Rihanna halftime show wows, but fans were talking about something else after performance

Rihanna had not performed live since the 2018 Grammys. On Sunday it only took her a handful of minutes to enthrall her fans and erase that five-year absence.

Yes, the music was great. But fans were enthralled to learn the singer is pregnant again.

Fans had speculated that she would have a special guest, as other halftime performers have in the past. But no one other than backup dancers joined her on stage.

Turns out she was carrying the special guest.

Twitter went into overdrive during her performance. Is Rhi Rhi pregnant again? She gave birth last May to her first child, a boy, with partner A$AP Rocky.

After she performed, her rep confirmed to The Hollywood Reporter that she is pregnant.

“Rihanna reveals she is pregnant with her second child during her Super Bowl Halftime performance,” music website Consequence tweeted after the performance, along with a photo showing Rihanna’s round stomach from the side.

She made a grand entrance standing on a platform lowered from the ceiling high above the field. It was scary for some fans to watch. But that went away as she launched into a string of her biggest hits.

She led off with “B-tch Better Have My Money.” Billboard noted it was an “an interesting choice, given that Super Bowl halftime performers generally aren’t paid for their efforts.”

She even got the Fox Sports guys (kinda) dancing as she worked her way through an amazing setlist of hits. “Rude Boy.” “We Found Love.” “Diamonds.” “Umbrella.”

But talk of a possible pregnancy took over the night’s discussion. She was covered up in a flight suit during much of the performance — in Chiefs red, by the way — but made no effort to cover a rounder stomach, leading fans to happily speculate that Baby No. 2 is on the way.

When she finished, she looked wistfully up at the fireworks exploding over the stadium.

Searches for “Rihanna” and “pregnant” stalled Twitter for a while on Sunday, leading to happy cries of “Rihanna broke the internet.”

“Whether this is normalizing postpartum bodies or Rhi Rhi is making a pregnancy announcement can we take a moment to recognize how women & mommies are defying limiting stereotypes daily. She DID that!!“ tweeted journalist Terri Huggins, who writes about parenting.

In an interview before the performance, she told The Hollywood Reporter she thought twice before agreeing to perform. When she said yes she was three months postpartum.

“When you become a mom, there’s something that just happens where you feel like you could take on the world — you can do anything,” she said.

“And the Super Bowl is one of the biggest stages in the world, so as scary as that was … there’s something exhilarating about the challenge of it all,” she said. “It’s important for my son to see that.”