Super Bowl 2019: all the best commercials, trailers, and performances from the big game

Disney used Super Bowl LIII to debut a number of new trailers and TV spots for its upcoming slate of movies, including Pixar’s highly anticipated Toy Story 4.

The new teaser for Toy Story 4 brings Bo Peep back to the franchise for the first time in 20 years. Bo Peep last popped up in Toy Story 2 in 1999, but she won’t be the same Bo Peep we remember.

T-Mobile is giving customers one free Lyft ride in February, and the company’s Super Bowl announcement used a viral meme in the process.

A fake text message conversation between a Lyft driver and a T-Mobile user (seen below) is based on a meme from December 2017. The original photo — a screenshot of a faked text conversation between an Uber customer and a driver — quickly went viral, only for the creator of the photo to later announce the entire thing was made up as a joke. Lyft’s commercial relied on the same tone and comedy to make the announcement.

T-Mobile is leaning into its customer appreciation by giving out free Taco Bell and one Lyft ride to customers.

Multiple ads for T-Mobile that played during the Super Bowl game between the Los Angeles Rams and the New England Patriots announced certain free offers for customers, including tacos that will be available every Tuesday at Taco Bell, and an offer for one free Lyft ride in February.

The 2019 Super Bowl gave Spongebob Squarepants, Nickelodeon, and general meme fans something to talk about for years to come — a shout out to “Sweet Victory.”

Maroon 5 paid tribute to Spongebob Squarepants with a clip of “Sweet Victory,” a song that the cast of Spongebob Squarepants performed in an episode from 2001. The episode finds Squidward being tricked into forming a marching band for the Bubble Bowl, a very obvious tribute to the Super Bowl. The episode, “Band Geeks,” is largely revered as one of the best Spongebob Squarepants episode in large part because of the performance.

CBS debuted a clever trailer for its upcoming reboot of The Twilight Zone, opening with Atlanta’s Mercedes-Benz Stadium abruptly shutting down, leaving a single figure in the middle of the field — Jordan Peele, the host for the series.

As he walks towards an empty door, he asks viewers to “witness an empty space, filled with thousands of screaming people, a man both nowhere, and everywhere at the same time, answers our new questions. The unthinkable is the expected. When truth is not the truth, what dimension are you even in?” It’s a clever teaser that immediately attracts viewers attention, and showcases the surrealist nature of the show.

The seemingly never ending battle between Felix “PewDiePie” Kjellberg and T-Series for most subscribed to YouTube creator just hit a whole new level.

Jimmy “MrBeast” Donaldson, another popular YouTube creator, appeared at the Super Bowl with his friends wearing “Subscribe to PewDiePie” shirts, bringing the internet campaign to a whole new level. The shirts appeared a couple of times on stream, and even managed to make it into an official ESPN tweet, which can be seen below. Donaldson and his friends can be seen to the right.

Budweiser has been playing with medieval fantasy for a while now with it’s “Dilly Dilly” commercials, and now it’s come full-circle, bringing in characters from HBO’s Game of Thrones.

The commercial opens with Bud Light’s knight taking part in a joust, before he’s confronted by an off-brand Game of Thrones theme song as The Mountain comes out to take part in the event. The two clash, with the Bud Light knight taken off his horse and brutally murdered, before a dragon swoops in to light everyone on fire.

Hulu has debuted a teaser for the upcoming third season of its award-winning drama, The Handmaid’s Tale, that reimagines Ronald Reagan’s iconic Morning in America commercial.

The trailer imitates Reagan’s 1984 election commercial, saying that more women are at work and more children are being born, imagining an optimistic vision for the world, before it takes a dark turn, with Elizabeth Moss’s Offred saying “Wake up, America.” It’s a sharp take on the criticism of America’s religious religious right, and promises more to come in the forthcoming season.

A new teaser for Captain Marvel, the next installment in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, finds Carol Danvers showing the boys who’s boss — including Samuel L. Jackson’s Nicky Fury and Jude Law’s villain, Yon-Rogg.

The teaser debuted at the 2019 Super Bowl, which saw the Los Angeles Rams take on the New England Patriots. There isn’t a ton of new information or scenes in the trailer, but it’s a fun 30-second clip. It shouldn’t be too surprising that there isn’t too much new information, though — the movie comes out in just over a month.

Jordan Peele has posted a new teaser for his upcoming film Us to Reddit ahead of its debut during tonight’s Super Bowl.

The first trailer for the film arrived last December, teasing Peele’s long-anticipated followup to 2017’s Get Out. The trailer shows off what starts off as an idyllic family vacation that takes a dark turn when the family encounters a creepy set of doppelgängers — who Peele called “The Tethered” (which give the golden scissors that they carry a bit more of a creepy presence).

Super Bowl LIII is happening on February 3rd, 2019, and if you want to watch, there’ll be plenty of ways to tune in — and you won’t have to pay as long as you’re using the right apps.

The rights to broadcast the Super Bowl change hands each year between NBC, FOX, and CBS. CBS will be airing this year’s game between the Los Angeles Rams and the New England Patriots, and that includes the commercials and halftime show featuring Travis Scott, headlined by Maroon 5.

The kick off for the biggest football game on our planet is scheduled for 6:30PM ET/3:30PM PT on February 3rd, 2019. But that’s a really Earth-biased way of looking at things. Maybe some other planets would like to know when they can watch the Rams take on the Patriots on Sunday.

Figuring out how long that delay will be isn’t as simple as adjusting timezones. As theoretical physicist Carlo Rovelli points out in Sports Illustrated, even light takes some small amount of time to travel from kick off to the people in the stands in Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta and to the cameras capturing the game. It takes even longer for that signal to travel from there out into the world.

There are so many streaming options available these days, and so many conflicting recommendations, that it’s hard to see through all the crap you could be watching. Each Friday, The Verge’s Cut the Crap column simplifies the choice by sorting through the overwhelming multitude of movies and TV shows on subscription services and recommending a single perfect thing to watch this weekend.

The Freshman, a 1925 silent comedy starring Harold Lloyd. The bespectacled comic plays Harold Lamb, a naïve young student who arrives at Tate University expecting college life to be like what he’s seen at the movies: full of school spirit and football heroics. Harold tries to win over his classmates by spending lavishly on snacks and parties, and he pitches woo to the pretty, kindly Peggy (Jobyna Ralston), described in a title card as, “The kind of girl your mother must have been.” All the while, mean-spirited upperclassmen turn the well-meaning newcomer into the butt of their pranks and jokes, including encouraging the football coach to let Harold join the team, so they can treat him as their tackling dummy, servant, and stooge. One of the first 50 films added to the Library of Congress’ National Film Registry (way back in 1990), The Freshman has been an enduring influence on all the underdog sports stories and campus comedies where nerds and outcasts get to one-up the snobs and jocks.

Tyler “Ninja” Blevins was gaming’s biggest name in 2018, and he’s continuing that in 2019 by starring in a Super Bowl ad alongside some of the biggest athletes.

Blevins, who is widely considered one of the biggest Fortnite players in the world, tweeted out the ad today, confirming it will play before Maroon 5’s halftime show. It stars former Indianapolis Colts quarterback Peyton Manning, Michael Strahan, and NFL commissioner Roger Goodell. The entire commercial is about Blevins, with Manning calling him a “video game master.”

The Seattle Seahawks might not be at the Super Bowl this year, but Microsoft is returning after a four-year hiatus. The software giant is focusing on its Xbox Adaptive Controller this year, and the commercial includes the many ways this unique controller is used. Designed for gamers with disabilities, the controller has two large programmable buttons and 19 jacks that can be connected to various accessories to make Xbox and PC gaming far more accessible for a number of players. Even Microsoft’s packaging for the controller is designed to be as accessible as possible.

Microsoft’s two-minute slot tells the stories of a number of young gamers with disabilities and how the Adaptive Controller levels the playing field in Xbox games. It’s part of Microsoft’s “empowering” series of ads, and it continues the same emotional message that was introduced back at the Super Bowl in 2014. It’s less about selling the Xbox Adaptive Controller to new audiences, and more of a method of tugging at the heartstrings to show that Microsoft isn’t just a giant corporation.