Duolingo revives owl mascot, Duo

Two weeks after announcing the murder of its sassy green mascot, the language-learning platform Duolingo now says he’s fine — and that he orchestrated the entire thing.

“Faking my death was the test and you all passed,” it captioned a video posted to social media on Monday, with a montage suggesting that users brought him back by completing their daily language lessons.

Duo — full name Duo Keyshauna Renee Lingo, born 1000 B.C., according to one official death announcement — has been the face of the company since its launch in 2011.

His extremely insistent — sometimes threateningly-so — lesson reminders and snarky social media presence have made him an online sensation in recent years, whether he’s hopping on the latest viral choreography, beefing with Duolingo’s legal team or pining after pop star Dua Lipa.

Duo’s intrigue reached entirely new heights earlier this month after the company announced his death on Feb. 11 and said authorities were investigating the cause.

“He probably died waiting for you to do your lesson, but what do we know,” it wrote.

It released a series of mournful and mysterious social media posts in the days that followed, including videos of Duo being fatally hit by a Tesla cybertruck and other Duolingo mascots giving him a funeral — and then them being killed off, too.

Then came the hopeful messages, encouraging users to complete daily lessons and quests in the app to “bring Duo back.” As fans — including dozens of companies and brands — paid tribute to Duo, many started to wonder if his death would end up being short-lived.

The question was, how — and when — would that happen?

How Duo masterminded his death and resurrection 

On Feb. 17, the company directed users to a website called bringback.duolingo.com, showing a goal of 50 billion XP, or “experience points,” which users earn every time they complete a task in the app.

Exactly a week later, Duo returned.

“Y’all really think i’d let a cybertruck take me out? #duolingohasrisen,” reads the caption.

The second video pairs flashes of animation with upbeat rap music. It appears to show Duo growing in an egg as users rack up XP points, then hatching with purple wings and celebrating alongside other revived characters.

On Tuesday, Duo finally pulled back the curtain on his fake and untimely demise, in a video that opens with him unzipping and crawling out of his own coffin on a sunny beach.

The narrator explains that while he has accumulated many enemies over the years, he figured it would be easiest to frame a software engineer named Jimmy.

“Now I know the death video looked incredibly realistic, but it was all edited,” he admits. “The cybertruck was mainly there for dramatic effect, and perhaps some social commentary.”

He went on to say his friends — fellow Duolingo characters, which include several humans and a bear — were being asked too many questions and were “too nice to lie,” so he made them fake their deaths, too. He also admits to wanting to see “how many of you would bother to bring me back to life.”

The campaign was a success, he says, because it revealed “who the real ones were” and, “most importantly,” got Dua Lipa (who publicly mourned the owl) to notice him.

“I guess you could say I put the ‘fun’ in ‘funeral,’ ” he concludes, as the video shows him lounging on a beach chair with a drink in hand, and skipping carefree-ly across the sand. “So yeah, please just do your lesson. Because next time it won’t be a fake death.”

What did Duolingo gain from it? 

Social media reactions to Duo’s resurrection and confession were mixed. Many commenters cheered his return, while others wondered what it was all for.

He warned that if the storyline felt too goofy, or inconsistent with Duo’s personality, it might alienate some fans — as was the case with Planters when it killed off Mr. Peanut only to reincarnate him as Baby Nut in a 2020 Super Bowl ad.

Duo has answered some questions but also raised new ones.

For instance, Williams wonders where the story will go next, and how long Duolingo will be able to keep the momentum, especially given most peoples’ short attention spans. For now, who — as an owl might say — knows?