Actually, Serena Williams Won the Super Bowl 2025

On Sunday, Feb. 9, 65,719 people piled into Caesars Superdome in New Orleans to watch this year’s Super Bowl 2025, according to the venue’s official count. The Philadelphia Eagles dominated, 40-22 over the Kansas City Chiefs, but the true victor of Super Bowl LIX was Serena Williams.

A huge swath of the Super Bowl’s audience could take or leave the game itself—they’re in this thing for the camaraderie, the ads, the halftime show, the drama. We knew the last category would provide, by virtue of having two of the world’s most-discussed individuals, Taylor Swift and Donald Trump, in attendance, but all-time tennis great Williams can add an accolade to her resume, right alongside those 23 career Grand Slams.

Williams made an instantly iconic surprise appearance on the field during Kendrick Lamar’s halftime performance, offering up a scene-stealing C-walk while he performed “Not Like Us.” It was a reprise of sorts for Williams: Lamar’s fellow Compton native did the same dance to celebrate her 2012 Olympic gold medal win at Wimbledon after she bested Maria Sharapova. Williams was criticized at the time for the move, also known as the “Crip walk” for its association with the gang of the same name, but it has become a common hip-hop dance move. “It’s just a dance,” Williams emphasized in a press conference in 2012. She hasn’t forgotten the backlash: In a video posted to social media after her performance Sunday, Williams commented, “Man, I did not crip-walk like that at Wimbledon. Oh, I would’ve been fined.”

And then there’s the Drake of it all, which can be summarized as “salt, meet wound.” Lamar’s song, which scooped up five Grammys a week ago, is, among other things, a diss track about the Canadian rapper. In a performance stuffed with Taylor Swift-worthy Easter eggs referencing Drake, Williams was one.

Williams and Drake were rumored to have been a couple in 2015, though they never publicly confirmed it. Drake was spotted at several of Williams’ tournaments throughout that season, and has said that his song “Too Good” is about her, and he also called her husband Alexis Ohanian a “groupie” on 2022’s “Middle of the Ocean.” Lamar’s “Not Like Us” drops the line “better not speak on Serena.”

“I died a little,” Williams wrote in a tweet of her Super Bowl appearance.

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But wait, there’s more! All eyes were on Taylor Swift Sunday evening, at the game to see if her boyfriend Travis Kelce and the Chiefs would achieve a historic Super Bowl three-peat. (They did not.) Swift appeared to spend the game minding her own business in her suite with pals Ashley Avignone, Ice Spice, the sisters Haim, and Travis’s mom, Donna Kelce, among others, but that didn’t stop some from heartily booing her when she was shown on the stadium’s Jumbotron. In video of the moment, she kept her face neutral while shifting her eyes to the side, and appears to say “What’s going on?” in response to the crowd and laughing slightly.

Trump, however, took time out of his busy schedule to become the first sitting president to attend a Super Bowl game in person (apparently Ivanka sitting on the couch watching with him “in a very loving way” wasn’t good enough; he dragged his daughter there too), and also found it in himself to diss Swift on social media after the game.

“The only one that had a tougher night than the Kansas City Chiefs was Taylor Swift,” he wrote on Truth Social. “She got BOOED out of the Stadium. MAGA is very unforgiving!”

A quick fact check: Swift was not booed out of the stadium. That would imply that she left, sliding along on some flood of tears. He’s right, however, in saying that MAGA is unforgiving, especially since they don’t let little things like “the truth” and “compassion” get in their way. Trump also boasted that he was cheered when shown, but leaves out the critical context that the moment he’s referring to was during the National Anthem, when a gigantic American flag was flapping across the stadium’s field. Not typically the most boo-able moment in the game.

Again, Williams proved herself to be the hero we need: She took to X to defend her pal Swift and encourage her to take her own song’s advice and shake it off.

“I love you @taylorswift13 dont listen to those booo!!” she wrote. At a game where, for the first time in years, the league did not display an on-field plea to “End Racism, Williams joyfully reclaimed one of her own moments of victory, and became an essential piece of a halftime show draped in red, white, blue. All that, and no trophy.