While the entirety of Halsey’s 2017 smash hit Hopeless Fountain Kingdom is a Romeo & Juliet themed concept album, she ups the ante above and beyond with the six-minute music video for “Now or Never”, her flagship single off the record. In what could rival a short film, Halsey paints a glamorous and cunning modernized reimagining of the original storyline, with similar—but tangential—cues from Baz Luhrmann’s version. Halsey also takes a radical revision with her remix—in her version, Romeo and Juliet—and the Montagues and Capulets by extension—are gender-swapped to create Luna Aureum (Romeo) and Solis Angelus (Juliet). Verona has been transformed into the crime-ridden underbelly of the former glitzy Hopeless Fountain Kingdom. In the Kingdom, there are two koi fish in the fountain at the center of the city, forever chasing each other in endless circles. Rumor has it that if the koi are able to catch one another, love and unity will override any feuds within the Kingdom, and since Luna and Solis are the first to be born into this war, it’s fated that the two of them can fulfill the prophecy and set the Angelus and Aureum clans on the path to peace, but their families, so blinded by the feud that’s lasted years, try to keep them apart by any means necessary.

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Luna’s character trajectory largely mirrors Shakepeare’s narrative of Romeo. Within the universe of the Hopeless Fountain Kingdom, Halsey has established that Luna used to date Rosa Angelus, played by Lauren Jauregui in the music video for Strangers. Rosa and Luna’s relationship ended in a similar rift when both families tried to keep the two apart. Luna’s costumes are gaudy and loud, and her hair is a striking, unnatural blue. From her tattoos to the hardened criminals she rides with, it’s clear that she’s both a product of her clan and a unique cog in the machine. Her romantic exploits follow a similar hard and fast trajectory that Romeo’s does, showing infatuation that dried up before their true, authentic, adolescent love. Halsey’s bisexuality is another modern twist on her narrative—her ex, Rosa, a derivation of Rosaline, stays as a woman in this version. While straight was not ever the default, this particular remix is cemented in our modern reality that bisexuality—and queer romance in general—is just as authentic and true as a heterosexual pairing, as in the traditional tale of Romeo & Juliet.

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Solis is painted in a heavenly light in comparison to the rough and tumble environment Luna lives in. The Angelus clan is devout and heavily relies on religious imagery, from their symbolism of angelic wings to the prayers the audience sees them recite throughout the video. His features are dainty and warm, and he’s radiant and kind in the same way that Juliet is typically painted as, both in Shakespeare’s original tale and within the other remixes here, Lurhmann’s, Swift’s, and Levine’s. The outside pressures of trusted adults leading this character astray is very much a part of Solis’s narrative, and he’s fully indoctrinated into the Angelus clan before the polarized, violent shoot-out at the end of the video.

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Both Luna and Solis are left standing, subverting the typical doomed love that Romeo & Juliet follows, but so many of their surrounding friends and family members are left dead in the street at the end of the gunfight in which the Aureum and Angelus clans take any means necessary to keep Solis and Luna from one another. Luna narrowly escapes by motorcycle at the end of the video, away from the death and violence, and also away from Solis, who is distressed and bloodstained in the middle of the street. The last shot we see is Luna chopping off her long blue hair, a single tear cascading down her face, the music reaching a sharp and sudden crescendo. While this doesn’t follow the typical Shakespearian storyline, there’s still very much that pull and allure of forbidden love tied up in the adolescent personas of Luna and Solis, and it allowed Halsey to keep this reimagined remix open for other music videos set within the realm of the Hopeless Fountain Kingdom. Two households both alike in dignity, war-torn and bloodied. Where civil hands make civil blood unclean, and the heartbreaks of our teenaged, reimagined Romeo & Juliet along the way.