How Did Alix Earle Finagle Her Way Into Bad Bunny’s Halftime Show???

First of all, if you have not yet watched Bad Bunny’s full performance at the Super Bowl, go do it now. Seriously. The clips aren’t enough to do it justice. The man is a BORN entertainer, and the staging was incredible. It was a gorgeous ode to Puerto Rico, the Puerto Rican diaspora, and the music and culture of Central and South America. It was also a visual feast: Every shot contained like, 10 more Easter egg details than my brain was able to process at once. 

For that reason, I totally missed the celebs hanging out on the casita porch during “Yo perro Sola” (also because I was busy just looking at Benito himself): Cardi B, Pedro Pascal, Karol G, Jessica Alba, and, inexplicably, Alix Earle??

Now, I don’t presume to know the totality of Earle’s relationship to the beautiful island of Puerto Rico, or the multifaceted Latinx communities of the United States (and indeed the entirety of North and South America). In fact, I don’t presume to know much about Earle’s relationship to anything or anyone… except what I’ve gleaned from dear old Page Six and its dogged reporting on when and where Ms. Earle, 25, has been spotted with one Tom Brady, 48.

In the days of mine and Earle’s youth, the odds are that Brady would’ve been playing on either side of the halftime show, but he hung up his cleats for good in 2023—shortly after he and Gisele Bundchen announced the end of their nearly 16-year relationship. She has since married and had a baby with her jiu jitsu instructor (not in that order), and Brady has been painfully, publicly single and is posting through it. 

That all might be changing, though, since Brady and Earle were spotted getting cozy in St. Bart’s over New Year’s, and were again spotted on Saturday night dancing together at a pre-Super Bowl party. The “whyyyyy” behind this pairing has kept us up at night here at Jezebel, but I think we can maybe now start piecing together an answer. The announcement that Bad Bunny would be headlining the halftime show dropped in September; Earle confirmed her breakup with Braxton Berrios (an NFL player whose name feels like it came straight from a Mormon mommy-blogger’s algorithm) in early December; and now that she was newly single, all that she needed was a well-connected boost to help her get up close and personal with Mr. Bunny—and who better to do that than the patron saint of sad, former MVPs who’d be flattered by the attention of a young hottie? 

This is pure speculation, bordering on fan fiction, but it’s honestly my only guess for how and why Earle was boogying on national television with the best of them. 

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