Jeans are still in the news thanks to an at-best dubiously-worded American Eagle ad that the president can’t stop posting about. It’s into this very normal milieu that Beyoncé has released a new commercial for Levi’s, the fourth chapter in a saga that began after she shared the Cowboy Carter track “Levii’s Jeans” in March 2024. This one’s got Timothy Olyphant in it, and he loses his jeans to Beyoncé after she bests him in a game of billiards. The president hasn’t tweeted about this one yet, but really anything is possible.
Beyond the Levi’s advertising of it all, the clip has caused speculation that Act III of Beyoncé’s current series, which started in 2022 with the album Renaissance, is on the way. Fans have long speculated that Act III will be a rock album, on the heels of Act I’s electronic/dance genre and Act II’s country. The commercial is also split into three parts, which Vulture, referencing fan tweets,suggests could be designed to mimic the three act structure of her project. The first section is modeled after Levi’s 1980s “Lauderette” commercial and sees her putting diamonds in a washing machine, which could reference the glittering cover of Renaissance. The second part, “The Heat,” features country musician Willie Jones, who featured on Cowboy Carter. The third part, which features Olyphant, is called “The Smoke” and sees Bey driving away on a motorcycle, which is imagery that fans have speculated will be relevant for Act III. There’s also a precedent for Beyoncé heralding a new era with a commercial; the Cowboy Carter rollout kicked off with a Verizon commercial during the Super Bowl in 2024, which makes spending a second week analyzing a jeans commercial a completely valid thing to do. You can check out the clip below.
