The New England Patriots are going to the Super Bowl for the third straight year, much to the jubilation and annoyance of fans and detractors alike. Ignoring the politics of the NFL for a moment, however, a recent Twitter tease by this year’s halftime show performers, the band Maroon 5, has fans of the acclaimed Nickelodeon cartoon SpongeBob SquarePants excited. Why? Because Maroon 5 might play a SpongeBob Super Bowl tribute to memorialize the late Stephen Hillenburg.
Wait, is there really going to be a SpongeBob Super Bowl tribute?
About 32 seconds into Maroon 5’s Super Bowl halftime show teaser, footage from Hillenburg’s SpongeBob SquarePants is briefly cut into the mix of performance footage and crowd shots. Otherwise, neither the teaser nor the band makes explicit mention of the character’s presence. More than anything, it just seems like a random bit of extra footage that just feels out of place.
#SBLIII pic.twitter.com/dWKJQDS9ap
— Maroon 5 (@maroon5) January 13, 2019
If you’ve been following along with the hugely popular Change.org petition calling for a SpongeBob Super Bowl tribute, however, then Maroon 5’s tease means a great deal more. As of this writing, over 1.1 million people have signed Isreal Colunga’s petition, which “[calls] for Sweet Victory to be performed” during the customary Super Bowl LIII musical performance. (The petition is currently aiming for 1.5 million signatures.)
No one from the NFL, Nickelodeon or Maroon 5 has explicitly stated that the halftime show will somehow incorporate the petition’s song of choice, “Sweet Victory.” Yet aside from the band’s recent tweet, the relevant parties have been hinting at something since Colunga’s petition first went viral. The official Twitter account for the Super Bowl LIII venue, Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta, acknowledged the petition with a SpongeBob GIF. At around the same time, Nickelodeon made the entire “Sweet Victory” sequence from the “Band Geeks” episode available to watch on YouTube.
No, seriously, what’s with the SpongeBob Super Bowl tribute?
Again, none of this actually means that Maroon 5 will be performing all or some of “Sweet Victory” during their halftime performance. But if they do decide to honor the petition’s request to give Hillenburg a SpongeBob Super Bowl tribute, then it will surely be one of the more memorable, Internet-inspired performances in recent memory.
