Harry Styles Fans Out for Blood After Singer’s Eye Hit by Skittle

It has not been an easy year for Harry Styles, who has been suffering from a hit album, two flop films, a custom Gucci line, and a case of the flu. To make matters worse: he was pelted in the eye with a Skittle while onstage on Monday night, and now a bunch of people are tweeting that he “needs an eyepatch.” Watch the video for yourself:

Here’s another, slightly funnier, angle:

This first tweet, however, really and successfully gets to the heart of the matter, which is that it was a “solid object” that hit Styles in the eye during his encore performance of “Kiwi.” Apparently he was holding his eye shut for the rest of the show, and perhaps even as he drove away from the venue. No matter how you feel about Styles and his cheeky little imp persona, I think we can all agree that a solid projectile to the eye sucks, and fans should stop hurling things in the direction of their favorite singer’s head.

Where the situation gets muddy, however, is in the detail that it was a Skittle that struck Styles in the eye. Though the consensus — as gleaned from impassioned tweets and comments — seems to be that the projectile was definitely a Skittle, it’s nearly impossible to determine from video footage alone that it was that specifically. I couldn’t identify a Skittle from more than three feet away; at that point, it becomes a straight-up rock. Can we rule out with absolute certainty any other hard-shelled, button-shaped candies, like, say, an M&M?

But Skittles, or at least whichever agèd 1D fan is running the brand’s account, has already taken partial responsibility for the event. And, knowing what they’re capable of, I trust the Harry Styles fan community with my life — if their Gen Z eyes have been able to successfully identify the vaguely-colored projectiles, then I believe in my heart that those are Skittles.

One tweet identifies a potential culprit, but most of the available information comes from witnesses on the scene in the floor seats. These concert-goers, immaculately dressed and ready to dance, are not the kind of people I would ever want to fuck with.

The good news is that Styles appeared on friend Pauli Lovejoy’s Instagram Live the other night, joking that he would see the drummer and DJ “tomorrow AVEC eye patch.”

Okay, so we’re all having a laugh, minus whoever it was who threw the Skittle in the first place, who should, if they haven’t already, enter witness protection, lest they find themselves one day being choked out by the loose yarn strings dangling from a particularly vengeful Styles fan’s daisy crochet cardigan.