I think they're intending to rewind the clock and take a different path, and stick to some of the principles that they see as key to the early web's success.
It might not suit every single project, particularly if you start from the current paradigm but it seems like a good addition to the toolbox.
This is nicely explained in: https://htmx.org/essays/when-to-use-hypermedia/
The fact that you can do that and not stare at a soup of minimized Javascript tells you a lot about htmx.
source: i am the creator of htmx