Wait, So Did Lili Reinhart and Cole Sprouse Not Break Up After All?

In what can really only be called breaking news, Lili Reinhart maybe just announced to the world that she and Cole Sprouse didn’t break up after all. (Or maybe they did. The Lili Reinhart/Cole Sprouse breakup interview associated with her proclamation has definitely prompted more questions than it has provided answers. But it gave us some new information to consider, and that’s basically always a good thing.)

Around noon on Thursday, July 25, Reinhart posted an Instagram of W‘s latest cover—which shows Sprouse and Reinhart together, in a semi-romantic, definitely vampiric pose. She captioned the photo, “BREAKING: A reliable source has confirmed that none of you know shit.” This pretty obviously alludes to the myriad “reliable sources” that have confirmed details about Sprouse and Reinhart’s breakup within the last week (notably, the fact that Sprouse and Reinhart broke up; the fact that Sprouse did the breaking up; and the fact that the Reinhart/Sprouse breakup was messy as hell). It also pretty obviously shuts those “reliable sources” down.

After looking at Reinhart’s Instagram, one might assume that Sprouse and Reinhart didn’t break up at all. They’re still together. The rumors that have been swirling since early this week are absolute BS. And those reliable sources weren’t so reliable after all.

Source: Instagram

Sprouse posted the same photo, alongside the caption: “UNPRECEDENTED: Cole Sprouse and Lili Reinhart consume the flesh of ‘reliable sources’ to fuel their bacchanalian sex cult.” (This one is decidedly less telling.)

Source: Instagram

But. The interview accompanying Sprouse and Reinhart’s W cover tells a different story. Writer David Amsden begins the piece by noting that Sprouse and Reinhart requested to be interviewed separately—a choice they chalked up to Reinhart being her own person with a perspective that exists outside their relationship. (Can’t argue with that.) This happened in late May—well before rumors began circulating that the pair had parted ways. (Those really only broke this Sunday/Monday, following some allegedly tense interactions between Sprouse and Reinhart at last weekend’s San Diego ComicCon.) “Two months later the two would part ways romantically, lending credence to my suspicions that the separate interviews might have been connected to the two of them being uncertain about their future together,” Amdsen writes.

And this is precisely where the confusion sets in. Amdsen alludes to Reinhart and Sprouse’s relationship being over. And he does so again a few paragraphs later: “It was hard to be bothered, even once I learned that the couple I was profiling was maybe no longer a couple.”

All I can say is—I’m absolutely perplexed. Reinhart’s Instagram seems to shut down allegations of a breakup, whereas the piece she’s referring to in that Instagram does the opposite. Did Reinhart and Sprouse break up? Did they not? Will we ever know the truth?!

In the midst of all this opacity, I am sure of one thing and one thing only: Amdsen absolutely nailed it when he said, “Sprouse and Reinhart seemed to be doing something similar…calling attention to the state of their relationship by keeping it tantalizingly obscure.” Amsden describes himself as being “manipulated into sugary submission”—and really, at this point, aren’t we all?