Super Bowl LVIIHow Patrick Mahomes and Kansas City Captured the Super Bowl Over Philadelphia

Rihanna hasn’t released an album since “Anti” in 2016, and many in her fervent fan base took her willingness to perform at the Super Bowl this year as a sign that her return to music might be imminent. Perhaps she would announce a new single or album, or maybe a tour.

Instead, she used one of pop music’s biggest stages to assert that despite all of that collective anticipation, she had other things to focus on: a private life to return to. So if her actual onstage delivery had been slightly weary, well, there were more important things to focus on.

In 13 minutes, Rihanna casually performed snippets of 12 hits, universally known songs that don’t require much in the way of fluffing or bombast. The closest she came to frisson, to sass, to authority, to verve came a little after the halfway point of the set.

Just after the familiar horn fusillade of “All of the Lights” boomed from the speakers, Rihanna took a compact from the outstretched hand of one of her dancers with her right hand, applied two dabs of powder — a nod to Fenty Beauty, which has been a bigger professional focus for her than music in recent years — and returned it before grabbing the microphone with her left hand from another dancer.

Then she launched into the hook of “All of the Lights,” a decade-plus-old collaboration with Ye (formerly Kanye West), whose antisemitic remarks late last year have made him a pariah. She followed that song immediately with “Run This Town,” another collaboration with Ye (and Jay-Z).

A quick cosmetics ad? Sure. An implicit statement of support for an embattled peer? Why not. Rihanna — one of the crucial pop hitmakers of the 21st century — needs the Super Bowl less than the Super Bowl needs her, and her performance was a master class in doing exactly enough. She treated it like many people approach their professional obligations when their personal life is calling: dutiful, lightly enthused, a little exhausted, looking to work the angles ever so slightly.

The queen of nonchalance, Rihanna first appeared Sunday night on a stage floating above the 50-yard line (a gesture cribbed from Ye’s 2016 Saint Pablo tour) singing “Bitch Better Have My Money.” She was tethered to the platform, limiting her maneuvering, but even when she reached the ground she didn’t overemphasize dance, instead holding sturdy court at the center of 100-plus dancers, sharing in their movements but never outdoing them. During “Work,” she led them as if she were a tutor calling out moves but not participating in them.

Rihanna’s hits are plentiful — she has charted more than 60 times on the Billboard Hot 100 — and they are varied. But there was no true thematic through line to this casual revue of a dozen deeply beloved songs. Mostly, she leaned into the up-tempo side of her catalog — “Where Have You Been,” “Only Girl (in the World)” — with nods to her Caribbean heritage on “Work” and “Rude Boy.” At the set’s end, she emphasized her big-picture, one-word-title smashes, “Umbrella” and “Diamonds,” which prioritize melodrama over feeling.

Rihanna is many things — a new mother, a billionaire mogul in fashion and cosmetics, an astonishingly reliable pop star with a deep catalog. But she is not a current hitmaker. And she had not performed a show of this scale since 2016.

So in its marketing, the Super Bowl amplified how it was a coup to land her most visible effort in years. During promotional teases, Apple Music’s Ebro Darden portentously intoned, “The wait. Is almost. Over.”

In essence, the event was her appearance. The event was the event. There were no guests, despite the frequency and power of her collaborations. No costume changes, despite her standing as a fashion innovator — she wore an all-red outfit, removing and adding layers throughout.

Though the performance was brief and hurried, it nevertheless felt slow. There was little variation in tone or energy, no aesthetic nods to the lightly themed set list. It was a routine designed to trigger long-honed pleasure centers, not ignite new fervor — a triumph of foregone conclusion.

That Rihanna appeared at all is a testament to the ways in which the N.F.L. has been successful in papering — or performing — over its controversies. She declined to perform at the Super Bowl in 2019, an era in which turning down a gig on one of the world’s biggest stages — a retort to the N.F.L.’s response to Colin Kaepernick’s activism — felt political. But the involvement of Jay-Z’s Roc Nation with the league in the years following has remade the halftime show both musically and socioculturally.

From an entertainment perspective, that’s been for the best. And for Rihanna, playing halftime is a milestone befitting the scope of her achievements. But her show wasn’t overtly political, or even particularly celebratory of her litany of hits. Instead, it served as something of a placeholder. She’d come to perform, yes. But she also has more pressing things to attend to.

In delivering Kansas City Coach Andy Reid a championship against his former team, Mahomes led the Chiefs to scores on all four of their drives after halftime. The fourth, which came after Philadelphia quarterback Jalen Hurts evened the score at 35 with a rushing touchdown and a 2-point conversion, would have ended with a touchdown had Jerick McKinnon not slid down a yard short of the end zone to keep the clock running and minimize any chances for Philadelphia. Indeed, Kansas City all but ran out the clock, positioning Butker — who sprained an ankle at this very stadium in Week 1 — for a short field goal.

Mahomes capped a week in which he won his second Most Valuable Player Award by being selected as the game’s M.V.P. for a second time. He threw for 182 yards and ran for 44 more — 26 of which came on a late fourth-quarter scamper, after he appeared to reinjure the right ankle he sprained in Kansas City’s divisional-round victory against Jacksonville three weeks ago.

But — and this may be less unassailable, if only slightly — Mahomes on one healthy ankle is better than most of the league’s players with two. Much as he did three years ago, when he spun a double-digit deficit into victory in leading Kansas City to its first championship since the 1969 season, Mahomes conjured his best for the game’s exhilarating, exhausting final 30 minutes.

He turned a 24-14 halftime deficit into a 35-27 advantage with 9 minutes 22 seconds remaining. Unbowed, Hurts guided the Eagles on a 75-yard drive in which he accounted for both the touchdown — his third on the ground — and the ensuing 2-point conversion, which evened the score at 35.

Even though Tom Brady won three Super Bowls in his first four years as the full-time starter, winning the game’s M.V.P. Award twice, he did not dominate the league this early like Mahomes, who this season threw for 41 touchdowns and 5,250 yards, both tops in the league. In fairness, few players have lorded over the N.F.L. like Mahomes, who since taking over as Kansas City’s starting quarterback in 2018 has always played in an A.F.C. championship game at home. Only four other quarterbacks have won multiple M.V.P. Awards and Super Bowl titles: Joe Montana, Steve Young, Peyton Manning and Brady.

Mahomes has shattered the bounds of credulity with his creativity and improvisational acumen, redefining a position that had been played a certain way for nearly a century. Even this season, working with a solid cast of receivers that lacked an established star beyond tight end Travis Kelce, Mahomes threw for more explosive plays — at least 20 yards — than anyone else in the league.

In the league’s first Super Bowl matchup of Black starting quarterbacks — a game that also featured the youngest combined age (51 years, 337 days) of the starters at the position — Mahomes and Hurts dazzled the crowd at State Farm Stadium, combining for seven total touchdowns. Hurts, who threw for 304 yards and a touchdown, set a Super Bowl record for rushing yards by a quarterback with 70.

The Eagles, after spending nearly six decades flopping and flailing and stomping on postseason land mines, tried gamely to establish a new Super Bowl paradigm: Every five years now they seem to face an iconic coach, a dominant quarterback and an elite tight end in the N.F.L.’s final game.

Philadelphia’s merry band of underdogs toppled New England, led by Coach Bill Belichick, Brady and tight end Rob Gronkowski, five years ago. But this Eagles team — with a different quarterback and coaching staff — won its first eight games, went 14-1 when Hurts started and claimed the top seed in the N.F.C.

The Eagles will rue so much about this game — mainly, how they managed to score only 11 points after halftime, but also the cruelty of James Bradberry’s defensive holding penalty on third-and-8 from the Philadelphia 15-yard line, which negated an Eagles stop and extended Kansas City’s winning drive.

State Farm is not running a television ad, but it has done a TikTok promotion. The insurance company posted a video several days before the game inviting people to enter a contest. The winner, who will be selected at random after the game, will appear in a TikTok video with the megapopular creator Khaby Lame.

Even brands airing TV commercials during the game are trying to engage audiences on TikTok to extend their ads’ reach. “If you’re going to invest that much money in a 30-second spot, you need to surround that with something else to make that investment worth it,” said Kelsey Chickering, an analyst at Forrester.

Twitter had been the primary second screen for many years, she said. People watching the game on TV were also keeping an eye on their Twitter feeds for real-time conversations, and advertisers poured money into ads on the service. But this year, she said, brands have turned to TikTok. “Consumers haven’t abandoned Twitter, but advertisers will prioritize TikTok,” she added.

Booking.com offered audiences a chance to win thousands of dollars in travel credits if they commented on the company’s TikTok and Instagram posts with mention of its “Somewhere, Anywhere” campaign. Pringles asked viewers to use the hashtag #StuckInPringles on TikTok to share stories of their hands getting stuck in Pringles tubes.

And last month, Doritos invited TikTok users to enter a contest to appear in its Super Bowl ad. More than a million videos were submitted in three days, a spokeswoman for the brand said.

The winner, Angie Yadao-Payad, of the #DoritosTriangleTryout challenge is seen dancing about 41 seconds into the ad, which also features the rappers Missy Elliott and Jack Harlow.

This is not the first time Rihanna decided to make a splashy baby announcement: In January 2022, Rihanna and her partner, ASAP Rocky, announced they were pregnant through a series of photos taken by “fashion’s favorite paparazzi,” Miles Diggs, according to Vogue. Rihanna gave birth to a son in May.

Fans have been waiting for a new Rihanna album since 2016 and pinned the start of a comeback with her halftime performance. Would she bring out a special guest? Release a new song? Announce a new tour? Instead, new rumors swirled.

Once her publicist confirmed the news, reaction from fans was equal parts supportive and concerned. They expressed their admiration, but also some trepidation about how much longer they would need to wait for the next album.

Caryn Ganz contributed reporting.

Rihanna has spent much of her time away from the music world — her most recent album, “Anti,” was released in January 2016 — making her name as a fashion and beauty mogul; in 2021 Forbes estimated her net worth at $1.7 billion. Ever the savvy businesswoman, her halftime performance featured a bit of product placement, when she paused for a moment to reapply some Fenty Beauty powder.

The staging was dramatic and visually striking, as Rihanna hovered over the crowd on an elevated platform that descended from above, and some of her dancers remained poised above the field throughout the set. She blazed through 12 songs in 13 minutes, emphasizing the staggering depth of her catalog as a hitmaker: “Rude Boy” from her 2009 album “Rated R,” “Where Have You Been” from “Talk That Talk” in 2011, “Pour It Up” from her 2012 LP “Unapologetic.” She did not, however, play her most recent single, the ballad “Lift Me Up” from the “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever” soundtrack, for which she received her first Academy Award nomination.

The set ended on a triumphant note, when Rihanna played her bombastic ballad “Diamonds,” draped in an oversized red puffer coat, and the stage ascended back to the sky.

Fans have been clamoring for a new Rihanna album, and it’s likely they will have to keep waiting. Despite speculation, she did not debut any new music during her performance, and she has not yet revealed any information about her ninth album. As she told The Associated Press in an interview shortly after she was announced as the halftime headliner, “Super Bowl is one thing. New music is another thing. Do you hear that, fans?”

Set List:

“Bitch Better Have My Money”

“Where Have You Been”

“Only Girl (in the World)”

“We Found Love”

“Rude Boy”

“Work”

“Wild Thoughts”

“Pour It Up”

“All of the Lights”

“Run This Town”

“Umbrella”

“Diamonds”