Environmental DNA metabarcoding has created a lot of excitement for scientists, government regulators, and industry bodies because of its potential. This exciting potential is great for the field because it attracts funding and generates innovative new ideas that are improving what can be done. However, the expectations and excitement will lead to disappointment unless the technology is applied appropriately to clearly-defined questions. Past exciting technological development in complementary fields, such as ancient DNA research and molecular microbiology have lesson to give us. In these areas, new technologies allowed previously research on questions that were previously impossible to answer. It also generated a lot of seemingly impressive research that when examined carefully turned out to be uninformative, or positively misleading. Embarrassment and failure followed. I will talk about the problems that I see eDNA metabarcoding research facing in the near future and how we can navigate some hidden and clear obstacles.