Couple from Netflix's Skywalkers get engaged, then arrested after climbing Empire State Building

It’s not clear if Netflix had any early knowledge of the stunt, but it was certainly happy to capitalize off of it, showing off pictures of Beerkus holding Nikolau aloft at the tippy-top of Malaysia’s Merdeka Tower from the movie’s climax on its social media this afternoon. The streamer distributed Jeff Zimbalist’s documentary about the pair—prolific influencers in the “rooftopping” subculture, who began a relationship after Beerkus decided his videos would do better with a female partner—back in 2024. (Our own review highlighted the aesthetic pleasures of watching the pair do what they do, while also dinging the film for taking a too-accepting view of its subjects’ influencer-trained skills at crafting narratives around themselves.)

The pair were reportedly met on the way back down the spire by members of the NYPD, whose bodycam footage of the arrest serves as a nice counterpart to all the photos and videos Nikolau and Beerkus were posting themselves of their (admittedly very cool) crime. Meanwhile, we’d love to watch a documentary about the response to all this from the PR department for the Empire State Building, who risked a severe (and possibly fatal) case of patting themselves on the back after they came up with this response to the stunt (per ABC News): “It is to be emphasized that the Empire State Building Observation Deck, atop the World’s Most Famous Building in the center of New York City, does offer a practical way for the most memorable marriage proposals.”