Some halftime shows are concerts. Some are nostalgia reels. And then there was Bad Bunny killing his 2026 Super Bowl halftime show, which was less “performance” and more pachanga nacional broadcast live to 135 million people. According to CBS, it’s now the most-watched halftime show in history, but numbers don’t really explain what happened. What happened was Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio took the biggest stage in American spectacle culture and said, politely but firmly: we’re doing this Boricua style ahora.

And just like that, the Super Bowl became Puerto Rico’s living room.

From the first beat, the show doesn’t feel engineered for mainstream digestibility. It feels like an invitation – no, a declaration – that our culture doesn’t need translation. No subtitles. No softening. No “let me explain this for the audience.” Just rhythm, color, choreography, and narrative moving with the confidence of someone who knows exactly where he’s from and refuses to dilute it.

The moment that seals it for me wasn’t the choreography or the celebrity cameos. It’s the kid asleep at the wedding on stage. If you’re Caribeño, you don’t laugh – you recognize. That is anthropology. That is sociology. That is the universal truth that weddings are for adults, kids will knock out on two chairs pushed together, and somebody’s tia will wake them up because, mijo, sleep is for the dead and you’re ten years old, get up, the party isn’t over. Seeing that on the Super Bowl stage feells surreal and deeply real at the same time. Benito isn’t recreating a fantasy Puerto Rico. He’s staging memories.

And then — una boda. A literal wedding unfolding in the middle of the spectacle, because of course there was. Puerto Rican culture doesn’t separate celebration from narrative – it folds life events into rhythm. That wedding scene isn’t filler. It is a thesis: joy is communal, messy, loud, multigenerational. Community is the point.

The guest appearances read like a pop-cultural roll call. Pedro Pascal slides in with effortless cool. Cardi B and Karol G bring heat. Ricky Martin shows up and, I’m sorry, I am a grown adult and I still giggle like a teenager every time that man appears. There is no cure. There is no therapy for it. It is permanent.

Lady Gaga’s appearance is… complicated. Some viewers weren’t thrilled given her vocal stance on Israel, and her inclusion is the only tonal hiccup in an otherwise perfectly calibrated show. What made that moment linger is the tension it introduces: you cannot stand on a stage that so powerfully invokes the freedom and dignity of Puerto Rico without audiences asking how that message extends beyond the island. For many viewers, solidarity is not modular – it doesn’t switch on and off depending on geography. The call for liberation resonates globally, and it feels contradictory to celebrate self-determination in one breath while remaining silent about it in another.

I found myself wondering whether Bad Bunny was gesturing toward something broader about pop lineage or Super Bowl performance solidarity, or whether the moment simply reflects the messy reality of assembling a spectacle at this scale. Maybe he knows something we don’t. Either way, the tension doesn’t disappear – it becomes part of the conversation, a reminder that cultural celebration and political consciousness are rarely clean lines. And as quickly as the question surfaced, the rhythm reclaims the stage, carrying the performance forward while leaving that contradiction humming in the background.

Then came the imagery that hits like a drum to the chest. Benito climbing light poles, invoking El Apagón, translating Puerto Rico’s political realities into visual language so massive it can not be ignored. For an island so often reduced to vacation aesthetic or resource extraction or background noise in American narratives, this is reclamation at Super Bowl scale. He isn’t just performing hits. He is staging protest, history, pride, and survival inside a spectacle machine that rarely allows that kind of interruption.

And his message lands because it is rooted in joy. Joy as resistance. Joy as cultural insistence. Joy that says: nosotros siempre estaremos aquí.

The contrast floating around social media afterward was brutal and hilarious. While Benito was orchestrating a cultural masterclass in identity and celebration, Turning Point USA’s parallel event – headlined by Kid Rock – reportedly feels like a garage show the neighbors were seconds away from shutting down. The internet described it perfectly: the party nobody wanted to attend, except the people who accidentally parked wrong and couldn’t leave. Meanwhile, Benito had the entire world dancing, whether they spoke Spanish or not.

I cried more than I expected. Maybe because seeing Puerto Rican culture centered without apology hits something deep when you’ve spent years watching your identity flattened into stereotypes or seasonal marketing campaigns. Maybe because diaspora longing is real, and hearing those rhythms on that scale feels like being home for a moment. I could almost smell the air, feel the sun, hear the neighbors arguing affectionately through thin walls. Community humming. Life loud and unfiltered.

My phone exploded afterward. Every Boricua I know – texts, voice notes, memes, emotional declarations. My friend Stephanie summed it up best: “This man is single-handedly responsible for my emotional well-being.” Dramatic? Sure. True? Also yes. Because what Benito has built is more than a discography. It’s a shared emotional vocabulary for a generation rediscovering pride.

I’m literally writing this on a flight to Miami while La MuDANZA loops in my headphones, and it hits me that Bad Bunny has done something rare. He’s created a soundtrack that feels like both celebration and mobilization.

This halftime show isn’t just entertainment. It’s cultural affirmation broadcast at an impossible scale. It says Puerto Rico is not an afterthought, but a living, breathing force carried by its people who refuse to shrink.

Bad Bunny didn’t perform for the Super Bowl. He turned the Super Bowl into Puerto Rico.

Y eso… eso es poder. ¡Con un besito y bendición, puñeta!