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I consider myself somewhat of a Super Bowl halftime show expert: I don’t know much about football, but I sure know a hell of a lot about musical icons, pop culture, and putting on a show. So, it’s with those credentials that I hereby declare that Bad Bunny’s halftime show at Super Bowl LX was one of the best ever, if not the very best of all time. There, I said it.
Despite the opinions of some, you didn't need to speak a single word of Spanish to understand that Benito's performance was a fun-filled and meaningful celebration of music, joy, and unity, which is exactly what the world needs in 2026. I've rewatched it about six times, and I'm still noticing new details and Easter eggs that I missed before. It's pure magic.
So, between the real-life nuptials, the celebrity guests, and, of course, all those "plant people," creative director Harriet Cuddeford and director Hamish Hamilton have chatted with Variety about how the show came together, with Hamilton calling it "the biggest team effort of a show I have ever been involved in."
So, here's a look at what they revealed...
1. First up, for that incredible opening section where he sang "Tití Me Preguntó" while walking through the sugarcane field, they flew in real business owners from Puerto Rico to be part of it.
From the nail technician to the piragua vendor, and even the two boxers, the people that Benito interacted with were the real deal. "The performance is celebrating normal people, and what it is to be human and love and have joy, and really appreciate one another," Cuddeford said of this decision. "This was to show how much he values his community, to celebrate normal people on the world’s biggest stage, especially people who are of importance in Latino culture." Benito is, of course, from Puerto Rico, and his Grammy-winning album, DeBÍ TiRAR MáS FOToS, is a celebration of his beloved culture. "He’s a very authentic person, Benito, and it’s about just being authentic and very real and very human," she added.
2. Speaking of normal people, we've gotta talk about the wedding. As you've probably heard, the man and woman who got married on stage right before Lady Gaga's guest performance were actually a real engaged couple from Ontario, California, and I'm not sure I've ever been more jealous of two people in my life. According to the directors, the couple had 15 spare wedding invitations and, a few months before the Super Bowl, decided to send one to Bad Bunny as a joke. Little did they know what would come next...
"Bad Bunny’s office reached out, and they thought, 'Amazing, maybe we’ll get a signed photo.' But they were invited to a Zoom call, which they thought was kind of weird," Hamilton said. The couple were Bad Bunny fans and had already planned to use his song, "BAILE INoLVIDABLE," for their first dance. "They went from planning to play it at their wedding to being on the Super Bowl with him live, singing it, and with the bonus prize of Lady Gaga being the wedding singer as well," Hamilton added. In case you were wondering, the priest that married them was an actual, ordained minister, too.
3. Gaga and the newlyweds weren't the only special guests on the football field. Ricky Martin, another Puerto Rican icon, showed up to perform "LO QUE LE PASÓ A HAWAii," Bad Bunny's song about protecting their island's culture and identity. According to Cuddeford, Ricky's involvement was very meaningful to Benito and a personal request of his.
"It was just very powerful to have a Puerto Rican icon whom he deeply loves and respects to join him and to perform that song," Cuddeford explained. "It was something that during his residency, he had many guest artists would come and sing that. He’d never managed to align to have Ricky do it, so he was so excited to have Ricky do it at the Super Bowl."
4. On the topic of special guests, there was a sweet moment when Benito handed one of his recently won Grammys to a small boy, who was shown watching his acceptance speech on a TV. There was some online speculation that this boy was Liam Conejo Ramos, the 5-year-old from Minneapolis who was detained by ICE in January. However, this rumor was quickly debunked.
Cuddeford clarified that the Grammy moment was Benito's idea and was all about inspiring the next generation. "He’d grown up watching his idols on TV getting awards. In his life now, he stands on stage and gets given awards by his idols," she explained. "He knew the Grammys were coming up, and he was hoping to win something. And then obviously he won Best Album last weekend."
Fans noticed that the young child actor was wearing an outfit that looked similar to one a young Benito wore in a viral photo of him as a kid. This, as you'd probably expect, was very intentional. "This is really representing a younger version of himself, with the hope of him inspiring the kids of today," Cuddeford explained. As for whether the little boy still has the Grammy? "I actually don’t know if he took it back," she added. "Knowing him, he might have just left it with the kid, honestly."
5. He may be Bad Bunny, but it also sounds like he's a Brave Bunny, too. One of my favorite parts of the show was when he danced on power line poles while singing "El Apagón" (The Blackout), a moment that symbolized Puerto Rico's ongoing electrical power crisis. In this segment, Benito climbed up the poles and performed on a pretty small platform at the top. Having watched this a few times, I did try to spot a safety harness, but, as it turns out, he didn't wear one, which wasn't necessarily ideal from a health and safety standpoint.
"He refused to wear a harness. He was like, 'I don’t need it,'" Hamilton said, revealing that there was an upside to the daring move. "There are all kinds of legal ramifications to that, which is not really my thing, but interestingly enough, when he decided he wasn’t going to wear a harness, we were able to then put a camera on the pole to look down at him climbing up!"
Benito certainly looked very confident up there, which isn't a surprise when you hear that it only took him about "three minutes" to perfect the climb. "There was all safety and rigging and all of that available, obviously, of course, but he didn’t want it. He does his own stunts, that guy," Cuddeford said. "At rehearsal, we were all like, ‘Is he gonna be OK?’ But he just went straight up there and managed his vocals. Very agile. He could just, like, handle anything."
6. And that wasn't the only stunt. There was also a moment when Benito fell through the roof of the pink casita, crashing in on a family watching the Super Bowl at home. Most of this was pre-recorded, but that didn't mean it was necessarily straightforward to pull off on the day.
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