It’s officially Super Bowl week. For sports fans that means we’ll soon see which team is crowned champion of the National Football League. For everyone else it means watching a bunch of very expensive commercials featuring famous celebrities. Sometimes those ads are memorable and sometimes they’re a big (game) disappointment. How can companies avoid the latter? Simple: reunite two popular stars of a beloved show. That’s what MTN DEW did for its new campaign. It stars ray of sunshine Aubrey Plaza having a Baja Blast even before she rides atop a dragon opposite her Parks and Rec costar Nick Offerman.
“America’s sweetheart” is having definitely having a good time everywhere she goes in MTN DEW’s new promo. Well, she’s having a “blast” in the exact way you’d expect Aubrey Plaza to go through life. But the “good” times really take off at the end of the ad when she goes full Game of Thrones by riding a dragon. As Daenerys learned, though, you’re better off having someone ride with you, and that’s what Plaza does when her former Parks and Rec boss joins her in the skies.
This commercial isn’t just a (Baja) blast for fans of the NBC sitcom. Plaza told Variety she was “dying” over the chance to work with Offerman again. “It was so fun because I love Nick so much,” she said, “And even though we’re not playing our characters in Parks and Rec it does feel in some way like a little April and Ron reunion and I feel like in some alternate universe, this is exactly what they would be doing. So it all made sense to me.”
Ron Swanson would definitely love owning a dragon if he lived in Westeros. April Ludgate would also definitely burn down King’s Landing for no reason if given the chance, so that checks out. As does our theory that reuniting sitcom stars is always a win to make a winning Super Bowl commercial.