Yes, as I remember it it was a 'back to simplicity' of the early web idea. Rediscover the power of hypermedia. I don't know HTMX well, but am following Datastar [0] which was inspired by it, and their selling points are Simplicity and Performance and take it some steps further than HTMX. The approach does shift logic / complexity towards the backend though.

[0] https://data-star.dev

The complexity has to live somewhere.