Jared Leto has ever done.

If you pay attention, you can taste the cyanide.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jU5izXm5DzQ

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