Can you believe that it’s been four years since ATEEZ appeared on the competition show Kingdom: Legendary War? While there was a lot of justifiable frustration and anger from fans about how ATEEZ’s members were treated while on the show, it still left us with numerous jaw-dropping performances that still remain iconic to this day.

The show aired from April 1 to June 3, 2021, which was during the time that Mingi was on hiatus for his health, so he didn’t take part in the performances. But we’re sure he was cheering on his fellow members just as much as the ATINYs watching were!

There were five different rounds in total, including the introduction and finale, but overall the ATEEZ members took part in eight different performances both as a whole group and as part of collaborations with other competitors on the show.

The theme of the introduction stage was to “perform one of their hit songs (that have won 1st place in a music show) for a 100-second performance that will best express themselves”. ATEEZ opened with a powerful rendition of “Wave” that captured one of the most iconic ending poses of the series with San holding a torch atop the other members!

The first official round had the theme “To The World”, with the description, to “perform one (or two) of their representative hit songs, which are rearranged and different from their usual stages of the song”. ATEEZ’s “Symphony No.9 ‘From The Wonderland’” is arguably their most well-known performance on Kingdom, and understandably so — blending their hit song “Wonderland” with sampling from Antonín Dvořák’s “Symphony No.9 in E minor, ‘From the New World’” was a genius idea. And with their pirate concept in full power for this performance, it’s no wonder it became a staple of their future concerts, including Jongho’s incredible four-octave high note and Seonghwa’s slaying of the kraken.

The second round’s theme was “Re-born”, with the criteria to “exchange songs, perform and rearrange them into different styles.” ATEEZ took fellow contestant group iKON’s song “Rhythm Ta” and made it entirely their own, calling the performance “The Awakening of Summer” due to their sampling from “Four Seasons – Summer (L’Estate), 3.” by Vivaldi.

The third round was called “No Limit” and was divided into two parts. For the first part, the six competing groups were split into two collaborating teams and further divided into rap, dance, and vocal sub-units. ATEEZ ended up collaborating with Stray Kids and BTOB, calling themselves “Mayfly”. For the rap unit, Hongjoong joined forces with Stray Kids’ Bang Chan, Changbin, and Han and BTOB’s Minhyuk to perform the high-energy original song “Colours”.

For the dance unit, Seonghwa, Yunho, Yeosang, San, and Wooyoung collaborated with Stray Kids’ Lee Know, Felix, and I.N and BTOB’s Peniel to make their own rendition of EXO’s “Wolf”. This was also arguably one of the most iconic performances of the series, with all three groups working beautifully together and putting a fun and feral twist on this classic K-Pop song.

Finally, Jongho was the ATEEZ member representing the group in the vocal unit, joining Stray Kids’ Seungmin and BTOB’s Eunkwang for a performance of IU’s “Love Poem”. Though not as flashy as the other two performances, this beautiful cover by the three phenomenal singers was totally captivating in its own right, with each of them perfectly harmonizing throughout. For some reason, though, this cover isn’t available on Spotify, which is (in my opinion) an absolute crime!

For the second part of round three, the competitors returned to their original groups for another performance of their own songs. ATEEZ sang an epic remix of “Answer” with guest artist La Poem, sampling from Ludwig van Beethoven’s “Symphony No.9 in D minor, Op.125 ‘Choral’”.

Finally, for the last round, titled “Who Is The King”, each group was assigned to perform a newly produced song live during the final episode. This resulted in one of ATEEZ’s most signature songs, “The Real”, which was performed for the first time on the finale. It’s a real treat to watch, so if you haven’t seen it before, we highly recommend it!

No matter how you feel about ATEEZ’s appearance on Kingdom: Legendary War, we’re pretty sure that any ATINY can agree that the group poured their blood, sweat, and tears into every performance and represented themselves beautifully while competing. Of course, when you’re a K-Pop group with as many skilled performers as ATEEZ has, it’s no surprise that they really set the bar high with their stages, and these performances deserve to be watched over and over in the years to come!