Ryan Phillippe turned 52 last week, and the internet’s response was to fall for him all over again — via time machine. A fan repost of the actor’s 2021 vacation photos went nuclear this week, and suddenly every timeline featured Ryan and a young Deacon Phillippe, shirtless at a backcountry hot spring, both of them flexing abs like it’s a competitive sport. Yes, the photos are five years old. No, that hasn’t slowed the internet down one bit.
The original set lives on Ryan’s Instagram, posted August 2021 from McCauley Warm Springs — natural hot pools tucked into the woods of the Santa Fe National Forest, reachable only by a hike. Ryan’s caption: “the rocky uphill hike was well worth the warm woodland baptism that followed.” A fan account’s resurfaced version pulled millions of views this week, which is the algorithm’s way of admitting some content is simply evergreen.
One photo, two men, one very motivated sculptor. Somewhere a geneticist is using this family as a teaching aid.
Photo: Josh Jensen, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 2.0
Like Father, Like Son, Like Industry
Deacon Phillippe is having the kind of year most people need a decade for. He graduated from NYU in May — with both parents showing up, reunited and radiating functional-coparenting energy. He made his acting debut as Parker in Never Have I Ever, played his dad’s brother onscreen in Prime Video’s Motorheads (a sentence that delights us), and just last week Netflix announced he’s joining the cast of Better Than the Movies — his rom-com debut, opposite Judy Greer. In his spare time he releases electronic music under the mononym Deacon, because apparently one career wasn’t going to annoy his resumé enough.
And the look? The internet already settled the matter during last month’s shirtless ERL photo shoot — purple jeans, Venice Beach styling, dead ringer for his father in his early twenties. The fan commentary was immediate and correct: “This the nepotism I wanna see.” Another user went with “He got both his parents elite genes,” which is technically a compliment to three people.
Sebastian Valmont, Aging in Reverse
Ryan’s hold on gay culture was permanently secured in 1999, when Cruel Intentions gave us Sebastian Valmont and a tank top that should be in a museum. He has never been shy about the thirst traps — the sauna selfie earlier this year broke containment within hours — and this fall he joins 9-1-1: Nashville for its second season, so the silver-fox era continues at network pace.
But the vacation pics hit differently, because they’re a family production. The man who spent the late ’90s corrupting the Upper East Side spent a summer weekend hauling his teenage kid up a mountain for a hot-springs baptism, both of them looking like the same guy at two points in a time-travel movie. It’s wholesome! It’s also, per the comments section, extremely not.
The Gene Pool Situation
For those keeping score at home: Ava, 27, is a walking recreation of Reese Witherspoon — she just appeared as a “vixen” on Doctor Odyssey and played the ex in Ella Langley’s “Choosin’ Texas” video. Deacon is a Xerox of Ryan. The Witherspoon-Phillippe children are what happens when two of the most symmetrical faces of the ’90s reproduce: the greatest hits, remastered.
The Verdict
We’re not saying the internet was invented for photos like these. We’re just saying it’s suspicious that it works so well for exactly this — and that five years on, the pics still clear the timeline at will. Deacon’s career is warming up nicely, Ryan is 52 and refusing to age on principle, and one creek in the New Mexico woods has now seen more muscle mass than most gyms see in a fiscal year. Good for them. Even better for us.
