Lofi Girl's vanishing act left music lovers panicking, but she returned with a new friend

The Lofi Girl has supported me through countless study sessions and last-minute deadline crunches. Her chilled-out beats with her cat companion have become a staple of YouTube, but earlier this month she mysteriously disappeared. After sending lofi lovers into a frenzy for two days, we finally know why: Lofi Girl has a pal called Synthwave Boy.

April 10 saw an unusual change to Lofi Girl's 24/7 stream, when she vanished without a trace. The only clues to go by were some teasers on Twitter and YouTube focusing on a blue window in the distance and a lofiworld.com web address. Discussions around what it could be were rife—was Lofi Girl shifting away from YouTube after all these years to a site of her own? Was it about to be an awful NFT shill? 

Nobody was quite sure, but over the next two days, a countdown saw the stream slowly zooming in on the blue window. It hit zero, and lore-hungry fans were greeted by a boy entering the room along with his dog. Turns out Synthwave Boy is the newest character in what's turning about to be a pretty lore-rich Lofi Girl universe. While the Lofi Girl stream is now back to normal, scribbling away in her notepad, Synthwave Boy can be found on a separate synth-style stream typing away at his computer.

It's a pretty fun and elaborate way to announce a new permanent music stream. You can even see both characters' bedrooms from each other's perspective—Lofi Girl's still has the blue window glowing faintly in the background, while you can just about make out her own well-lit window in Synthwave Boy's stream. That now makes three 24/7 livestreams under Lofi Girl's belt—the classic study stream, a more relaxed sleep and relaxation stream and a synthwave stream.