Swarm recreates viral moment where Tiffany Haddish said someone bit Beyoncé

Swarm, the horror-thriller series from Donald Glover and Janine Nabers, premiered Friday, bringing with it several allusions to Beyoncé Knowles Carter. The series uses the Beyhive as inspiration to gruesomely satirize the darker side of fandom. One reference many are already talking about is the "Who bit Beyoncé?" firestorm that ignited in 2018.

Here's the backstory on the moment that consumed the zeitgeist at that time (not unlike how someone attempted to devour the multi-Grammy winner). It begins with a 2018 GQ profile of actress and comedian Tiffany Haddish. In the interview, she mentions attending a party with Beyoncé and Jay-Z. During said party, she says another actress was touching Jay-Z's chest, which rubbed Beyoncé the wrong way.

"There was this actress there that's just, like, doing the mostest. She bit Beyoncé in the face," Haddish revealed to the magazine. "So Beyoncé stormed away, went up to JAY-Z, and was like, 'Jay! Come here! This b----' and snatched him. They went to the back of the room. I was like, 'What just happened?' And Beyoncé's friend walked up and was like, 'Can you believe this b---- just bit Beyoncé?'"

Love & Basketball and The Best Man star Sanaa Lathan was on the suspect list as fans launched a full-scale investigation from afar.

amazon studios; Kevin Mazur/Getty The 'who bit Beyonce?' drama comes back to the spotlight in 'Swarm'

Swarm has a lot of fun with this moment. Dominique Fishback headlines the Amazon series as Dre, a diehard devotee of a singer named Ni'Jah, the story's Beyoncé equivalent. She's so consumed with her love of the R&B star that — spoiler alert (though not surprising) — she will literally track down and kill anyone who would go so far as to tweet something bad about the icon.

In episode 3 of the limited series, this obsession leads Dre to breaking into the home of a man who works at a festival Ni'Jah will be attending. She plays it off like she's trying to escape an abusive boyfriend and then uses the guy to gain access to the festival's afterparty.

Hunger is a repeating motif throughout the series. Dre is often ravenous after committing a kill, and food is also involved with these dreamlike sequences in which she loses herself. Such a moment comes at this party when Dre spots Ni'Jah. The viewer sees Dre digging into the bounty of hors d'oeuvres presented before her, but in reality she's biting Ni'Jah.

Dre flees in horror at what she's done, while the shocked crowd at the party try to figure out what the heck just happened. She busts out a backdoor and flees down the street. One of the two dazed staffers smoking out back remarks as she rushes by, "You know who that was? The chick from Love & Basketball."

Mystery solved.

Swarm is now streaming on Amazon Prime Video.

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