The Wild Reed: Thoughts on Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl Halftime Show

Wednesday, February 11, 2026

Thoughts on Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl Halftime Show

Sunday’s halftime show was the first primarily Spanish-language performance to take place at the Super Bowl, although Bad Bunny was a guest back in 2020, when he and J Balvin guested during Shakira and Jennifer Lopez’s headlining performance. . . . While Bad Bunny’s performance was an exuberant and deeply coded celebration of Latin American culture, it was also a statement that culture is meant to be shared. Love is stronger than hate, together we are America – and everyone is welcome on the dance floor.

– Tomás Mier and Jem Aswad
Excerpted from “Bad Bunny Stuns the Super Bowl”
Variety
February 8, 2026

Bad Bunny didn’t just break the Internet and viewership records; he broke MAGA in a way that is deeply personal, and they hate him for it.

But they don’t hate him because he doesn’t sing in English, or because he’s been critical of the masked thugs they beat immigrants vicariously through, or because his pigmentation is problematic – at least those aren’t the primary reasons.

MAGAers hate Bad Bunny because he is a symbol of their greatest fears coming to life: a nation that is outgrowing them, a culture that is evolving past them, a war against progress that they know they’re losing.

They despise him because, over the course of a thirteen-minute halftime show that they swore they wouldn’t watch but couldn’t look away from, they were forced to see what’s happening outside of the insular, white nationalist echo chamber they spend their lives in, and it terrified them.