The 2016 V.M.A.s have been one long night of commentary with the volume turned on full-bast, and it was about time the most regal person on earth showed up to silence us all into complete submission.

This year has basically belonged to Beyoncé, so it only makes sense that the “Lemonade” queen dropped in for a surprise performance at the V.M.A.s tonight. We’d all been hoping for it, waiting for it, polishing up the hot sauce in our bags (It’s the baseball bat, people! Sorry, it’s hard to get over). In fact, Beyoncé herself is hard to get over.

The news that the V.M.As would get a whole lot more aesthetically pleasing (a.k.a. that Beyoncé would be performing) came hours before the actual show, when M.T.V. released the requisite lemon emoji blast. And once number-one Beyhive hype-woman Serena Williams came onstage, we all knew what was coming. The V.M.As gave Bey free rein, and she basically recreated the Formation tour onstage for us at Madison Square Garden.

Opening with “Pray to Catch Me” in a cape and hat by Ralph & Russo, the queen took it to every “Lemonade”-brand emotional high and low. And during “Sorry,” actual flames took the stage, eliciting an audible “Oh, my god” from crowd members (those who weren’t presumably fainting).

For the first time of the night, commentators Key and Peele were speechless—except to wonder why the cameras cut to them when the world should have been tweeting out “one million lemon emojis.”

In other words, the 2016 V.M.A.s belonged to Beyoncé.