At B.C. Place Stadium on Friday, July 17

What happens when you take five relatively talented lads, give them everything they’ve ever wanted, and then milk their planetary stardom for all it's worth, from unprecedented record sales to merchandise deals with Colgate toothpaste? Evidently, you get the most promising member of One Direction, Zayn Malik, ejecting from the crazy spacecraft of boy bandom in a purported attempt to get back to the real world.

In Malik’s stardust is where Vancouver found ultimate guilty pleasure One Direction—now Harry Styles, Liam Payne, Louis Tomlinson, and Niall Horan—last night at B.C. Place Stadium. But despite the gloom of uncertainty surrounding the group’s future, the fans, so-called Directioners, seemed as spellbound as ever.

While filing into the stadium, you had to look no further than the kids dressed up in banana costumes, the signs reading “I need you more than food" and “I have four fingers for four weddings,” or the girl who had drawn exact copies of Styles’s tattoos onto her skin for proof of near-baffling devotion.

Proving themselves crowd-pleasers in their own right, openers Icona Pop rallied the Directioners with their refreshing take on electro club bangers. Decked out in slick leather and silver sequins, the Swedish hitmakers did not stop moving once during their confident set, belting out shameless party anthems with a twist of eclectic beats and Spice Girls–esque energy.

Then it was the moment Vancouver’s Directioners had been dreaming of, including the one kook who had shown up for the pro-Styles Foreskin Pride rally outside. With a pink and gold bloom of pyrotechnics, everyone’s pretend boyfriends strolled casually on-stage, launching into the sonic fireworks of “Clouds”, off 1D’s latest album, Four.

The audience responded with glass-shattering levels of cheering. One fan turned to her friend and sighed, “Don’t you feel like you’re home right now?”

As the band followed up with the glimmering stadium pop of “Steal My Girl”, it became clear how One Direction’s cult of personality managed to reduce half the population to lovelorn gloop. Eschewing the flamboyantly costumed, choreographed-routine-heavy formula of previous decades’ boy bands, One Direction has always sold itself as ordinary mates from working-class families who just want to sing.

Of course, that in itself is a manipulative formula. 1D’s undeniably absurdly catchy hits like “One Thing” and “Gotta Be You” were chock full of bubbly personality and cheeky charm, and most of the band’s early promotion was centred around the lads’ down-to-earth candour.

That is why, instead of a circus of jet-pack-powered backup dancers on-stage, you have Horan strumming a six-string or Styles wiggling his hips like an endearing goof and convincing a fan’s parents to make out on the video screens.

But as the set bounced along (highlights being the ridiculously bubblegum “Kiss You” and velvety nocturne “Night Changes”), the overarching blandness of the band’s recent material became more and more mind-numbingly apparent.

Pop music, cheesy? Fine, as long as it’s tempered. Outright dumb? If not infuriatingly so, then sure. But pop music should never be bland. In fact, with Malik kaput, Styles seemed to be the only Directioner on stage performing with real passionate charisma. Tomlinson looked as if he’d rather be clipping toenails.

The absence of Malik’s magnetism and superior vocal range—guess who used to hit all the high notes now missing from the live show?—lurked over the night’s proceedings. And, well, there was a life-size cardboard cutout of the dreamy ex-Directioner literally lurking in the crowd, just off the runway. Awkward. The boys chose to ignore it, along with one fan’s T-shirt bearing Malik’s likeness and the dramatic words “Never forget.”

As the foursome closed the altogether relaxed show with the delirious glee of “Best Song Ever”, you had to wonder when all of this is going to implode, like some confetti cannon in reverse, and what will happen when One Direction hits a dead end.

Horan will probably manufacture a line of premium salad dressings. Payne will release a solo acoustic album every Christmas for the next decade. Tomlinson will either renounce fame or host his own variety show. And Mick Jagger look-alike Styles will go on to front a Rolling Stones-inspired band that is actually not bad. Hey, you never know.