Homoploid hybrid speciation (HHS), where genetic contributions from two species combine to produce a third species without a change in pioidy, remains an intriguing and enigmatic evolutionary process.Genomic studies in the past decade have shown that introgression and admixture between species is common,and yet well documented cases of HHS remain rare (Schumer et al., 2014;Marques et al., 2019).This strikes at a key feature of HHS;it is a far higher bar to prove that hybridization was critical for speciation than it is to show that introgression occurred.The former requires us to know how reproductive isolation (RI) is achieved, identify hybrid ancestry, and definitively link hybrid ancestry with reproductive isolation.With this in mind, the work by Wang et al.(2020) fully documenting a case of HHS is particularly impressive in terms of both the scope and clarity of the results.