Taika Waititi Takes Us On a Dad’s Tour of New Zealand, and the Internet Is Obsessed

All weekend long I have spent my time liking Taika Waititi’s Instagram stories because he told me to. The Our Flag Means Death star and director of Thor: Love and Thunder is back in his home country of New Zealand and taking a tour of some of the major tourist “hotspots” with his daughters. This means going to see the hobbit homes from the Peter Jackson Lord of the Rings movies (which is funny if you know any of Waititi’s history with the franchise), along with some of New Zealand’s natural wonders. Throughout the collection of Stories, Waititi’s comedy shines through, especially as he does a running bit styled after YouTube influencers, reminding (and imploring) his audience to “like” his videos if they want to see more.

But what does #DadsOnTour, the hashtag Waititi has been using, actually mean? It appears to be an elaborate joke that revolves around Waititi lovingly “bullying” fans into liking his videos for more content and all of us doing it, because watching Taika Waititi tease his kids and tease New Zealand while clearly loving them and doing anything for them (both the kids and New Zealand) is good content.

As stuff.co.nz elaborates:

Waititi ended each post by asking his followers to hit the like button, which turned into a running joke.

“Okay, make sure you push like down the bottom, because I haven’t seen you guys doing that. Seems like you aren’t actually taking this seriously,” he says in one clip.

[…] Waititi again instructed his followers to like his post, with a caption saying: “Click like, you scumbags. It’s important that you like me.”

Whether it is Waititi jokingly telling us all to like and comment about his adventures (in the style of a YouTube influencer vying for popularity) or the commentary he’s giving on things like New Zealand’s Death Lake (that will just kill you, according to Taika Waititi), or the second #Deadpool that he goes to that will entice you in and kill you anyway, it’s just weirdly wholesome and wonderful to watch.

“This here is a big beautiful hot water lake full of boiling water that will kill you. Welcome to New Zealand. It’s a terrifyingly beautiful lake,” Waititi says in one video. “Make sure you hit that like button if you like the idea of me taking my children around the edge of a Death Lake.” These Instagram stories have made us instantly want to book tickets to New Zealand as well as made us extremely sad that we cannot go on the Taika Waititi tour.

We are used to Waititi being funny and posting videos of his kids’ antics (like when they cut his hair on livestream in quarantine) but #DadsOnTour is now a series I want to see daily.

#DadsOnTour

The entire Instagram story saga is hilarious because it’s Waititi’s brand of humor mixed with his kids making fun of him for talking to his “followers” and also him making fun of his kids in return. The “she bitches about everything looooooool” caption truly sent me into a fit of laughter. Waititi’s daughters Matewa Kiritapu, 6, and Te Hinekāhu, 9, are great sports and we imagine they’re used to these sort of fun antics with their dad. They often accompany him on set, so Waititi doing this sort of “directing” as they walk around is likely old hat. (Did we mention the red dad hat yet??)

There was also the saga of the ballet flats where Waititi shared that his daughter wanted the shoes but wore them on a hike so they got destroyed.

There are eels named eel, lakes of imminent death, too much mud, and hobbit breakfasts to go around, and yeah, pretty much everyone I have seen online is obsessed with it.

When can we expect merch, Taika?

Dads On Tour has now gotten to the point where Twitter is just openly talking about it as if we’re all on the same page. And maybe we are, but it’s astonishing how fast Twitter has gone from strictly Blackbeard from Our Flag Means Death Taika Waititi content to Thor: Love and Thunder Waititi content, and now this, within the span of weeks. (Maybe we just all love him too much. Maybe this is Taika Waititi’s world and we’re just living in it.)

It helps that Waititi throws up a peace sign every single time he ends an “episode” as he tells us to like and comment.

That has also turned into fan art.

All of this to say that hopefully, Dads On Tour becomes his next Oscar-winning motion picture.

We don’t know how many episodes of Dads On Tour we’re going to get or whether we’ll get a season 2 (#RenewOurFlagMeansDeath) but for now, we can all just log into Instagram each day and see Waititi sharing the beauty (and horribly frightening lakes) of New Zealand while being a great dad. Please like, comment, and scream to the gods for more content.

(image: Kevin Winter/Getty Images)