The Death and Resurrection of the Green Owl: Duolingo's Controversial Marketing Decision
One of the most well-known online personalities, the Duolingo owl (Duo), was shockingly "killed off" on Feb. 11, 2025, after an advertisement showed that the owl was hit by a Cybertruck. The initial reasoning behind this sudden marketing choice was confusing to app users, and the company even kept the reason for death a secret, in order to create more engagement with the app. Regular users of Duolingo were still shocked about their app's mascot being randomly announced as dead, but there had been past messages in the app that had hinted to this eventual end. Duolingo was known for constantly threatening the death of Duo if the users did not finish their language lessons. It seemed like a very unrealistic threat at first, but led to the company actually going through with it. The message posted to Duolingo's Instagram page as the death announcement stated, "It is with heavy hearts that we inform you that Duo, formally known as The Duolingo Owl, is dead." Th...